How I Use the NotebookLM Slide Deck Generator to Study More Easily

Once again, there is a new feature available on Google's NotebookLM, the AI tool that functions like a personal assistant and only references material you provide for it. This one is a slide deck generator, which can be useful if you need to make a presentation in a hurry, but I've been using it a little differently to help myself retain new information.

Generating a slide deck in NotebookLM

First, you should know how to generate a deck. In case you're unfamiliar with NotebookLM, it's basically just like ChatGPT, but instead of pulling answers from the big, wide Internet, it only relies on PDFs, links, videos, and text you input as resources. This makes it the perfect tool for working on a specific project or studying for a class, since you don't run the risk of inadvertently getting misled by some random, unrelated source.

You can use the chat bot feature the way you would ChatGPT, asking questions and getting summaries of your materials. You can also automatically generate flashcards, videos, infographics, mind maps, fake podcasts, and much more.

To generate slides, it's the same process you'd follow to make those: In the left-side panel, select all of the sources you want the tool to pull from. In the right-side panel, select Slide Deck from the menu. After a few minutes, you'll get slides you can download as a PDF, the same as you would if you were downloading a PowerPoint, and you can upload those to Google Slides or PowerPoint to create a simple presentation.

Why I like NotebookLM's slide deck feature

I've mentioned before that while I love NotebookLM and use it every day for both work and personal pursuits, I can't stand its app. It just doesn't work nearly as well as the browser version, which is a shame because the browser version works so well. I pretty much ignore the app and don't use NotebookLM on mobile or, when I do, I use my mobile browser to access it, which we all know is an annoying workaround that never quite translates right on the smaller screen.

Credit: Google/Lindsey Ellefson

With the slide PDF, however, I get a ready-made study guide complete with visuals, which I can send to myself via iMessage and study on the go. When I generate my own study materials without NotebookLM, I almost always do it in Google Slides, then download the full PDF and review the slides like a giant study guide, so this new feature is taking a bunch of the work out of doing that for me.

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