When you're faced with a dense PDF, a textbook chapter, or a long YouTube video, it can be hard to know where to start. Guided Learn mode breaks complex material down into a manageable study plan, complete with section summaries, flashcards, and quizzes.
You can trigger it from any imported source, a PDF, Word document, PowerPoint file, YouTube video, or audio recording. You can also launch it directly from the editor view on an existing document in your knowledge base.
If you haven't uploaded anything yet, see:
Uploading PDFs to RemNote for PDF and other text files,
Learning from Web Pages in the RemNote Reader for web pages,
or Recording and Transcribing Lectures for audio.
First time? Start here
If you just want to jump in without reading the full guide, follow this 5-step path:
1. Upload your material: Add a PDF, PowerPoint, YouTube link, web page, or audio recording to RemNote.
2. Launch the tool: Open the document and click the Learn PDF button in the top right. This opens directly into the Learn PDF view (or the equivalent for your file type).
3. Set your baseline: Tell RemNote how well you already know the material, from "Haven't learned it yet" to "Know it well."
4. Follow the plan: Work through the first section, whether that means reading the summary or jumping straight into practice cards, depending on what you selected in the previous step.
5. Track your progress: Watch the Mastery Tracker update automatically as you study.
Now let's walk through what happens at each of these steps in more detail, using a real example.
Getting started
Let's say you're studying a paper, "Tea and Health: A Review of the Current State of Knowledge." First, upload your file to RemNote. Open the document and click the Learn PDF button in the top-right panel. This opens directly into the Guided Learn mode view for your PDF (the same process applies to any source you want to use with Guided Learn mode, including videos, web pages, and audio recordings).
You'll then be asked a simple question: how well do you know this content?
Haven't learned it yet: Choose this if it's your first time looking at the material and you have no prior understanding of its contents.
I have a basic understanding: Choose this if you've already skimmed the content and grasp the basic concepts.
Know it well and just want to review: Choose this if you've thoroughly gone through the content, perhaps already practiced flashcards from it, and just want to maintain your understanding.
After selecting your level, click Generate Learning Materials. RemNote's AI will generate content tailored to your study plan.
Note: No matter what you select, the content itself stays the same, only what's prioritized changes. If it's your first time with the material, Read Summary appears first in each section; if you already know it well, Practice Cards appears first instead. The sections, their content, and your flashcards aren't affected either way.
The Study Plan
The AI breaks the document down into sections drawn directly from the source material. For our Tea and Health paper below, it creates distinct, bite-sized sections for "Tea Types History and Nutrition," "Health Benefits of Tea," "Safety and Consumption Guidelines," and more.
Note: When you upload a large PDF or document, the AI won't generate every section at once. This keeps your study sessions manageable. Use the Generate Next Sections button to create new sections as you progress.
There are several actions available for each section. Let's say we want to start with Section 1 of our Tea and Health paper: "Tea Types History and Nutrition":
Read Summary
RemNote generates a ready-to-read summary directly from the relevant section, giving you a detailed overview before you dive in.
From here, you can further tailor your learning based on the generated summary:
Test Your Knowledge: In the side panel, the AI generates questions based on the summary. Type your answers to actively test your understanding before the answer is revealed. In our example above, we see: "Which type of tea is produced without fermentation?"
Edit Summary: To tweak the summary, click the ... menu in the upper right corner and select Copy Summary into Editable Notes to create a separate, editable document. It's saved automatically under Uploaded Files in your knowledge base, nested under the document you uploaded. Or use Copy Summary as Text to copy it to your clipboard.
Read PDF/Document: When reading a PDF, you might wonder where the AI pulled its information from. Clicking this button takes you straight to the relevant pages for the section (and shows you which pages weren't used), so you can always keep track of where you are in the source file.
Interactive Explanations: While reviewing the text, you can click any sentence or a concept (underlined in blue) to read an explanation. This helps you quickly clarify unfamiliar terms or complex ideas without losing your context. Reading the summary of our example paper, you might see "Green tea" underlined. Clicking it opens an inline explanation.
AI Tutor: Ask the AI Tutor anything you're unsure about as you read; it draws directly from your uploaded paper to answer.
For example, after reading the Health Benefits of Tea section, you might ask: "What's the difference between the antioxidant effects of green tea versus black tea, and why does processing matter?" See the AI Tutor Chat article to learn more about how it works.
If your PDF has formulas, an Explain formula button appears on hover next to each one. Clicking it gives you a step-by-step breakdown of the equation in the AI Tutor tab.
Generate Flashcards
Once you've read through a section, or if you already know it well and want to skip straight to practice, use this button to create flashcards testing the key facts from that section. The AI generates cards directly from the source text, and they're saved under the document you uploaded, so you can edit, add, or remove them anytime.
