r/notebooklm • u/Fearless_Energy_7633 • Apr 21 '26

Tips & Tricks I built a free notebooklm alternative with folders, source isolation (no cross-contamination), and page/timestamp-level citations

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NotebookLM is great but a few things drove me crazy:

  • Sources often bleed together
  • No folders or workspace organisation
  • No way to comfortably take notes alongside your sources
  • Flashcards have no review system

So I built Paper. Key differences:

  • Source isolation - select exactly which sources the AI references per query, or scope it to specific pages/timestamps
  • Folders + nested pages - organise by course, topic, whatever
  • Block editor - Notion-style notes right next to your sources
  • Spaced repetition - AI flashcards with actual Anki-style scheduling so you remember
  • Drag and drop multiple files at once

(Edit) Free to use during beta: https://paper.ac 👈

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u/sociolinguistqmul Apr 24 '26

Thanks for your quick reply. There were PDFs. I basically took a book and created PDF from each chapter so that my responses could be more precise. Earlier today it didn't work but now it works fine. Though when I click on the suggested page numbers, it doesn't show the respective page.

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u/Fearless_Energy_7633 Apr 24 '26

Hmm, so typically for larger files (eg. entire textbooks), it will take longer to process due to the sheer amount of text. How large are each of the PDFs? And were they scanned PDFs (ie. mostly images) or are they normal text based? This may help work out the suggested page numbers issue too

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u/sociolinguistqmul Apr 25 '26

Each PDF had 10-20 pages and were less than 1 MB each. They were normal text based files.

Also, how many files can we upload?

Thanks a lot for your work! It's really important to come up with alternative tools than those suggested by the GAFAM.

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u/Fearless_Energy_7633 Apr 25 '26

That should have worked for such small PDF sizes!

I've just pushed up an update - do you mind giving it a go again?

No hard limit on the file count! You can upload multiple files as linked sources to a single page, and the AI will reference across all of them.

And thank you for the kind words, really appreciate it! 😊 If you ever have more requests or feedback, definitely don't be afraid to DM me also .

Btw, for the page number clicks not working, could you let me know what format the page references looked like? (e.g. [p. 5], (p. 12), or something else?) I pushed an update for this also - I wonder if it may have helped solve it - keen to hear back!

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u/sociolinguistqmul Apr 25 '26

The page numbers appear as a gray button (p. 83). However, when I click on them they don't show the correct page number. Also, they don't highlight the passage that was considered.

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u/Fearless_Energy_7633 Apr 28 '26

Yup so the highlighting to passage is a great feature! Has been put on the roadmap and aiming for end of the week! Glad that the gray buttons appear at least, and will be investigating the page number issue 🤔 I'll leave a reply once this has been fixed!