⚡ NotebookLM QoL — Batch Generate / Delete / Rename

The quality-of-life upgrades NotebookLM is missing — made by a student, for students. 🎓

🆕 NotebookLM is now “Gemini Notebook” at notebook.google.com. v1.6 supports the new address (the old one keeps working too). If the extension “stopped doing anything” for you, update to 1.6 and reload your notebook tab.

Generate a quiz for every chapter in one go. Rename ten “Untitled quiz” after their sources automatically. Download everything with one click — and watch it happen on a live progress bar. Fully free, open source, no account, no tracking.

👉 Install from the Chrome Web Store

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✨ What it does

	Feature	In one sentence
⚡	Batch generate	One output per source — quizzes, audio, video, slides… — from a single dialog, custom prompt included
✏️	Auto-rename	Chapter 3.pdf — Quiz instead of ten identical “Untitled quiz”
🏷️	Rename by source	Rename even old outputs after the sources they came from, in one click
⬇️	Instant bulk download	Direct downloads via NotebookLM's own file URLs — no menu clicking
🗑️	Bulk delete	Dozens of outputs or sources gone with a single confirmation
📊	Live progress bar	See exactly how far your downloads and renames are
🧹	Duplicate finder	Find duplicate sources by title, keep the first of each

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⚡ Batch generate — one modal, one output per source

Pick your sources and output type (Audio Overview, Video Overview, Quiz, Report, …), press Generate batch, then finish in NotebookLM's own options dialog — format tiles, length, language, and even a custom text prompt (“what should the hosts focus on”, video topic, slide-deck description, …).

The extension splits your single request into one generation per source at the network level: no dialog replay, no clicking, your options and prompt apply to every source. A bottom-right panel with a Cancel button appears while the requests are being sent.

🧰 Legacy batch mode — a checkbox in the same modal switches to the older engine that replays NotebookLM's dialog once per source (slower, DOM-driven). Kept as a fallback in case Google changes their internal request format; format-tile choices apply, language/custom prompt don't.

✏️ Renaming that just happens

• Rename by template — batch results are automatically renamed after their source using a template ({source} — {type} by default; variables: {source} {type} {date} {n}). Renames are stored persistently and applied as each generation finishes — even if you reload or come back to the tab hours later.
• Instant since v1.4 ⚡ — renames go through NotebookLM's own rename call: nothing is clicked, no focus stealing, with the old inline-edit flow kept as an automatic fallback.
• Rename by source 🏷️ — select existing outputs (even ones created long before installing the extension) and rename them after the source(s) they were generated from, in one click. Source information is read passively from NotebookLM's own network responses — no dialogs are opened, nothing is clicked.

⬇️ Multi-select & instant downloads

• Multi-select Studio outputs — always-visible checkboxes, a clickable Select all outputs header, plus an always-on bulk bar with a live count, one-click bulk download and bulk delete (single confirmation). Selection is tracked by artifact id, so it survives list reordering and re-renders.
• Instant bulk download 🚀 — audio, video, infographics and slide decks are downloaded directly via the file URLs found in NotebookLM's own responses: instant, no menu clicking, and the items don't even need to be scrolled into view. Files land auto-renamed in a NotebookLM/ folder in Downloads. If a direct URL doesn't check out (the extension verifies the server is sending a real file, not an error page), it automatically falls back to clicking NotebookLM's own Download menu. Reports always use the click path; quizzes, flashcards and mind maps have no download in NotebookLM at all and are skipped with a toast.
• Select by type 🎯 (new in v1.6) — a Select type… dropdown next to Select all outputs adds every output of one type (e.g. all Audio Overviews) to the selection, ready for bulk download or delete.
• Live progress bar 📊 (new in v1.5) — bulk downloads, bulk renames and the background auto-renames after a batch all show a progress bar at the bottom of the screen (“Downloading 3/7…”, “Renaming 2/5…”, “Auto-renaming 4/10…”) instead of running invisibly.
• Batch queue panel — the legacy queue panel (bottom right) shows per-job progress with Stop after current / Resume, survives reloads, and can be collapsed off-screen with the » button — a small « Batch tab on the screen edge brings it back.

🧹 Bulk source management

Check sources (NotebookLM's own select-all works fine), then Delete checked in one go from the floating bar, or Find duplicates (title-based) and remove them keeping the first of each group.

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🔒 Privacy

No analytics. No servers. No accounts. The only host permissions are notebook.google.com and the old notebooklm.google.com, and all data stays in your browser. Full policy: PRIVACY.md.

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📦 Install

Chrome Web Store: NotebookLM QoL

Developer mode:

1. Download / unzip this folder.
2. Open chrome://extensions, enable Developer mode (top right).
3. Click Load unpacked and select this folder.
4. Open NotebookLM (notebook.google.com) — you'll see checkboxes in the Studio panel and a ⚡ Batch generate… button under the create buttons.

🩺 Something not showing up? Click the extension icon: the popup runs a health check on the current tab and shows which parts are working (content script, network data, sources panel, Studio buttons).

⚠️ After updating the extension, reload any open NotebookLM tabs — Chrome invalidates the old content script and buttons would otherwise fail with “Extension context invalidated”.

