I love NotebookLM, but its biggest update yet is making it feel less like itself (for better and worse)
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Google's biggest NotebookLM update adds visible reasoning chains, a sandboxed Linux VM for writing and running code, over 100 pre-built software skills, and new output formats (PDFs, PowerPoints, charts, CSVs). The update also introduces web search via Google to help build source repositories. While the transparency and code execution features are praised, the author is conflicted about the web-search capability and chatbot-like behavioral changes (emojis, follow-up prompts), arguing they dilute what made NotebookLM uniquely trustworthy — its strict grounding in user-provided sources.
Table of contents
NotebookLM now shows you what it's thinking before it answersNotebookLM can now write and run codeThis update also introduced a bunch of new output formatsThe part where NotebookLM stops feeling like NotebookLM134 Impressions