NotebookLM for Windows

A native desktop app for Google NotebookLM — Ghost Mode, Quick-Clip, multi-pane research, dark mode. Now on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

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What. A native cross-platform desktop wrapper for Google NotebookLM, built on Electron, that turns the web app into a deeply integrated research utility — with transparency, customizable global hotkeys, multi-pane research (up to 3), dark mode, Markdown export, URL drop capture, and a mini Quick-Clip overlay.

Who. Built solo by Gyanesh Samanta (@GyaneshSamanta) — now openly accepting community contributions.

When. Active from February 8, 2026 onwards — v1.0 (wrapper), v2.0 (Ghost Mode + Quick-Clip + Split View), v2.1 (installer + auto-update), v3.0 (cross-platform + power-user features + open-source foundation).

Where. A nights-and-weekends project now in the hands of 5,000+ researchers, students, and analysts on Windows, macOS, and Linux who wanted NotebookLM to behave like a first-class desktop app.

Why. NotebookLM is a phenomenal research tool — but living in a browser tab means you lose half its leverage. No global hotkey to capture a clipping. No transparency to reference a PDF underneath. No way to compare two notebooks side-by-side without two browser windows. This app fixes all of that.

It started as a simple Electron wrapper around notebooklm.google.com — a frameless window with a custom title bar, persistent login, and Windows toast notifications when an Audio Overview finished generating. Useful, but still mostly a tab-with-extra-steps. The first download numbers (a few hundred) suggested people wanted more than a wrapper.

Version 2.0 was the leap. Ghost Mode added an opacity slider to the title bar, so the entire window can fade to translucent — perfect for transcribing from a video underneath or copying from a PDF without the constant Alt-Tab dance. Quick-Clip registered a global Ctrl+Alt+N hotkey: copy text from anywhere, hit the chord, and NotebookLM jumps to the foreground and pastes the clipping into the active note instantly. Split View turned the single window into a two-pane research studio sharing the same login session — one notebook on brain-activity research, another on the Q3 earnings call, side-by-side without juggling tabs. Native drag-and-drop lets you fling PDFs, TXT, and Markdown straight onto the window to trigger NotebookLM's upload pipeline. Every one of these features answers a complaint I had personally — and apparently most of the 2,000+ downloads so far had it too.

Version 2.1 was the boring-but-important release: a real NSIS installer, an electron-updater pipeline that ships updates in the background, and a portable .exe for users who don't want anything touching their registry. The whole stack stays delightfully thin — Electron 34, vanilla JS/HTML/CSS, two runtime deps (auto-launch, electron-updater).

Version 3.0 is the 5,000-download milestone release. It's the leap from "a Windows app for me" to "a research tool worth contributing to." A unified settings system with a real preferences panel. Dark mode with a proper CSS-variable palette. Customizable global hotkeys so power users can rebind Quick-Clip to whatever fits their muscle memory. Always-on-top for reference workflows. Three-pane multi-view for the research geeks. A mini Quick-Clip overlay that pops up at the cursor when the main window is hidden — no more forced foregrounding. Markdown export of your notes. URL drop capture so dragging a link from the browser pushes it as a source. And — finally — macOS and Linux builds via a cross-platform CI pipeline, with issue templates and a curated good first issue backlog so anyone reading this can ship the next feature.

1. Grab the latest release from the Releases page.
2. Pick your flavour:
   • Installer (-Setup.exe) — recommended. Adds shortcuts and enables background auto-update.
   • Portable (.exe) — just download and run, nothing touches your system.
3. Run it. That's the whole setup.

Tip: Pin NotebookLM-for-Windows.exe to your taskbar for one-click access.

Help shape the next release. Every item below is a tracked issue — pick one and ship it.

• Webview crash recovery (render-process-gone) — good first issue
• Visual regression tests for theme + layouts

• Workspace / profile switcher (multi-Google-account)
• 4+ panes / configurable grid layout
• "What's New" panel on first launch after update — good first issue

• Programmatic drag-and-drop file upload — help wanted (hard)
• Screenshot → OCR → push as source

• Localization / i18n scaffolding
• Plugin / extension API for community features

See all open issues · Read CONTRIBUTING.md first.

Three-pane multi-view — research three notebooks at once, all sharing the same login session.

Split view — two notebooks side-by-side.

Settings panel — theme, customizable hotkey, always-on-top, and default pane count, all in one place.

Light mode — the classic deep-purple chrome.

Dark mode — quieter palette for late-night research.

The app monitors NotebookLM for completion events through a webview-preload.js shim and surfaces a native Windows toast when one fires.

Detected events:

• Audio Overview generated
• Source added
• Note saved

• Electron 34 — desktop runtime
• auto-launch — startup integration
• electron-updater — background auto-update channel
• electron-builder — NSIS / portable / DMG / AppImage / .deb packaging
• Playwright — smoke tests for Electron lifecycle and IPC
• GitHub Actions — Windows + macOS + Linux build matrix on every tag
• Vanilla JS / HTML / CSS — no framework, no bundler, no bloat

NotebookLM-for-Windows/
├── assets/
│   ├── icon.png            # App icon
│   ├── split-view-1.png    # Marketing screenshots
│   └── split-view-2.png
├── src/
│   ├── main.js             # Electron main process — windows, hotkey, tray
│   ├── preload.js          # Secure IPC bridge (contextIsolation)
│   ├── renderer.js         # UI logic — title bar, opacity slider, split view
│   ├── webview-preload.js  # In-page hook that detects NotebookLM events
│   └── index.html          # App container
├── PRD/                    # Product specs
├── package.json            # Electron 34 + 2 runtime deps
├── build_installer.bat     # One-click local build
├── CONTRIBUTING.md
└── LICENSE                 # GPL-3.0

git clone https://github.com/GyaneshSamanta/NotebookLM-for-Windows.git
cd NotebookLM-for-Windows

npm install            # install Electron + builders + Playwright
npm start              # run in dev mode
npm test               # run Playwright smoke tests
npm run dist:win       # Windows: installer + portable .exe
npm run dist:mac       # macOS: .dmg + .zip (run on macOS)
npm run dist:linux     # Linux: AppImage + .deb (run on Linux)

Built artifacts land in dist/ as:

• NotebookLM-for-Windows-v<version>-Setup.exe (NSIS installer)
• NotebookLM-for-Windows-v<version>.exe (portable)

1. npm run dist
2. Repo → Releases → Draft a new release
3. Create a tag (e.g. v2.1.0), upload the .exes from dist/, publish.
4. electron-updater picks the release up automatically on existing installs.

# 1. Fork on GitHub
git clone https://github.com/<you>/NotebookLM-for-Windows.git
cd NotebookLM-for-Windows
git checkout -b feat/your-feature

# 2. Hack, test
npm install && npm start

# 3. Commit, push, PR
git commit -m "feat: short description"
git push origin feat/your-feature

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full workflow.

GPL-3.0 © 2026 Gyanesh Samanta.

Want to be in this list? Pick a good first issue and open a PR.

• Gyanesh Samanta — author, maintainer, designer (LinkedIn · @GyaneshSamanta)
• And 5,000+ downloaders whose bug reports and feature requests shaped v2.0, v2.1, and v3.0.