NotebookLM has been on everyone’s radar this year, and it’s easy to see why. It’s probably the best tool out there right now for researching and learning thanks to its insanely good synthesizing capabilities. It’s so pivotal to many of our workflows; I even use it alongside my design apps, as well as to take care of boring everyday tasks.

Although powerful enough on its own, NotebookLM really starts to shine when you weave it into the rest of your digital setup. You might be curious about how people actually pair NotebookLM with other apps, since there aren’t really official integrations. Well, it depends on what you’re working with - some apps work better with NotebookLM than others…

What does it mean to “integrate” an app with NotebookLM?

Since there are no official integrations

There’s also no public API or official plugins for integration, so you might wonder what we mean when we say we're “pairing” NotebookLM with another app. Does it mean we’re just copy-pasting everything between them? Sometimes, that is actually the case.

However, there are workarounds to using apps side-by-side with NotebookLM seamlessly. The first is an official Google Drive integration. NotebookLM does integrate with Google Drive. So when, say, a notes app has a Drive integration, like Goodnotes or Google Docs, you can fetch those notes directly from within NotebookLM thanks to its integration with Drive.

You can also use the Google Drive desktop app. If an app exports files in an open, universal format that NotebookLM supports, like Markdown or PDF, then you can export locally to a folder that’s set to sync with your Google Drive. And then you can fetch those files directly within NotebookLM.

This is how “integrating” NotebookLM with other apps works. Basically, if you can get universal formats onto your Drive, consider it paired. And some apps make this workaround more seamless than others.

Readwise

Get your highlights into NotebookLM

Readwise is a tool that serves as a hub for users to store highlights from their reading materials. It integrates with a wide variety of reading and productivity apps, and there’s also a web extension to import highlights directly from web pages. Readwise also has its own reading app, called Reader.

Readwise is probably the only tool in this roundup that lists NotebookLM itself as an integration. However, it doesn’t quite integrate directly with NotebookLM, but rather, Google Docs. Whatever highlights you’ve saved in your Readwise library will sync automatically with Google Docs, which you can then fetch from within NotebookLM. It’s the perfect way to gather materials into a NotebookLM notebook as you’re reading and highlighting.

Perplexity

Export Markdown and PDFs locally

Perplexity has become an integral part of my work this year, and it’s really good at breaking complex topics into digestible nuggets. Unfortunately, it took me forever to realize that you can export your chats (also called threads).

Ever since discovering that it can export entire threads as Markdown or PDF, I started incorporating Perplexity into my note-taking stack. I export the most useful threads to a local folder that’s synced to my Google Drive via the desktop Drive app, and then I can simply fetch those text and PDF files from within a NotebookLM notebook. I also export some of my threads to my Obsidian vault because it retains the formatting and clickable links. Speaking of Obsidian…

Obsidian

Syncing my vault with Google Drive

Obsidian is a personal knowledge management app that uses Markdown and stores all your data locally by default in your Obsidian vault. All you need to do to “pair” it with NotebookLM is write your notes in the app, make sure your local vault is set to sync with the Google Drive desktop app, and you can fetch those notes directly from within NotebookLM. This is probably the easiest, most seamless integration with NotebookLM there is.

VSCode

Exporting text to a local folder

Although I don’t know much about programming or code, I use VSCode from time to time to clean up the html source code of my articles, or even for writing in Markdown. VSCode lets you export in a massive range of formats locally, including Markdown and plain text. I simply store those files in a Drive-synced folder, and then I can access them in a NotebookLM notebook. NotebookLM is actually a little better at spotting certain inconsistencies in the code than VSCode’s search function, and it can also explain certain parts of the code to me in plain language.

Windows Notepad

An easy way to get my plain text into NotebookLM

Windows Notepad is Windows’ official note-taking app, and it’s been part of my workflow since forever. I write in it using plain or Markdown text, and save my files to my local text stack. Once again, as long as that folder is synced to Drive, I can fetch the files from within NotebookLM. This is a great way to quickly get more personal documents in NotebookLM since I use Notepad for a wide variety of tasks like project lists, journal entries, financial notes, and so on.

If it exports in a universal format and can get onto your Drive, consider it integrated

While official NotebookLM integrations are few and far between, you don’t actually need something that officially integrates with NotebookLM. To get content from another app into the AI, all you need is a universal format supported by NotebookLM (plain text and PDF) and the Google Drive app. Once it’s connected, consider your research and materials integrated.