Manage, rename, and remove sources in NotebookLM

Rename sources, view indexed content, select which sources the AI draws from, and remove sources you no longer need in your NotebookLM notebook.

As your notebook grows, keeping your sources organized helps you work more efficiently and ensures the AI is drawing on the right material. NotebookLM gives you tools to view, rename, select, and remove sources directly from the Sources panel—without leaving your notebook.

Give your sources descriptive names when you add them, especially if you are working with multiple documents on the same topic. Clear names make it much easier to track which source contributed to which AI response.

View your sources

The Sources panel is on the left side of your notebook. It lists every source you have added, along with the source type and title.

Click any source in the panel to see:

• Its title (editable—see below)
• A short AI-generated summary of the source content
• The source type (PDF, website, YouTube video, etc.)

You can also expand a source to read the full indexed text that NotebookLM has extracted from it. This is useful for verifying that the right content was captured, especially for scanned PDFs or audio transcriptions.

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Rename a source

Source titles default to the file name, document title, or page title at the time of import. You can rename any source to something more meaningful.

1. Find the source in the Sources panel

   Locate the source you want to rename in the left panel.

2. Open the three-dot menu

   Hover over the source and click the three-dot menu (⋯) that appears to the right of the source title.

3. Click Rename

   Select Rename from the menu.

4. Enter a new name

   Type the new name and press Enter or click outside the field to save.

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Remove a source

You can remove a source from your notebook at any time. Removing a source is permanent within the notebook—you cannot undo it.

1. Open the three-dot menu

   Hover over the source in the Sources panel and click the three-dot menu (⋯).

2. Click Remove source

   Select Remove source from the menu.

3. Confirm the removal

   Confirm when prompted. The source is immediately removed from your notebook.

Removing a source also removes it from the AI’s context. Any notebook guide sections, chat responses, or AI-generated content that was based solely on that source may no longer be accurate or fully supported. Review your notes after removing a source to check for gaps.

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Select sources for a chat query

By default, NotebookLM considers all sources in your notebook when responding to a chat message. You can narrow the AI’s focus to specific sources for a given query.

In the Sources panel, check or uncheck sources to select which ones the AI should draw from. Only the selected sources are used when you send your next message in the chat.

This is useful when:

• You want to compare two sources directly
• You are working on a specific section of a larger project
• You want to verify that an answer comes from a particular document

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View indexed source content

To see the text that NotebookLM has indexed from a source, click the source in the Sources panel to expand it. You can scroll through the full extracted text from there.

This is helpful for:

• Confirming that a scanned PDF was OCR’d correctly
• Checking that captions from a YouTube video were captured completely
• Reviewing what text was extracted from a website at the time it was added

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Re-add a removed source

There is no way to restore a removed source from within the notebook. If you remove a source and need it back, you must add it again from scratch using the same method you used originally—uploading the file, pasting the URL, or re-selecting the document from Google Drive.

If you think you might need a source again later, consider keeping it in the notebook and deselecting it from the chat context instead of removing it entirely.

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Related

Supported formats

See which file types and source formats NotebookLM supports, including size limits.

Adding sources

Step-by-step instructions for adding each type of source to your notebook.