The Ultimate NotebookLM Chrome Extension Just Got Even Better!

Notebookm is an incredible tool, but it lacks some basic features that really hold it back. Things like bulk export, multi-notebook search, and a unified dashboard for all your notebooks. But I recently found this Chrome extension called Cortex that adds all of these features into Notebook LM. And Cortex just dropped some massive new updates that honestly take it to another level. We're talking about automation rules that let Notebook LM basically run on autopilot and a podcast feed that automatically pushes all your audio overviews directly to your podcast app of choice. If you didn't catch my last video on Cortex, let me give you a quick rundown on what it does. To get started with this, you'll want to install the Cortex Chrome extension. I'll have a link for it in the description down below. After installing it, the first thing you're probably going to notice is that when you come into any of your notebooks, there are all these new buttons around here. For instance, over here are some buttons that help you quickly sort through all of your sources. So, if I click on web, it's only going to show me web articles. If I click on YouTube, it's only going to show me YouTube videos that are inside my notebook sources. There are also buttons up here that allow you to quickly download all of your sources. We have another one that will instantly sync any of your Google Drive documents inside this notebook. And you can even bulk delete sources in here as well. Moving along, there are other options to export your entire conversation with your notebook and to bulk export all of the creatives that were made inside of Notebook LM Studio. Opening up the Chrome extension itself, you'll see that you have the option to import the page that you're currently on into any notebook. So, for instance, let's say I'm looking at this article and I want to save it to a notebook. Instead of copying the link and going over to that notebook and pasting it in, all I have to do is click on Cortex, select the notebook I want to add it to, and click on import to notebook. I can then open up the notebook. And here I see that new source over here on the left. But where Cortex gets very powerful is if you click on the Chrome extension and click on manage notebooks. This is a completely new dashboard that Cortex creates for you to help you manage all of your different notebooks. First, you can see a lot of information in here like all of your different notebooks, how many sources they all have, the last time you edited the notebook, and all the audio overviews from those notebooks as well. You can do things like save your prompts into a prompt library here or bulk import sources. And you can even organize your notebooks into different folders and favorite your best notebooks. But Cortex just added a lot of new features to this that I didn't get a chance to talk about in my last video because they're brand new. So I've partnered with Cortex on this video to update you on what's new. The first new update is that Cortex now has a redesigned dashboard that makes it easier to find exactly what you're looking for. Over here on the left, we have three different views. Notebooks, all sources, and artifacts. Notebooks shows you all of your notebooks that you currently have organized here, and you can see all the information about them. You can even filter here or sort on the left. If I click on all sources, this will literally show you every single source in every single one of your notebooks. You can see the sources right here in this column. You can see the notebook that it's in right here. And you can tag them to easily organize and group them together. Clicking this button will instantly bring you over to the notebook that source is inside of. You can also click this eye icon to actually see the source itself without leaving the Cortex dashboard. or you can download or delete the source. And if you commonly use Google Docs across your different notebooks, well, you can just click right here and this will instantly sync all of your Google Drive documents across all of your notebooks with one single click. The third tab is called artifacts, and this will literally show you every single thing that you have created inside of Studio. So that's over here on the right. all of this stuff again across all of your different notebooks. So, for instance, here's an infographic that I made and I can click on this and actually see that infographic directly inside of Cortex without leaving it. You can download any of these as well or again open it up to actually go over to the notebook itself. And if you need to, you can even bulk delete your artifacts as well. In addition to that, Cortex really powered up its podcast feed. Now, in my last video, I briefly showed you that Cortex lets you turn your audio overviews into a podcast, but they've really built this out. Now, to get started with this, you can come on the left where it says podcast and click on the plus icon. This will allow you to create a new podcast feed. I'm going to call this one Paul's

