I use NotebookLM quite a bit, and it would be great if it were easier to download a batch of PDFs from Paperpile directly to my computer. This would make it much easier to spin up a NotebookLM instance and drop in a bunch of papers as sources.
Perhaps the most intuitive way would be to integrate a “PDF” option into the existing Export menu – instead of exporting citations in BibTeX, CSV, etc, it would export a zipped file of PDFs.
Thank you for sharing the details of your use case for the need for bulk download for PDFs directly from Paperpile, @bryanbriney. I’ve added your +1 to this request on our internal feature tracker for consideration at a later date.
The workaround for now is to sync your files to Google Drive, and you can download a batch of PDFs from there. In Google Drive, files are organized in subfolders sorted alphabetically by the first author’s last name. For easier export, you can change how files are organized and named via Settings > General, and under File and Folder names, click Set file and folder name pattern.
Just chiming in here to add to Suzanne’s helpful response on what can be done in the product today.
How to more easily get full-text PDFs into apps like NotebookLM is a user flow we are actively working on (like, devs on keyboards this week building stuff).
We’re always looking to get more signal on the ways of working & problems researchers are actually trying to solve. If you ever have a minute, I’d love to hear your response to a few leading questions. (Alternatively, I’m happy to set up a Zoom call – https://pprpl.co/meet-with-greg to grab time.)
We appreciate your input. I hope to be able to share our team’s progress on this front soon!
Chiming in as I am also looking for this feature for bulk pdf downloads. I would not be using with NotebookLM.
Typically, I’d like to download all papers cited in a manuscript in progress, typically around 50 - 100 papers. This would be to give to a co-author for when they review the manuscript away from internet.
I’ve added your +1 for bulk PDF downloads directly from your library to our internal feature tracker, @anna. As an alternative to bulk downloading, you can share papers with a co-author by selecting all the references in the folder and clicking the share button in the toolbar:
This will generate a unique sharing link that you can send to your co-author — whether or not they use Paperpile. Make sure to choose the Share PDFs and other files option:
The share link opens a webpage where they can view and download each PDF individually by clicking the PDF button, or they can add them to their library by clicking the plus button if they are a Paperpile user.
Alternatively, if they are a Paperpile user, you can choose to share the folder with them by clicking the 3 dots button next to the folder title in the sidebar, and selecting Share.
Hi Greg – thanks for the quick response.
Generally about 20-25 (just enough to be a hassle to download individually!), but I think NotebookLM will accept up to 50 sources. Often I’m looking to download the entire contents of a folder or tag in my Paperpile library.
I mainly use NotebookLM for factually grounded question/answer chat when writing grants or manuscripts. It’s huge timesaver for those “I know I read this somewhere but I can’t remember which paper to cite” type of things.
Usually to build my own knowledge of a new topic or to quickly find the right paper to cite.
Thanks again for the quick reply, and keep up the good work!
