How to duplicate a notebook in Gemini Notebook, the official way

The feature is documented in two places: Google's own Workspace Updates announcement, and a more detailed walkthrough on Google's support page for creating notebooks, which spells out the exact click path used below. It rolled out simultaneously to Rapid Release and Scheduled Release Workspace domains on 17 August 2026, so there was no staggered multi-week wait the way some Workspace features get, and no admin setting to delay it.

How to duplicate a notebook, step by step

1. Open the notebook you want to copy. You need copy permission: you're either the owner, or the owner shared it with "Allow copies" turned on.
2. At the top of the notebook, select Copy, then confirm with Create.
3. The duplicate appears in your own notebook library as an independent notebook. Rename it right away, since Google adds it under the same title as the original with no automatic "(copy)" suffix documented anywhere.

To let other people copy a notebook you own: open it, go to Share, add at least one person (or make it public), and make sure Allow copies is checked. It's on by default, so if you've shared a notebook and never touched that setting, it's almost certainly already copyable by whoever you shared it with.

What actually gets copied, and what doesn't

Google's own announcement is specific about this, and it's worth reading literally rather than assuming a copy means a full clone. Copied: every source in the notebook, plus Studio content, meaning Audio Overviews, Video Overviews, Study Guides, Flashcards, Quizzes, and Slide Decks that already exist in the notebook, along with the generation prompts and custom chat configurations behind them. Not copied, ever: your personal notes and your chat history. That's a deliberate design choice, not a bug: a copy is meant to hand someone a clean starting point built on the same source material, not a transcript of your specific conversation with it.

There's one real caveat buried in the source-copying rule: if a source was added to the original notebook from Google Drive, it only carries over into your copy if you personally have permission to access that Drive file. Copy a coworker's research notebook that includes a Drive document you were never shared on, and you'll end up with a notebook that's missing that one source, with nothing in the interface calling that out at copy time. If a copy looks lighter than the original, permissions are the first thing to check.

The permission model, in full

A notebook is copyable in exactly three situations: you own it outright; it was privately shared with you and the owner left Allow copies checked; or it's a public notebook with Allow copies checked. There is no per-person override: Allow copies is a single toggle for the whole notebook, not something you can grant to one collaborator and withhold from another. If you want to hand a template to your team but stop a specific person from duplicating it, the only lever Google gives you is removing that person's access entirely, not a finer-grained copy permission.

Admins don't get a separate dial here either. A Google Workspace admin can turn Gemini Notebook access on or off for their organization as a whole, but there's no admin-level control specifically over the copy feature: it's bundled into whatever access level a user already has. That's worth knowing if you're managing a school or company account and were hoping to allow Gemini Notebook generally while blocking notebook copying specifically. As of this writing, that split isn't available; it's an all-or-nothing setting at the organization level.

Before this shipped: how people used to duplicate a notebook

For the three-plus years between NotebookLM's 2023 launch and this August 2026 update, there was no in-product way to copy a notebook at all. Two workarounds filled the gap, and they're worth knowing because the native Copy button doesn't fully replace either of them. The first was manual: create a blank notebook, open the original, and re-add each source one at a time. It worked, but it dropped everything (Studio content, chat configuration, all of it) and didn't scale past a handful of sources before it became tedious.

The second was an export/import flow built around third-party Chrome extensions offering a "Backup & Restore" feature, with nlmtools.com's NotebookLM Tools extension the most visible example, exporting a notebook's structure as JSON and re-importing it elsewhere. That approach preserved folder structure in a way manual re-adding didn't, but it was never an official Google feature and depended on a browser extension staying maintained. With the native Copy button now live, most people duplicating a whole notebook don't need either workaround anymore, though an export-based extension can still matter if you specifically want to copy sources across two different Google accounts, which the native feature doesn't document as supported either way.

Method                  Preserves            Loses                 Effort
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Native Copy (Aug 2026)  Sources, Studio      Chat history, notes   One click
                        content, prompts
Manual source re-add    Sources only         Studio content,       High, per source
                                              chat history, notes
Export/import extension Sources, folder      Studio content        Medium, needs
(e.g. nlmtools.com)     structure            (unconfirmed either    the extension
                                              way by our sources)

Two things nobody, including Google, has confirmed yet

Two practical questions come up naturally once you know the feature exists, and neither one is answered anywhere in Google's own documentation or in the third-party coverage that followed the launch, including a writeup from Android Authority that otherwise covers the rollout in detail. The first is whether the Copy button works from the Gemini Notebook mobile app the same way it does on the web; nothing in the announcement mentions mobile at all, one way or the other. The second is whether you can copy a notebook across two different Google accounts, say from a personal account into a work one, rather than staying within a single signed-in account. Both are the kind of detail that's faster to test on your own account than to find confirmed in writing right now. If you rely on either behavior for a real workflow, verify it yourself before you build a process around it.

Google's own help page hasn't caught up yet

Here's something worth checking yourself before you rely on Google's documentation as the last word: as of this writing, eleven days after the feature shipped, Google's own Gemini Notebook FAQ page still has an entry titled "Duplicate a notebook" whose answer reads "This feature isn't supported yet." That's directly contradicted by both the Workspace Updates announcement above and Google's own separate support article on creating notebooks, which documents the exact Copy → Create flow in detail. It's a small thing, but it's a useful reminder that even a company's own help center can lag its own product announcements by well over a week. If you searched Google's FAQ for this feature and got told it doesn't exist, you weren't wrong to be confused. The page was wrong.

Where this doesn't work yet: Gemini Notebook Enterprise

Every source describing this feature, including Google's own announcement, is written for personal accounts and standard Workspace users. Gemini Notebook Enterprise's own sharing documentation, published separately on Google Cloud's docs site, describes only Viewer and Editor access levels for Enterprise notebooks and doesn't mention a copy or duplicate capability at all. That page states outright that notebook sharing is one of the few areas where Enterprise differs from the rest of Gemini Notebook. No source confirms whether that gap is temporary or permanent, so if you're on an Enterprise seat specifically for the governance controls covered in our Gemini Notebook Enterprise guide, don't assume the Copy button described here is available to you until you've checked it against your own account.

People also ask

Can I copy someone else's public notebook?

Yes, as long as the owner left Allow copies checked in Share settings, which is the default. If a public notebook doesn't show a Copy option, the owner has specifically turned that setting off.

Does duplicating a notebook copy my chat history and notes too?

No. Chat history and personal notes are excluded from every copy, by design. Only sources and existing Studio content (Audio Overviews, Video Overviews, Study Guides, Flashcards, Quizzes, Slide Decks) carry over.

Does making a copy count against my notebook limit?

Google hasn't stated this explicitly anywhere in its documentation. Since a copy becomes a fully independent notebook in your library, it's a reasonable assumption that it counts toward your plan's notebook cap the same as any notebook you create from scratch, but treat that as an inference, not a confirmed fact, until Google says so directly. See our full breakdown of exact notebook, source, and daily-query limits by plan in our Gemini Notebook usage limits guide.

Can I stop people from copying a notebook I've shared?

Yes. Open the notebook, go to Share, and uncheck Allow copies. It's on by default for both private shares and public notebooks, so if you've shared something you don't want duplicated, check that setting explicitly rather than assuming it's off.

Does the Copy feature work in Gemini Notebook Enterprise?

It doesn't appear to, as of this writing. Google Cloud's own Enterprise sharing documentation lists only Viewer and Editor access and makes no mention of a copy or duplicate capability, unlike the personal and standard Workspace documentation, which describes it in detail.