second feed and click on create. And then from here, you want to come over to your artifacts and find any of your audio overviews. So I will click on filter and click on type and I will select audio overview. So now I'm seeing all the audio overviews from all my notebooks. And what I can do is if I want to add any of those to my podcast, I can just click right here, click on Paul's second feed that was then added or it's processing right now. And let's add some other ones. So I'll come back and let's say I also want to add this one. So I will do Paul second feed for that as well. So those are now being added. Now we have the ability to upload artwork for our podcast. So I'll click on upload artwork. Select this image I just generated. And there we go. Now I have a cover for my podcast. Next, if you want to, you can upload your own audio. So if you make audio somewhere else, you made a podcast some other way, you can upload it into here as well. And then finally, click right here where it says RSS. This will actually generate a link. It's now copied to my clipboard automatically. I can now go over to my podcast app of choice, whether that's Apple podcast or maybe Spotify and then paste that in as a link to a podcast feed. And now I will be subscribed to Paul's second feed. So, anytime a podcast is added to this, it will automatically be downloaded to my iPhone, to my Apple Watch, so I can listen to it wherever I go. But by far, the biggest new feature of Cortex is this one right here that's called automation. These automation rules are honestly what take Cortex from a nice to have to a must-have for me. Let me show you an example of how this works. I'll click on create your first pipeline. From here, I'll give the pipeline a name. I'll call this one study guide creator and click on next. And then we get to select our trigger that is going to activate this automation. There are currently six of them. The first one is tag added whenever a specific tag is added to a notebook. We also have a trigger anytime a notebook is added to a specific collection. Another one if the title of the notebook contains specific text. There's domain routers. There's anytime an episode finishes playing in a podcast and even a trigger anytime audio is generated. For this one, I am going to use the tag is added. And for the tag, I am going to select a tag I created called generate assets. But if you need to create a new tag, you can return back to the Cortex dashboard and just add a tag here with a new name and then it will be available in here as well. So that is my trigger. I'll click on next. And then I get to choose what actions I want to occur every time I add that tag to a notebook. In this case, I wanted to automatically generate certain assets for me. I will click on generate artifact then. But there are other options here. So you can automatically move it to a collection, automatically add a tag, automatically generate audio or a note or even send it to your podcast feed. I'll click on generate artifact though and I'm going to select almost all of these. I want to create a study guide. flashc cards. I want to create a slide deck, an infographic and a quiz. And then I'll click on generate all. Here we can see all those actions up here if I wanted to. Let me also click on generate audio. That way it also automatically generates an audio overview for me. Once I'm happy with that, click on next. And here's where you can review it. You can see everything that it does and I'll click on save. So let's test this out. I have this notebook right here called gardening 101. And as you see on the right, there are no assets inside this notebook. So I found it inside my Cortex dashboard. And all I will do is add the tag generate assets. And then coming back over here to notebook LM, you can see it's already getting to work starting all of the generations that the automation set up for me. So now I don't individually have to select every single one that I wanted to make. Cortex sent the information over to Notebook LM for me automating this entire process. Now there's one other feature that Cortex added that I'm really excited to show you because I think a lot of people are going to be very excited for this. Over here on the left, there is a new tool called merge notebooks. And as this name might imply, this allows you to merge two or more notebooks together. So right here you can see I have three different notebooks that are all similar. They're all about AI. And I realize that I don't

need three different notebooks. I just want one with all of that information in them. So I will select all three. I'll just name this one AI and click on merge. Confirm. And we now see that is processing. And now it's done. This is our new notebook that combines all three of those other notebooks into one. Now, Cortex does have a free plan, but really to get the most out of it, you will want to use one of the paid plans. There's both a subscription option and a one-time payment option. The subscription costs just $2. 40 a month if you sign up for the entire year, but just for like $20 more, you can get a lifetime subscription of Cortex and you never have to pay anything ever again. So, there is that choice right here for just $49. And if you do sign up for one of the paid plans, make sure to use the coupon code that I will include in the description down below. That will give you a little bit of an additional discount. So, that's a new Cortex update between the automation rules and the podcast feed. This extension just keeps getting better and better. Again, if you want to check it out for yourself, I'll have a link for Cortex and that coupon code down in the description. Otherwise, if you want to make sure you stay on top of all the latest AI news, make sure to subscribe to the channel and then I'll see you in the next video. Bye for now.