Andy Walker / Android Authority
TL;DR NotebookLM has a new feature in Discover Sources that allows you to search for information inside your Google Drive files.
This integration enables you to locate information within documents and presentations, and allows you to add the parent file as a source.
The update appears to have been rolled out quietly, as there’s no official announcement from Google.
NotebookLM is one of the best and most practical applications of AI for average users like you and me. Since it only uses the sources you provide, it doesn’t hallucinate like other AI tools, making it ideal for productivity, studies, or even just daily life (we use it for our internal documentation here at Android Authority). You can ask NotebookLM a question and get a precise answer straight from your documentation. But what if you can’t locate specific documents that you want to add? NotebookLM has a Discover Sources feature that searches the web for you, and it seems Google has quietly added a new option for scouring through your Google Drive as well.
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As spotted by XDA, Google has added a new Google Drive option within Discover Sources. The existing Web option lets you enter a query and search the Internet for relevant sources. The Google Drive option works similarly, but restricts itself to Google Drive.
Aamir Siddiqui / Android Authority
As Google notes in its support page, it can pull in results from all sources you own or have access to, with doc and slides being supported file types. For instance, you can enter a search query like “Docs about Q4 planning,” “Slides from Claire,” or “Notes from last week” to scour through your Google Drive files and add them as a source to your NotebookLM project. Google doesn’t list PDF as a supported file type, but I was able to successfully search for content within PDFs shared with me on Google Drive and add them to my NotebookLM project.
NotebookLM already features Google Drive integration, but this existing integration allows you to search and locate files by file name. This new Google Drive integration allows you to search for content within Google Drive files, providing a more in-depth search that should be particularly helpful when you have too many files to remember by file name.
It’s hard to comment on when Google introduced this feature, as I couldn’t locate an official announcement. However, this was added sometime in the past few weeks, as the support page did not mention Google Drive as part of Discover Sources at least as late as July.
While the feature is neat, NotebookLM could improve with support for additional file types. For instance, even this Google Drive integration could be better if it could scan through images as well. Still, this is a neat feature that seamlessly integrates Google Drive search into NotebookLM, and I am eagerly waiting for Google to bring all of the Discover Sources functionality to the mobile app, too.
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