Google has added three Gemini Notebook study tools that turn your own notes into revision material. Short Video Overviews explain a tricky concept in about 60 seconds. Interactive Learning Overviews guide you through a pile of lectures and readings step by step. The new quiz formats add short-answer, multi-select and fill-in-the-blank questions. Everything is built from the sources you upload. You can try them on the free plan at notebook.google, and India is a supported country.
Google’s education team highlighted the features in a study guide on 16 October. They were first announced in September, when Google said Interactive Learning Overviews and the new quiz formats would roll out to all users over the following weeks. If a button described below is missing from your account, the rollout may simply not have reached you yet.
What the new Gemini Notebook study tools do
- Short Video Overviews: about 60-second videos that pair a narrated explanation with educational animations. They are meant for formulas, diagrams and concepts that are easier to follow when you see them. You can share them with classmates.
- Interactive Learning Overviews: a type of report that walks you through your material section by section. It mixes summaries with studio outputs such as slides, quizzes and flashcards, and Google says it sticks strictly to your coursework.
- Expanded quiz formats: short-answer, multi-select and fill-in-the-blank questions alongside the usual multiple choice. After a quiz or a flashcard round, you can ask the notebook where you went wrong and what to revise next.
Upload the notes and past papers your exam actually uses. The resulting quiz should be more relevant than a general chatbot’s, but check any answer you plan to memorise against the original material.
How to make a Short Video Overview
- Open Gemini Notebook and create a notebook, or open one you can edit. Add your sources: PDFs, websites, YouTube videos, audio files, Google Docs or Google Slides.
- In the Studio panel, select Video Overview, then open its customisation options.
- Under Format, choose Short. The other formats are Explainer, a fuller overview, and Cinematic, which is English-only and for users aged 18 and over.
- Pick a narration language, and if you like, add a steering prompt that names the topic to focus on, such as one chapter or one formula.
- Select Generate now, or Generate later if you have hit your usage limit. Google warns that video overviews can take a while, sometimes more than 30 minutes, so you don’t need to keep the tab open.
Short videos don’t offer the visual style picker (Whiteboard, Watercolor, Anime and so on) that Explainer videos get. To share one, use the share button in the video player. The notebook itself must be shared with the person or set to anyone with the link, and public sharing only works on personal Google accounts. You can also download the video and send the file.
For Indian students, the language list matters. Google’s help page lists Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Urdu among the narration languages for Short Video Overviews. You could upload English notes and have a quick explainer narrated in Tamil before a test.
How to create an Interactive Learning Overview
Interactive Learning Overviews are web-only for now, so use a laptop or desktop browser.
- Go to notebook.google.com and open a notebook you can edit, or create one and upload your sources.
- In the Studio panel, select Reports, then Interactive.
- Under Template, choose Learning Overview. To change the defaults, select the edit icon, choose a language and describe the report you want, for example “Explain how Newton’s laws drive rocket flight.”
- Select Generate, or Generate later.
- When the report is ready, look at the suggested slides, quizzes or flashcards it offers and select Add on the ones you want embedded. They also show up in the Studio panel.
The result works like a structured revision guide: a table of contents on the left, explanations in the middle and study cards embedded in each section. It is most useful when you have a big set of sources, such as a semester of lecture slides plus a textbook chapter, and need to find your way through them in order. Google says some content in interactive reports is only available to users aged 18 and over.
New quiz formats and feedback
To make a quiz, select Quizzes in the Studio panel, or use the pencil icon to customise it first. You can set the difficulty to easy, medium or hard and type a prompt to steer the questions, for example “only chapter 4, focus on numericals.” Inside the quiz, Hint nudges you towards an answer without giving it away, and Explain breaks down why an answer is right or wrong. Short-answer questions are the most useful addition, because you have to recall the answer instead of recognising it from a list.
Once you finish a quiz or a flashcard deck, ask the notebook chat how you did. It can point to the topics you keep missing so you know where to spend the next hour. Flashcards can be downloaded as a CSV file if you also use another revision app.
Limits, plans and the student offer in India
Gemini Notebook is part of Google’s free plan in India. Usage limits are based on compute rather than a fixed count. Your prompts, the length of your chat, the number of sources and the outputs you generate all draw from the same allowance, which refreshes every five hours until you reach a weekly cap. If you run out, Google lets you queue outputs such as Video Overviews and Slide Decks with Generate later. Before you generate anything, the studio shows a meter of how much of your allowance it is expected to use.
| Plan | Gemini Notebook usage |
|---|---|
| No AI plan | Standard limits |
| Google AI Plus | 2x standard limits |
| Google AI Pro | 4x standard limits |
| Google AI Ultra | 5x or 20x AI Pro limits, depending on the subscription |
College students should look at Google’s student offer before paying. Google has confirmed that eligible college students in India can get one year of Google AI Plus free, with twice the standard Gemini Notebook usage limit. You must redeem the offer by 31 December 2026 and add a valid payment method. After the free year, the plan renews at the regular price unless you cancel. Our guide to the Gemini free plan changes explains what AI Plus adds in the Gemini app as well.
What to check before you rely on it
- Accuracy: Google says video overviews, including their voices and visuals, are AI-generated and may contain mistakes or audio glitches. Reports carry a similar warning. Check formulas and dates against your textbook.
- Age and accounts: you need to verify your age in your Google Account, and stricter content rules apply to users under 18. On a school or work account, your admin has to turn Gemini Notebook on. Google Workspace for Education accounts can use it at any age.
- Source limits: each source can be up to 500,000 words or a 200MB upload. Copy-protected PDFs won’t import.
- Your data: Google says personal notebooks are not used to train Gemini Notebook unless you send feedback, and Workspace users’ content is not reviewed by humans or used for training.
Gemini Notebook’s advantage over a general chatbot is that you can build a quiz and revision guide around your own course material. My take: if you are preparing for semester exams, start with one chapter. Make a Short Video Overview for the concept you find hardest and a short-answer quiz for the rest, then compare the quiz against your notes before trusting it for the whole syllabus.
FAQ
Are Short Video Overviews free?
Google’s help pages don’t list a paid plan as a requirement for Short Video Overviews. They do count against your usage limit, and the paid Google AI plans raise that limit. Co-creating videos with producer notes is the part reserved for Google AI Ultra.
Can I make a Short Video Overview in Hindi?
Yes. Hindi is on Google’s list of narration languages for Short Video Overviews, along with Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Kannada, Malayalam, Gujarati, Punjabi and Urdu.
Do Interactive Learning Overviews work in the mobile app?
Not yet. Google’s help page says interactive reports, including Learning Overviews, are only available on the web.
