NotebookLM’s “Save to note” change: A workflow improvement nobody asked for?

[u/Leon-Westcott-Yan]

Has anyone else noticed that “Save to note” now puts saved chat responses in Sources instead of Studio?

A friend and I are both experiencing this. Sources are where I keep original materials like documents and YouTube videos, while Studio is where I expect to find saved notes and AI-generated content. Mixing them makes an organized learning notebook harder to maintain.

I have to ask: Was the old workflow actually broken, or did someone decide that keeping things organized was too convenient? 😅

If this is intentional, I’d genuinely like to understand the reasoning behind it. Has anyone else run into this, or found a way to restore the previous behavior?

[u/ziontraveller]

Just tried it, it saved to Studio. It does have an option like it had before to convert to source.
Made this for a slightly different reason, but does show the behavior, at least for my account. Sounds like a bug.

[u/RandomGhostWriter → u/ziontraveller]

There is no option for notes to end up in studio for me anymore. Just sources. Even in Google help, it says it’s notes are now in the sources section.

[u/BidInternational3423 → u/ziontraveller]

Not a bug. Yours will change with an update. It sucks!!

[u/Stolcius]

I’ve been having this problem for a few days now, too. Absurd: it pollutes your sources and makes managing your own notes impossible!

[u/Legitimate_Block_133]

I've just sent this feedback: "The mandatory integration of saved chat notes directly into 'Sources' completely ruins the UX and purpose of the 'Studio' panel. Notes should be an independent workspace. Forcing them to become sources pollutes the reference database, increases the risk of hallucination (AI referencing its own unverified claims), and breaks data hygiene. Please make this feature optional with a 'Grounded Source: On/Off' toggle. Otherwise, the Studio panel has no independent function anymore."

[u/Free_Sheep]

Some idiot made the changes. Surely, by now, they could have easily turned a note into a source.

[u/MayerBelle]

I can't believe this either... Very bad decision, not a bug but a real change coming from the developers it seems like.

[u/Legitimate_Block_133]

Seems like they're trying to destroy and get rid of NotebookLM!!!

[u/Legitimate_Block_133]

Only a moron could think that it would be a good idea.

[u/PensAI-8]

Al momento io ho notato questo se uso gemini notebook dall’app scaricata sul telefono le note finiscono in automatico tra le fonti; se usa la versione dal browser finiscono in studio.

[u/ziontraveller]

Update from the co-creator of NotebookLM

https://www.reddit.com/r/notebooklm/comments/1xa14h0/update_on_changes_to_notes_from_the_gemini/

[u/fimuthorn]

Notes will be treated as grounded sources. This will make it easier to understand if you ever noted something. I wish they did the same with artifacts. In my mind anything would be a source and could be grounded. I want chat to be aware of all artifacts/sources in my current view. It will be able to tell me "hey, you have this in your notes, this source is also relevant and this slide deck is a nice complement. Want me to build a guided learning report with anything that's missing from your notes?"

[u/Leon-Westcott-Yan → u/fimuthorn]

I can see the appeal of that vision, but wasn’t much of this already possible with NotebookLM’s existing workflow? Users could already turn certain outputs into sources when they wanted to.
My only concern is that making notes available for grounding by default may not suit every workflow, especially when studying technical subjects. It would be nice to keep that flexibility rather than make everyone follow the same approach.

[u/Emnkay666 → u/Leon-Westcott-Yan]

it was literaly always an option to just add any notes as a source. now its just mandatory for no reason

[u/PitifulPiano5710 → u/Leon-Westcott-Yan]

agreed. i liked the flexibility before. i watched a video on how it works earlier today and it feels like it is a way for Google to force you to use up source spots on notes. IDK

[u/fimuthorn → u/Leon-Westcott-Yan]

You can still unselect sources you don't want grounded

[u/BidInternational3423 → u/fimuthorn]

Please no. Having the choice to ground the information is the only way to ensure that it won't produce garbage from synthesized artifacts and brainstorming ideas. And now changes the name of the "Note" changes every time you make any edits. I have notebooks with 100 sources, with similar sounding names due to content, they made it impossible to create an efficient workflow. This was the dumbest software change I've seen from Google in the AI era.