teng-lin/notebooklm-py v0.8.2

on GitHub

[0.8.2] - 2026-09-02

The headline of this release is the new Android backend. The Python SDK, CLI,
MCP server, and REST server can now use NotebookLM's native mobile API as an
alternative to the Web backend. Install the android extra and select it with
backend="android", --backend android, or NOTEBOOKLM_BACKEND=android.
The Web backend remains the default. All eleven public API namespaces are
available, and Android operations no longer fall back to the Web transport. See
the installation and
configuration guides
(#2269, #2281).

Why choose it? The Android transport talks directly to NotebookLM's native gRPC
service, using short-lived OAuth bearer tokens minted on demand from a stored
master token. This avoids the Web backend's expiring browser-cookie sessions,
frontend build labels, obfuscated RPC IDs, and positional batchexecute
responses. It can therefore be a better fit for unattended CI, containers, and
long-running services, while also providing an independent route when a Web UI
change disrupts automation. The tradeoff is that a durable master token is a
more powerful credential than a cookie snapshot; use a dedicated account and
protect it carefully. Both backends rely on undocumented Google APIs and may
change without notice.

Added

• Added chat generation status and cancellation on both backends.
  client.chat.session_status() reports the active session state, while
  client.chat.cancel() idempotently stops the selected or latest session.
  MCP users can cancel a detached chat task with chat_cancel and inspect live
  session state through chat_status (#2306).
• Added notebooklm copy <title> as a CLI entry point for copying a notebook
  with its sources and Studio artifacts on either backend. It accepts a partial
  or active notebook ID, --use selects the new copy, and --json returns
  structured output (#2308).
• Added ranked passage search on both backends through
  sources.search(notebook_id, query, source_ids=..., limit=...) and
  notebooklm source search. Results include the source, text, rank, and
  source-relative span, and can be filtered to selected sources
  (#2305, #2307).
• Added Google Play Books sources on both backends. Use
  sources.list_play_books() and sources.add_play_book(),
  notebooklm source books / source add-book, or the corresponding MCP
  tools to add eligible books from your library. Availability follows
  NotebookLM's account and region restrictions (#2300, #2304).
• Added research.discover() and notebooklm research discover on both
  backends for a single-call "Discover sources" workflow. It returns ranked
  sources and an overview immediately, while preserving a task ID for later
  import (#2299).
• Added source and artifact workflow helpers on both backends: non-blocking URL
  batches, appending text to a source, copying sources or artifacts, fetching
  Studio customization choices, and requesting grounded next-step suggestions.
  These are also available through the corresponding CLI commands (#2291).
• Added chat_start and chat_status MCP tools for chat generations that
  may outlast a remote connector's request timeout. Requests queue when the
  configurable concurrency limit is reached, and chat_status can poll
  multiple task IDs at once (#2286).
• Added source-type recognition for Gemini chats, Excel, Gmail, AI Mode chats,
  Google Play Books, and general Google Drive files (#2282, #2300).

Changed

• Release and nightly compatibility testing now runs the complete 15-cell
  matrix: Ubuntu, macOS, and Windows across Python 3.10 through 3.14. Browser,
  coverage, repository-lint, and live-E2E work remains in dedicated lanes.
• Compatibility note: backend source type code 14 now reports
  SourceType.GOOGLE_DRIVE instead of GOOGLE_SPREADSHEET. Native Google
  Sheets continue to report SourceType.GOOGLE_SPREADSHEET through code 7
  (#2281).
• The cookies extra now uses the maintained rookie-cookies package instead
  of rookiepy. This supports Python 3.13+ as well as extracting cookies on
  Windows for Chrome, Edge, Brave, and other Chromium-based browsers (#2162).

Fixed

• Android gRPC PERMISSION_DENIED responses now surface as client request
  failures rather than authentication failures, matching the Web backend and
  avoiding misleading re-authentication guidance for operation-level refusals.
• Web chat now identifies payload-free terminal streams as quota exhaustion,
  matching the Android backend's explicit RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED result for the
  same account state. CLI, MCP, and REST callers now receive a retriable
  rate-limit error instead of a non-retriable generic chat failure.
• The public API compatibility audit now treats a previously uninspectable
  baseline signature as unknown rather than a breaking change. This prevents
  false release failures on Python 3.14 while still rejecting regressions that
  make a previously inspectable signature unavailable.
• Credential redaction now recognizes current AQ.-prefixed Google
  authorization keys in runtime logs, exception previews, and cassette
  fixtures, alongside legacy AIza keys (#2254).
• The RPC health canary no longer treats an account-dependent omission of the
  dedicated Cinematic row from Studio customization choices as removal of
  VideoFormat.CINEMATIC. Wire format 3 remains supported, while unknown codes
  and missing ordinary format choices still report drift (#2313).
• Write operations no longer report success when NotebookLM actually rejected
  the request. This covers source refresh and rename, notebook and chat
  updates, sharing changes, note, label, and collection mutations, and artifact
  rename, export, and mind-map generation (#2296).
• Android sources.get_guide() now accepts the server's valid unlabelled
  response on repeated reads. Missing or not-yet-summarized sources also match
  Web behavior for get_guide() and check_freshness() instead of raising a
  false not-found error (#2277, #2280).
• Android file uploads now always perform one status check before timing out
  when given a positive wait timeout, so a ready or failed source is not
  misreported as an indeterminate timeout (#2294).
• Interactive login now tolerates interrupted navigation during Google's
  sign-in flow and gives actionable fallback guidance after repeated failures.
  Browser-cookie import also handles millisecond or microsecond expiry values
  and Firefox session cookies correctly (#2260, #2252).
• Fixed evaluation of public method annotations on Python 3.14 when a class
  method shadows a builtin type name (#2268).