NotebookLM is one of the best research and learning tools out there, and I’ve been using it extensively this year. I don’t have many complaints; it’s sleek, intuitive, feature-rich, and it does pretty much everything I need it to. I use it beyond research too – I set it up as my primary notes app, use it to learn new software, and it’s great at advising on creative processes. But because it’s such a powerful and diverse tool, I naturally get curious about similar options. This led me to Gistr.

Gistr is an AI tool that promises a similar experience to NotebookLM, but approaches it from a different angle. There are still many similarities in that both pull data from your files and both can analyze YouTube videos, just to name a few. Gistr is smaller in scale but interesting in concept, and it turned out to be more useful than I expected. It even surpasses NotebookLM in some areas. Here’s how my time with Gistr has been so far…

What is Gistr?

A smart productivity tool

Gistr is marketed as a smart notebook, and has an AI-powered workspace built around the idea of turning complex information into quick, digestible insights. It uses the same framework as NotebookLM which analyzes and synthesizes the data you give it. You upload your files or add some links, and then you can prompt the AI for summaries and insights. The name “Gistr” sums it up perfectly – it gives you the gist of anything, fast.

There are several key differences between Gist and NotebookLM, however. For starters, Gist is more of a proper note-taking app in that it has note blocks, which you access with the slash command like in most other note-takers. It also handles chats differently, sorting them into threads and collections (more on this later). Another core difference is in how it processes YouTube videos. This article about Gistr’s YouTube functionality provides a great overview.

My first impressions of Gistr

It’s a real notes app

I’ve tried using NotebookLM as a note-taking app before, and it wasn’t too bad. But Gistr has more traditional note-taking features for you to use as a notes app. The first thing you’ll notice when entering the homepage are the different tabs...

Threads are dedicated spaces for your conversations with the AI and your note blocks. You start each thread by uploading either PDF files, web links, or YouTube videos, similar to NotebookLM’s Sources. Think of threads as pages in Notion or Obsidian. Each topic of conversation can live on its own page – similar to how you have different notebooks in NotebookLM.

The cool thing about threads is that all of your AI chats are also note blocks, which you can collapse, expand, or move around on the page. It supports rich text options, which let you add your own text notes complete with headers, bullet lists, code snippets, and image inserts. Furthermore, there’s a handy split-view with your chat and note space on the left, and sources on the right. You can highlight text within the source, whether from a web link or a YouTube transcript, and it will appear in the note space on the left as a new note block.

It doesn’t have a dedicated backlinking system like Obsidian, but you can simply copy the link of a specific thread and paste it into other threads. You can also copy prompts and responses and add them as text blocks within any thread – this is smoother than NotebookLM’s “save to note” function, in my opinion.

Then there are Collections, which function as folders where you can organize and categorize your threads. For example, I created collections for design, Figma, and psychology. Lastly, the Sources tab is a little hub of every source you’ve uploaded to Gistr, regardless of which threads or collections they belong to. Overall, I really like this setup. It’s not better or worse than NotebookLM, just different, and more reminiscent of a proper note-taking app.

How Gistr’s AI holds up to NotebookLM

It’s more powerful than I expected

Replacing NotebookLM with Gistr as my primary AI research and learning assistant was easier than I expected because I didn’t think the AI would be that powerful. It has much of the same core functionality as NotebookLM, retrieving information from your uploaded content and then synthesizing it based on your prompts.

The thing I love most about it is the prompt suggestions:

• The Smart Guide lets you “get the Gist”, get super simple explanations, get the key points in bullet format, or get deep questions. The latter could be a replacement for NotebookLM’s Quiz feature.
• The Smart Questions suggestions give you a selection of questions that pertain to your selected sources. This is quite similar to NotebookLM’s prompt suggestions.
• And then there’s the Tools for Students. This tab gives you options for more academic-like structures of the content, for example, “Explain the core concepts as a story so they stick in memory”. This could replace NotebookLM’s Report and Brief functions.

The response time is actually a bit faster than NotebookLM, and the answers are up to par, complete with citations. Of course, you can also give it custom prompts to get responses with specific perspectives or context. Furthermore, you can select from a list of AI models, like Gemini, Claude, Grok, and GPT. And probably the coolest thing about Gistr: you can edit the AI’s responses.

I also love how Gistr handles YouTube videos. It gives you a transcript that’s much easier to follow in paragraphs. The standout feature about Gistr’s YouTube videos is Moments, though. This feature lets you “extract” key points from the transcript and save them separately for later. Clicking on them takes you to that exact spot in the video, which will automatically start playing.

Gistr is a capable NotebookLM alternative

There’s no need for me to leave NotebookLM, it does everything I need it to. But no productivity tool is perfect, so I’m always on the lookout for new options. And Gistr was an amazing find. Not only does its AI use the retrieval framework like NotebookLM for summaries and overviews, but it also gives you proper note-taking features and more extensive YouTube capabilities. For anyone who isn’t keen on Google’s NotebookLM, Gistr is a viable alternative that’s worth a try.

Gistr