A NotebookLM alternative for reading and remembering
NotebookLM, now called Gemini Notebook, answers questions about your sources and turns them into summaries and overviews. Winda is built for reading the sources themselves. AI explains the hard parts as you read, and the flashcards and quizzes you make come back for review on a schedule.
NotebookLM checked on Sep 26, 2026
Stay with NotebookLM if you want answers about your sources
- You ask questions across many sources at once and want answers with citations
- You like to listen: Audio Overviews turn your sources into a conversation
- You want mind maps, reports and slide decks made for you
- You read
- Answers and summaries, with citations
- Cards and quizzes
- Sets you work through, with no review schedule
Try Winda if you need to understand and remember what you read
- You want to read the whole text yourself, with explanations right under the sentence
- You want flashcards and quizzes made from what you read, each linked to its passage
- You want each card to come back on a schedule, not only when you redo a set
- You read
- The page, PDF or video itself
- Cards and quizzes
- Reviewed on an FSRS spaced-repetition schedule
What NotebookLM does well
NotebookLM is one of the best tools for asking questions about a pile of documents, and Google keeps adding new ways to present them.
Answers with citations
You can ask about all the sources in a notebook at once. Each answer cites the passages it used. Hover over a citation to read the quote, or select it to see the quote in its source.
Many formats from one notebook
NotebookLM can turn your sources into Audio Overviews in more than 80 languages, Video Overviews, mind maps, reports, slide decks and infographics.
Takes almost any source
One notebook can hold PDFs, Google Docs and Slides, Word files, web pages, YouTube videos, audio, images and EPUBs.
Flashcards and quizzes on request
NotebookLM makes a set of flashcards or a quiz from your sources, at the difficulty and length you pick. You can go back over the cards you missed, and download the flashcards as a CSV file.
Where NotebookLM gets harder to use
The trouble starts when you need to read the material closely and still remember it weeks later.
You read about the source, not the source
Sources open in a viewer next to an AI summary, and Google's help says they may look different from the original file. NotebookLM keeps only the text of a web page and only the transcript of a YouTube video. Answers and summaries are a good way into a document, but they can't replace reading it.
Flashcards without a schedule
NotebookLM has no spaced repetition. You mark each card Got it or Missed it and can redo the ones you missed, but nothing brings a card back just before you would forget it.
Nothing on the page you're reading
Google has no official browser extension for NotebookLM. To study a web page, you first paste its link into a notebook.
How Winda does it
In Winda, you read the web page, PDF or video itself, and AI helps as you go. Winda makes flashcards and quiz questions from what you read, and brings them back for review on a schedule.
Read the whole page, not a summary
Winda opens web pages, PDFs, YouTube videos with their transcripts, Word and PowerPoint files, and images in one reader. The Chrome extension brings the same tools to any web page. Select a line to have it explained, ask about it or turn it into cards.
Every card links back
Each card keeps the passage it came from. When an answer stops making sense, you can go back to that page.
Reviews come back on a schedule
Winda schedules every card with FSRS, the same algorithm Anki offers. A card you miss comes back the same day, and a card you know waits longer each time.
NotebookLM and Winda, side by side
| AI notebookNotebookLM | ReaderWinda | |
|---|---|---|
| Reading | ||
| Reading the original | A source viewer with a summary; web pages as text, YouTube as a transcript | The page, PDF or video itself, with the transcript next to a video |
| Help while you read | Ask in chat; answers cite the passage | Select a line to have it explained or translated in place, or ask about the whole document |
| Browser extension | No official extension | Chrome extension: select a line on any web page to have it explained, ask about it or make cards |
| What you can add | PDFs, Google Docs and Slides, Word, web pages, YouTube, audio, images, EPUBs | Web pages, PDFs, YouTube, Word, PowerPoint, images and text |
| Remembering | ||
| Flashcards and quizzes | Sets made for each notebook | Flashcards, fill in the blank and multiple choice, from a selected passage or a whole document |
| Review schedule | No: you mark Got it or Missed it, then redo the missed ones | FSRS across all your cards, with cards due each day |
| Making other things | ||
| Audio and video overviews | Yes | No |
| Mind maps, reports, slides | Yes | No |
Checked on Sep 26, 2026 at support.google.com/gemininotebook, Gemini Notebook Help: flashcards, blog.google. If something has changed, write to hi@winda.app and we'll correct it.
Questions
Yes. Google renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook in July 2026. It is the same product, and old NotebookLM links take you to it.
No. NotebookLM doesn't support spaced repetition. Its flashcards let you mark each card Got it or Missed it and go back over the ones you missed, but nothing schedules a card to come back later. In Winda, every flashcard and quiz question goes on an FSRS schedule and comes back when it's due.
A summary tells you what a text says. Understanding comes from following it yourself: the argument, the examples and the exceptions a summary leaves out. Winda keeps you in the text, explains the parts that are hard, and then helps you remember what you understood.
Yes. A PDF opens as its pages, a web page opens as the article, and a YouTube video plays with its transcript next to it. You can select any line to have it explained or translated in place, or turn it into cards. With the Chrome extension, you can do the same on any web page.
NotebookLM makes audio and video overviews, mind maps, reports and slide decks, and it answers questions across many sources at once. If that is what you use it for, NotebookLM is the better fit. Winda is for reading one thing closely and remembering it.