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🛠️ Development

bash build.sh                      # bundles src/ -> dist/ with esbuild
npx tsx --test src/lib/*.test.ts   # unit tests (pure logic)

Architecture:

• src/content/selectors.ts — every DOM selector lives here, nothing else touches raw selectors.
• src/content/adapter.ts — all NotebookLM actions (list/select/rename/delete/download/generate) via DOM automation.
• src/content/interceptor.ts — MAIN-world script (injected at document_start by inject.ts) that passively parses NotebookLM's own Studio network responses (artifact ids, titles, types, status, source ids and direct download URLs) and, when armed, splits one user-made generation request into one request per source — custom prompts and options included. It also sends renames through NotebookLM's own rename RPC, reusing the auth token and URL parameters captured from the page's own requests (no token scraping). Fun fact learned the hard way: NotebookLM uses the same internal type code for quizzes and flashcards; the subtype hides deeper in the payload. 😅 Communicates with the content script via CustomEvents only; if Google renames the RPC ids it degrades silently and the DOM features keep working.
• src/content/registry.ts — content-script side: artifact ↔ sources registry + persistent auto-rename for split-mode batches.
• src/lib/ — pure, unit-tested logic: rename-template engine, duplicate normalizer, queue state machine.
• src/content/ui.ts — injected UI (checkboxes, bulk bars, batch modal, queue panel, progress bar, batch-cancel panel).
• src/background.ts — notifications, download renaming via downloads.onDeterminingFilename, and verified direct downloads: the background starts the download from the network URL, checks the response is a real file (not an HTML error page) and reports back so the content script can fall back to the click path.

There is no official NotebookLM API; everything works through the DOM plus passive network parsing. If Google changes the UI, fix selectors.ts first. Any selector failure disables its feature gracefully — the native page keeps working untouched.

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⚠️ Known limitations (v1.6)

• Auto-renames apply only once a generation has finished — NotebookLM rejects renames on in-progress items, so a rename can land a few seconds after the item appears. Since v1.4 the rename itself is an instant network call; if a visible title ever looks stale, a reload shows the server-side truth.
• Bulk downloads: Chrome blocks multiple automatic downloads by default. The first time, click Allow on Chrome's “download multiple files” prompt (or allow it under Site settings → Automatic downloads for notebook.google.com), otherwise only the first file arrives.
• Quizzes, flashcards and mind maps have no Download option in NotebookLM at all — bulk download skips them and says so in a toast. Reports download via the click path (the item must be visible in the Studio list).
• Batch language applies reliably to titles and Audio Overviews; Video Overview content may still come out in English — that appears to be a NotebookLM-side limitation, not an extension bug.
• Renaming old outputs made from many sources names them after the first source plus +N (e.g. Ch02.pdf +6 — Quiz).
• Rename by source needs the artifact data captured since the last page load; if you get a “no source data captured yet” toast, reload the page and let the Studio list load first.
• Duplicate detection is title-based (URL-based matching is implemented and tested in src/lib/dedupe.ts, but NotebookLM's source list doesn't expose URLs in the DOM).
• Bulk download triggers individual downloads (auto-renamed) rather than a single ZIP.
• Source-selection persistence and dashboard bulk-delete of notebooks are planned for a future version.

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📜 Changelog

• 1.6.0 🩹 — fix: the extension did nothing on the new NotebookLM address. Google renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook and moved it to notebook.google.com; the extension now runs there (and still on the old domain). Also fixed: the ⚡ Batch generate button never appeared in notebooks that had no Studio outputs yet. New: health check in the popup, Select type… dropdown for bulk actions, correct labels for mind maps (they now share a type code with quizzes/flashcards) and the new Reports / Data Table icons.
• 1.5.0 📊 — live progress bar at the bottom of the screen for bulk downloads, bulk renames and background auto-renames; refreshed project icon.
• 1.4.0 ⚡ — instant renames: batch auto-renames and “rename by source” now use NotebookLM's own rename call instead of simulating menu clicks and typing (the DOM flow is kept as automatic fallback).
• 1.3.1 🛡️ — direct downloads are now verified (HTML error pages are detected, cancelled and automatically retried via the click path); README refresh.
• 1.3.0 🚀 — instant network-based bulk downloads (audio/video/infographic/slide deck); fixed quizzes being labeled “Flashcards” in renames; Cancel button while a batch is being sent; collapsible queue panel; debug logging off.
• 1.2.x 🧪 — unified batch modal (sources + type + options + custom prompt in one flow); fixed a false “batch cancelled” during fan-out; bulk bar no longer covers the last outputs; hardened renames against list re-renders.
• 1.1.0 🔌 — network interceptor: custom prompt mode (split one request into per-source generations), rename by source for existing outputs.
• 1.0.x 🎉 — initial release: batch generate (legacy engine), rename templates, multi-select bulk download/delete, bulk source management, duplicate finder.

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❤️ Contributing

Found a bug? Google redesigned something and a button vanished? Open an issue — selector fixes are usually quick.

MIT licensed. Not a commercial product: no paid features, no subscriptions, the complete source code is right here.