Note: If you'd rather generate cards from the entire source file instead of one section at a time, see the flashcard generation section of the PDF reader article.
Generate Quiz
Sometimes you may want to practice in a more formal, exam-like setting. Generate Quiz creates a customizable quiz for the section you're studying. Configure how extensive it is, choose free-response or multiple-choice format, and adjust the difficulty level.
Once generated, you can choose between two modes:
Study Mode: Learn at your own pace. Answers are revealed as soon as you click, with the option to get an AI explanation for each question.
Test Mode: Simulate a real test. Answer everything first, then see your score and review your results at the end.
Quizzes don't just test what you know; they also help RemNote figure out what you need to focus on next. When you miss questions in a certain area, the AI notes it and gives you direct feedback on your weak points. Back on the main Study Plan tab, you'll see a summary of how many topics need more attention.
Back in our Tea and Health paper, the AI has flagged that questions on Cancer Risk have been consistently missed and could use a closer look.
Mastery Tracker
The Mastery Tracker keeps you on track with your learning progress. If you're preparing for an exam, this view acts as your command center, showing your progress across every section, along with the specific topics the AI extracted from your source material.
Note: Your mastery score updates automatically each time you complete a quiz or flashcard session in a section, so you don't have to mark anything manually.
Back to our Tea and Health paper: say you decide you only need to focus on "Nutritional Composition of Tea" for your exam, and want to skip the Introduction and Consumption sections. Click Customize Topics to select or deselect exactly which topics you want in your study plan and Mastery Tracker, so you only spend time on what matters.
Extra features
Extra Practice & Study Guides
At the bottom of your Study Plan, past the last section, you'll find a few more tools: generating a full study guide, building a quiz that covers everything you've studied, and reviewing quizzes you've already created.
Study Guide
Once you've worked through your summaries and built up some quiz history, you might want one consolidated document to return to the night before an exam, something that pulls everything together without making you click through individual sections. That's what the Study Guide is for.
Click Open Study Guide to generate a document tailored to your notes and quiz history.
What's included in the study guide?
What's included in the study guide?
Core Concepts: Foundational definitions and primary ideas, distilled into the essential building blocks of the subject.
Must Remember: The critical data points, figures, dates, and criteria you need for quick retrieval during an exam.
Key Processes: Step-by-step sequences and timelines, useful for understanding how a system changes over time or the exact steps of a methodology.
Key Comparisons: Related concepts placed side by side so you can quickly see how they differ.
Patterns to Recognize: Recurring trends and signals across your notes, so you can anticipate outcomes and understand broader systems.
Mental Models & Intuition: Analogies and conceptual frameworks that make abstract ideas stick.
Exceptions & Edge Cases: The specific scenarios where the standard rules don't apply, so you know the limits of what you're studying.
When to Use Which: Practical, situational advice on when to choose one method or approach over another.
Common Misunderstandings & Exam Traps: False assumptions, common pitfalls, and likely distractors, so you don't fall for trick questions.
Practice Quiz
You can also use the Generate Practice Quiz tab to build a quiz for the entire document rather than a single section, and customize exactly what it covers, all topics or only the ones you haven't finished yet. It's a good way to test your overall retention.
Existing Quizzes
Every quiz you generate is saved under the Existing Quizzes tab, so you can come back and review it later.
Automatic Multiple-Choice Quiz Generation
If you're studying a document that already contains exam-style multiple-choice questions, like past exams or textbook quizzes, Guided Learn mode can detect them automatically. When it finds them, you can extract them directly as multiple-choice flashcards in your editor, so you can practice them directly within RemNote.
Workflow examples
Guided Learn mode adapts to whatever you're studying, videos, slide decks, textbooks, or massive documents. Every workflow starts the same way: upload your source and open the Guided Learn mode tab to get started.
Upload a PDF or PPTX to prepare for an exam
Import your syllabus, lecture slides, or required readings. Use the Mastery Tracker to make sure you hit 100% comprehension before test day.
Record a live lecture and test yourself
Record audio directly into RemNote during class. Guided Learn mode transcribes and summarizes the discussion, then you can immediately generate a quiz to test your retention while it's still fresh.
Handle large documents (textbooks, literature books, scientific papers, protocols, etc.)
Upload a massive document without feeling overwhelmed. Let the AI generate the first few sections so you can start studying right away, and hit Generate Next Sections as you work through the rest.
Study a YouTube video
Paste a YouTube video URL directly into RemNote. The AI breaks the video into logical chapters, provides summaries, and generates flashcards, so you can learn from long lectures or video essays without manually scrubbing through timestamps.
