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6.2 – Customize the Style and Length of Your Notebook Responses Lesson

Fine-tune how NotebookLM answers your questions by setting the style and depth of its responses. This lesson shows you how these options make NotebookLM more relevant to your needs—whether you want business-focused analysis, a helpful knowledge base, or creative support. For step-by-step instruction and real-use demonstrations, refer directly to the video.

What you'll learn

  • Select predefined styles for NotebookLM responses to fit different goals

  • Set up custom instructions to guide NotebookLM’s tone and perspective

  • Use sample prompts to create your own specific directions

  • Choose the ideal response length for summaries or detailed answers

  • Apply these settings for both individual and shared notebooks

  • Improve productivity by matching AI answers to your workflow

Lesson Overview

In this lesson, you’ll see how to adjust the way NotebookLM answers your queries using customization tools available—particularly in NotebookLM Plus. NotebookLM lets you shape your notebook’s voice by switching between preset styles such as “Analyst” for business insights or “Guide” for help centers. If those presets aren’t specific enough, you can write your own custom instructions, giving you control over the notebook’s role, tone, or output. This means you can ask for academic-level explanations, quick business summaries, or even responses as a fictional character—whatever your project calls for.

You’ll also find out how to manage the length of NotebookLM’s answers, making it simple to receive brief summaries or more in-depth content as needed. These customization features support efficient workflows across business, research, writing, or team collaboration. If you want a consistent, tailored experience that matches your purpose, learning these skills will make NotebookLM a more powerful tool in your day-to-day work.

Who This Is For

Anyone seeking to make AI-generated notes more effective and relevant will benefit from this lesson. You’ll find these techniques helpful if you are:

  • Business analysts needing concise decision support
  • Educators looking to personalize AI tutoring styles
  • Team leads managing a shared help center or knowledge base
  • Content creators seeking creative or editorial support
  • Researchers customizing summaries for complex topics
  • Anyone using NotebookLM Plus and wanting more control over output style
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Where This Fits in a Workflow

Customizing the style and length of your notebook responses is a valuable step whenever you want more control over how AI serves you or your team. Use these settings when preparing board meeting materials, creating documentation, researching, or coaching. For example, a marketing manager might set the style to “Analyst” for strategic reporting and then switch to “Guide” when building a customer FAQ. Writers and educators could configure a concise response for quick feedback, or longer explanations for lessons. This flexibility ensures NotebookLM matches your workflow rather than forcing you to adapt to it.

Technical & Workflow Benefits

Before customization was available, NotebookLM responses were generic and required manual editing to fit specific tasks or audiences. Now, by choosing styles or adding your own instructions, you streamline the process—saving valuable time and reducing repetitive tweaks. For instance, setting a short answer as the default provides instant summaries ready for meetings, while a custom instruction like “Act as a senior editor” ensures feedback is professional and targeted.

Workflows benefit from having AI that understands context and priorities. You don’t have to repeatedly prompt for tone or brevity; NotebookLM remembers your settings. Over time, this leads to more consistent and reliable outputs, reducing the need to reformat, expand, or shorten responses after the fact.

Practice Exercise

Try customizing a notebook for your specific needs:

  1. Open any project in NotebookLM Plus and select “Configure Your Notebook.”
  2. Choose a preset style (Analyst or Guide) or enter your own custom instruction—e.g., “Summarize content as if explaining to a board of directors.”
  3. Set the response length to Short, Default, or Long.

Once you’ve saved your settings, ask NotebookLM a question relevant to your project. Review the response and compare it to answers from a “Default” notebook—where do you notice differences in style, focus, or length?

Other Relevant Courses

Course Context Recap

This lesson is a key part of learning to make NotebookLM work for your unique projects, building on your earlier understanding of gathering and organizing information. Next, you’ll look at sharing options and analytics for collaboration and tracking. Mastering response customization ensures that your notes and summaries align with your goals. Continue with the next lesson to explore how you can work with others and measure the impact of your AI-generated insights across team and organizational workflows.