The Notebook OS side panel follows you across every tab in Chrome. It is always one click away, whether you are reading a research paper, watching a YouTube video, or having a conversation with an AI assistant.
Inside the side panel is Note Studio — a rich-text editor designed specifically for capturing ideas and sending them into Gemini Notebook. This guide covers how all the pieces work together.
Two Types of Notes: Global and Locked
When you open the side panel, you are working in one of two note modes:
Global note (cross-page draft) — This is the default. Whatever you type stays in the editor as you move from tab to tab. It follows you around. Use this for ideas that are not tied to a specific page — general thoughts, things to research, connections between topics.
Locked note (page-locked draft) — Lock the note to the current page URL by toggling the Lock to Page switch. Now the editor content is tied to this specific page. When you navigate away, your note is saved. When you come back to this URL, you see your note again exactly as you left it.
Use page-locked notes when you are actively annotating a specific source — a paper you are reading, a web page you are researching, a YouTube video you want to review.
Lock to Page: When to Use It
Lock to Page is most useful when your reading session spans multiple tabs and you want to keep separate notes for each source. Without it, you risk overwriting your notes as you move from page to page.
A good workflow: lock the note before you start reading, take notes as you read, then save to Gemini Notebook when you are done. Move to the next tab, lock a new note, repeat.
Save to Gemini Notebook vs. Copy
This is one of the most important distinctions in Note Studio.
Save to Gemini Notebook takes the text content of your note and sends it to a selected notebook as a new source. This is the right action when you want the note to become research material — something Gemini Notebook can read, cite, and reason about.
One important detail: when saving to Gemini Notebook, use plain text. Gemini Notebook processes text sources. Rich formatting like bold, italics, and lists may or may not survive the ingestion process cleanly. If you want structured formatting to come through reliably, write in plain text or simple markdown.
Copy copies the note content to your clipboard, formatting included. Use this when you want to paste the note somewhere else — a document editor, an email, a project management tool, another app. The Copy button preserves your rich text formatting for use outside Gemini Notebook.
Rich Text Features
Note Studio supports basic rich text editing: bold, italic, headings, bullet lists, numbered lists, and links. These are useful when you are writing notes you plan to Copy out to another app.
The editor is intentionally simple. It is not a full word processor. It is a capture tool — designed to get your ideas down fast and move them to the right place.
What Happens to Your Draft If You Clear the Browser Cache?
Note Studio drafts live in local browser storage. If you clear extension data or reinstall the extension, unsaved drafts may be lost. Before doing any browser cleanup, open the side panel and check whether there is anything important in the editor that has not yet been saved to Gemini Notebook.
Once a note is saved to Gemini Notebook, the important copy is in your Google account. That copy is safe regardless of what happens to your browser.
Practical Workflow: Annotate While You Read
- Open the side panel on the page you want to annotate
- Toggle Lock to Page
- Take notes as you read — key points, questions, connections
- When done, click Save to Gemini Notebook and choose the target notebook
- Move to the next tab and repeat
At the end of a reading session, you have multiple locked notes across multiple sources — each saved to Gemini Notebook as a separate source. Now you can open Gemini Notebook and ask questions across all of them at once.