How to get your Canvas files into NotebookLM
NotebookLM cannot see your Canvas courses. Everything has to be a file on your computer first. That is the part guides skip.
Short answer
NotebookLM cannot reach Canvas. There is no integration and no login, so every source has to be a file on your computer first.
It accepts PDF, .docx, .pptx,
.txt, .md, CSV, images, audio, web URLs and
public YouTube links, up to 50 sources per notebook on
the free tier. It does not accept a local video file,
which is why lecture recordings have to become audio or a transcript
before you can upload them. One notebook per course beats one notebook
per degree, for grounding reasons covered below.
On this page
NotebookLM is now called Gemini Notebook. Google renamed it on 16 July 2026 and describes it as a rename rather than a replacement: same product, same notebooks, new name and logo rolling out over several weeks. Everything on this page applies to both names. It says "NotebookLM" throughout because that is still what most people call it.
NotebookLM is very good at the thing students want from it: answering questions from your own course material, with citations back to the source. There is one obstacle in front of that, and every guide skips it. NotebookLM cannot see your Canvas courses. It has no integration, no login, no way in. Everything has to be a file on your computer first.
Which means the hard part of "use AI on my course material" is not the AI at all. It is the twenty minutes of clicking that gets four months of slides, readings and lecture recordings out of Canvas and into a folder.
The part nobody explains
Canvas keeps your material behind a login, spread across a Files tab, module attachments, Pages and a separate lecture capture system. NotebookLM takes uploads. Nothing bridges those two automatically, so the workflow is always: get the files down, tidy them, then upload.
That has one useful consequence. Once the files are on your machine they are yours permanently. Put them into whichever tool you like - NotebookLM today, something else next year, and your own reading in the meantime. The download is the durable part; the AI tool is not.
What NotebookLM accepts
The format situation is much better than it was. Word and PowerPoint were both added during 2025, which removed the conversion step that used to make this awkward. As things stand it takes:
- Documents - PDF,
.docx,.pptx,.txt,.md, CSV. - Google files - Docs, Slides and Sheets, plus Drive links.
- Audio - MP3, M4A and WAV, transcribed on upload.
- Images, pasted text, web page URLs, and public YouTube links.
Per source you get up to 500,000 words or 200 MB, whichever you hit first, which no normal lecture deck or reading comes close to. The accepted types and the limits are listed in Google's own source documentation, and they do move, so check it rather than trusting this paragraph in a year.
Local video files are not on that list. You can point it at a public YouTube URL, but a lecture recording saved as MP4 cannot be uploaded. That is the one place a conversion step is still genuinely required. It is covered below.
Why the source limit changes what you upload
A free notebook holds 50 sources. Paid plans raise it. Fifty sounds generous until you try to put a whole degree in one notebook and discover that a single semester of one course is already thirty files.
So the cap pushes you toward the right habit anyway: one notebook per course. Grounding quality points the same direction. Ask a question of a notebook holding one course and the answer comes from that course's own material and cites it. Ask the same question of a notebook holding four unrelated courses and you get confident answers assembled from the wrong module.
Curation is the actual skill here. Be ruthless. A semester folder straight off Canvas contains a lot that is not study material: administrative announcements, the same reading list posted three times, the assignment brief you already submitted against.
Getting the files out of Canvas first
How much work this is depends entirely on where your course keeps its material. If everything is in the Files tab, Canvas will zip it for you and you are five minutes from done. If it is attached to modules or embedded in Pages, the Files tab does not contain it and the zip will quietly not include it.
How to download all your files from Canvas covers every route in detail, including the built-in ones that need no software. Start there, and only reach for a tool if the built-in export leaves too much behind.
Lecture recordings, the one real conversion problem
A recorded lecture is the single most useful thing you can give NotebookLM, because it is where most of the actual explanation lives and it is the material you are least likely to reread. It is also the one thing you cannot upload as it comes.
Two routes work, and one is clearly better:
- Audio. Extract the audio track as MP3 and upload that. NotebookLM transcribes it on the way in - a half-hour recording takes a couple of minutes. Simple, and it costs you one source.
- A transcript. Better. A text transcript is tiny, searchable in your own folder, quotable in your notes, readable without any AI tool at all, and it is what NotebookLM was going to produce internally anyway. See how to get a transcript of a Panopto lecture - there is often one waiting that you do not have to make.
