NotebookLM

Raised as a usability problem by 12 people on Hacker News over 3 years (2024–2026), in 6 threads.

People raised many different problems with NotebookLM, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.

The newest 11 complaints

Making a podcast takes several minutes and the podcasts disappear after a while2026-07-17
Linear source list makes it hard to see the big picture or connections2026-01-08
Three panels waste screen space; chat and notes occupy room not needed together2025-09-21
Took ages to figure out that simple text can be pasted; editing text is poor2025-09-21
Layout is confusing and UI concepts are not intuitive to the user2025-09-20
Six large buttons take 328px height, hiding notes on small screens2025-09-20
No export option, so getting information out requires copy-paste2025-09-20
Too many cards, buttons, sections and icons make core chat-with-files flow hard to navigate2025-09-20
Interface is not a great user experience despite looking clean2025-09-20
Only accepts 50 PDFs at once, forcing awkward batching of documentation2025-04-30
Uploading several PDFs at once is glitchy, with icons and items appearing and disappearing randomly2024-09-22