Highlights and notes: import and export¶
Your highlights, notes and bookmarks are not trapped in Bookx. You can bring in the ones you made on a Kindle, in KOReader, on a Kobo or in calibre, and take yours out as Markdown, HTML, JSON, an Obsidian note or Readwise data.
Notes & Highlights¶
Sidebar → Notes & Highlights shows every highlight and note of every book in the main area of the library.
- Search looks in the quote, your note, the book title, the author and the chapter. Every word you type has to be found (any case).
- Group by book, month, colour or book tag, or not at all. Order: newest first, oldest first, or in book order.
- Filters: colour, a book, with / without a note, and a date range (
YYYY-MM-DD, both days included). - Click a row to open the book at that passage. For a PDF the row shows the page (
page 12), for other books the chapter. - The pencil button edits the note; the bin deletes the highlight (after asking). Both change the book.
- Tick the check boxes to choose highlights, or leave nothing ticked to use everything shown. The Export button then offers every format below, Anki flashcards and Readwise.
- The list shows the first 200 matches; Show more adds the next ones.
Import Highlights¶
Main menu → Import Highlights (also in the right-click menu of a book). Choose Files or Folder or Device; Bookx reads what it finds and shows a review before anything is added:
Add 3 highlights to your library? UI Test Book: 3 highlights added, 1 not found in the book’s text, left out Left out, not in your library: Some Other Book (1) Nothing is deleted, nothing you already have is changed, no quote is added twice.
What it reads:
| Source | What to choose | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Kindle | My Clippings.txt (on the Kindle in documents/) |
Highlights and notes; a note is joined to the highlight at its location. Bookmarks are skipped. Dates are read when the Kindle wrote them in English. |
| KOReader | a book’s metadata.*.lua (in its .sdr folder), the folder of a device or KOReader, or KOReader’s own export (Export highlights as JSON or Markdown) |
Title and author come from the book’s properties, else from the .sdr folder name. |
| Kobo | a copy of KoboReader.sqlite, or the Kobo’s folder (the mounted device) |
The database is only read, from a temporary copy; the file on the Kobo is not opened. Highlights and notes of every book. |
| calibre | an annotations export (JSON) from calibre’s viewer or calibredb annotations export |
Read leniently; if a file is not recognised you get a message. |
| Bookx | the JSON of Export Annotations | Handy to move highlights between libraries. |
How it decides:
- Books are matched by title (case, punctuation and a number prefix like
01 -ignored), with the author as tie-break and veto. A book that is not in your library, or that fits two of yours, is listed and left out, never guessed. - A quote you already have (same words, ignoring case and punctuation, or one inside the other) is not added again. If your copy has no note and the imported one has, the note is filled in; a note you wrote is never overwritten.
- The quote is placed in the book by searching for its text (curly or straight quotes, dashes and line breaks do not matter). A quote that cannot be found in the book’s text is left out and counted in the review: highlights from a different edition of the book often can’t be placed.
- Bookmarks and notes without a highlighted quote have no place to attach to and are not imported.
- It only ever adds. Importing the same file twice adds nothing the second time.
Export Annotations¶
- One book: right-click → Export Annotations → a format.
- The whole library: Main menu → Export All Annotations → a format → a folder. One file per book that has
highlights, notes or bookmarks, named
<title> - annotations.<ext>.
| Format | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Markdown, Plain text, HTML | reading, printing, notes apps |
| JSON | other tools; Bookx can import it again |
| Obsidian note | a note with a quote callout per highlight, ready for a vault |
| Kindle clippings | a My Clippings.txt-style file for tools that read Kindle exports |
| Readwise | the JSON body of Readwise’s highlights API, if you want to send it yourself; see Send to Readwise below to let Bookx do it |
Every highlight in the JSON export carries an id that comes from the book and the quote (bx-…), so it is the
same on every export and on every computer. Importing a file you exported never adds a quote twice.
Highlights come in book order with their chapter and note; bookmarks follow. A book’s own Bookx JSON is different from calibre’s or KOReader’s; Bookx reads all of them.
Anki flashcards¶
In Notes & Highlights, Export → Anki flashcards makes cards from the highlights shown or ticked, or from your vocabulary list.
| Choice | What you get |
|---|---|
Anki package (.apkg) |
open it in Anki with File → Import; a deck Bookx::Highlights or Bookx::Vocabulary is made |
| Anki text file / CSV | for Import File; the header lines tell Anki the deck, the note type and where the id and tags are |
Front/back cards show the quote on the front and your note and the source (book, author, chapter) on the back.
Cloze cards hide the longest word of the quote. Vocabulary cards show the word and its meaning, with the sentence you
met it in (the word in bold, or hidden for a cloze). Each card is tagged bookx and with the book. Cards have a fixed
id, so importing a newer export updates the cards in Anki instead of adding copies.
The .apkg was checked by reading it back, not by importing it into every Anki version; if Anki complains, use the text
file.
Send to Readwise¶
Export → Send to Readwise uploads the highlights (those ticked, or everything shown) to your Readwise library.
- The first time, paste your access token (from readwise.io/access_token). It is kept in the system keyring, not in the settings file. Readwise Access Token in the same menu changes it.
- Bookx remembers what it sent. A second send uploads only new highlights and the ones whose note changed.
- There is a progress bar and a Cancel button; what was sent before you cancelled is remembered.
- Errors are shown in words: a token that is not accepted, or Readwise asking you to slow down (try again in a minute).
Bookmarks and highlights without text are not sent.
Kindle¶
With a Kindle connected, Import Highlights → Folder or Device reads documents/My Clippings.txt from it. Nothing
on the Kindle is changed. The Kindle’s own per-book annotation files (.sdr folders with .azw3r or .mbp files)
are a binary format that Bookx does not read; the clippings file has the same highlights and notes.
See also Devices and sharing for syncing notes with a connected e-reader and Sync your reading position for the position.