NotebookLM Interactive Mode: Ask Questions During Audio
Interactive audio mode in Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) lets you join a generated podcast discussion and ask your own questions. Here is how it differs from the standard overview, how to use it, and how to check what it tells you.
Updated 5 min read
Gemini Notebook, the current name for NotebookLM since July 2026, has an interactive audio feature that lets you interrupt a generated discussion and ask your own questions. The hosts pause and answer based on your sources. This is different from the standard audio overview, which plays a fixed pre-generated conversation. Tools like fenbs can keep the questions you asked and the takeaways you verified, so the learning from a session persists beyond the audio.
For a broader comparison of AI chat tools, see /blog/chatgpt-agent-mode. For alternatives to Gemini Notebook itself, see /blog/notebooklm-alternatives.
What interactive audio mode is
Interactive audio mode generates a two-host podcast-style discussion of your notebook's sources and then lets you speak or type a question during playback. The generated hosts pause and respond to your question, drawing on the same sources. You can ask for a clarification, a deeper explanation of a topic, or a comparison between two ideas in the sources.
The responses are generated in real time, so they can vary from what a text-based Q&A session would produce. The same grounding rules apply: answers should come from your sources, and you can ask for a citation after any response.
How it differs from the standard audio overview
The standard audio overview is pre-generated and fixed. You listen to it like a podcast episode; you cannot interrupt or redirect it. It is useful for a first pass through the material or for listening while doing something else. Interactive mode, by contrast, is a live session where the direction depends on what you ask.
Because the standard overview is pre-generated, it can be saved and shared. The interactive session is ephemeral: the conversation is not stored as a transcript you can review later unless you record it yourself. That is worth knowing before relying on an interactive session for important research—plan to take notes or record the audio independently.
How to start interactive mode
Open a notebook that has at least one source loaded. Look for the Audio overview section and the option to start an interactive session rather than generating a fixed overview. The feature requires a microphone if you want to speak your questions, though you can also type them. Check that your browser has microphone access if you plan to use voice input.
The session starts with the generated hosts discussing your sources. Wait for a natural pause or use the interrupt button to ask a question. Keep questions specific and grounded in your sources: "What did source two say about X?" tends to produce more reliable answers than open-ended speculative questions that the sources may not cover.
Record what you learned and what you still need to check
Interactive audio sessions are live and not saved automatically. After a session, write the key takeaways and any unanswered questions as tasks and lessons in fenbs. Before the next session, a connected AI app reads those notes and can generate follow-up questions focused on the gaps.
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How to verify what the audio tells you
Spoken answers in interactive mode can be harder to verify than text answers because you cannot easily copy a passage from audio. After an answer you want to check, pause and ask the notebook to show the source passage in text: switch to the chat panel and ask the same question in writing. Compare the written answer and citation against the audio response.
If an answer surprises you or contradicts what you expected from the sources, treat it as unverified until you can trace it to a specific passage. The same accuracy habits that apply to text-based Q&A apply here, but the audio format makes it easier to pass over a questionable claim without noticing.
What to do after an interactive session
The audio does not save automatically. If you recorded the session externally, note the timestamp of any important answer so you can find it again. Write down the questions that produced the most useful responses, because they are good candidates for a follow-up text session in the notebook or for adding to a study plan.
Note the questions that the audio could not answer well. These usually indicate a gap in your sources: the material you need is not in the notebook yet. Add those questions as tasks so you can find and add the relevant sources before the next session.
Interactive mode works best as a complement to the standard text Q&A workflow, not a replacement for it. Use it when you want a more conversational review of material you have already read, when you are testing your own understanding out loud, or when you need a hands-free session. Switch back to the text panel when you need to cite an exact passage or confirm a specific claim against the source text.
How to do this with fenbs
fenbs does not connect to Gemini Notebook's audio feature. What it does is give you a place to keep the questions, answers and gaps from each session in a structured form that persists for future sessions.
- Create a free account and open or add the project the audio session is part of.
- After each interactive session, write the key takeaways as context notes and the unanswered questions as tasks.
- Record any answers you verified against the source text as lessons: what the question was, what the source actually said, and whether the audio answer was accurate.
- Before the next session, read the open tasks and lessons so you know which gaps to focus on.
- Connect Claude, ChatGPT or another AI from Integrations to read your study context and generate follow-up questions from the gaps you noted.