Getting the recording in the first place is its own problem, because Canvas embeds video from five different systems and each has different rules. Useful detail for this page: in both Canvas Studio and Panopto the transcript is a separate permission from the video, and it is often left open when the video is not - which hands you the better source anyway.
Either way, lecture recordings are the material universities restrict most often. The permission question is a real one rather than a formality. See how to download Panopto lecture recordings, which leads with exactly that.
A recipe for one course
- Download the course to a folder on your computer. If the Files tab holds everything, Canvas's own zip is the quickest route; if it does not, or if you are doing this for several courses, the 100% AI & NotebookLM Ready preset below does steps 1 to 3 in a single run.
- Delete the administrative noise - announcements about room changes, duplicated reading lists, the assignment briefs you have already submitted against.
- Turn any lecture recordings into transcripts or MP3s. This is the step with no manual equivalent - NotebookLM will not take the video, so something has to convert it before you upload.
- Create a notebook named after the course. One course, one notebook.
- Upload the slides and readings first, then the transcripts. You will usually land somewhere between fifteen and forty sources, which fits.
- Ask it for a study guide, or a timeline of the topics, or the three questions most likely to come up. Then check the citations, which is the whole point of a grounded tool.
Keep the folder, not just the notebook. The notebook is a view over your sources and it depends on somebody else's product staying free and staying available. The folder on your disk is the thing that is actually yours, and it will still open in ten years - which matters most if you are close to losing Canvas access altogether.
Where it is genuinely weak
It answers from what you gave it, so a gap in your folder is a gap in its answers, stated just as confidently as everything else. If half the course was delivered verbally and you uploaded only the slides, it will cheerfully summarise the slides and never mention the rest.
It is also not a shortcut past your institution's rules. Policies on using AI tools with course material vary a great deal, they are usually stricter for assessed work than for revision. A few explicitly cover uploading lecture material to third-party services. Check yours before building a workflow on it.
A course folder NotebookLM already accepts
Canvas Downloader ships a preset called 100% AI & NotebookLM Ready, built for exactly this. Tick as many courses as you like and each course arrives as one flat folder, drag-and-drop ready: PowerPoints, Word documents and spreadsheets converted to PDF, Canvas Pages and link lists as text, and the Panopto lecture recordings saved separately as audio, or as a searchable transcript - which is the one source on this page NotebookLM will not take as video.
Free and open source, Windows and macOS. Runs on your own computer. So does the transcription.
Common questions
Can NotebookLM connect to Canvas directly?
No. There is no Canvas integration and no way for NotebookLM to log in to your account. Course material has to be downloaded to your computer first and then uploaded as sources, which is why getting the files out of Canvas is the real work.
Can I upload a lecture video to NotebookLM?
Not a local video file. It accepts audio (MP3, M4A and WAV) and public YouTube links. A recorded lecture has to become audio or a transcript first. A transcript is usually the better choice: it is smaller, searchable in your own folder and readable without any AI tool.
Does NotebookLM read PowerPoint and Word files?
Yes. Both were added during 2025, so .pptx and .docx upload directly alongside PDF, plain text, Markdown, CSV and Google Docs, Slides and Sheets. The conversion step older guides describe is no longer needed for ordinary documents.
How many files can I put in one notebook?
Fifty sources per notebook on the free plan, with paid plans raising the limit. Each source can run to 500,000 words or 200 MB, whichever comes first, which no normal lecture deck approaches.
Should I make one notebook per course or one per semester?
Per course. The source limit pushes you that way and so does answer quality: a notebook holding one course cites that course, while a notebook holding four produces confident answers assembled from the wrong module.
Is it safe to upload my course material to NotebookLM?
That is a question about Google's terms and your institution's policy rather than a technical one. Policies vary, are usually stricter for assessed work than for revision, and some explicitly cover uploading lecture material to third-party services. Check yours first.
Will NotebookLM make things up about my course?
It answers from the sources you give it and cites them, which makes it much easier to check than a general chatbot. The real failure mode is a gap in your folder: material you did not upload simply will not appear in the answers. Nothing flags that it is missing.
What should I not bother uploading?
Administrative announcements, duplicated reading lists, assignment briefs you have already submitted against, and anything you would not reread. With a source limit, every slot spent on noise is a slot not spent on a lecture transcript.