Guide · Kindle
How to export your Kindle highlights
Updated
Short answer
Where Kindle keeps your highlights
Kindle stores highlights in two separate places, and which one you need depends on where the book came from:
- Your Amazon account (the Kindle notebook). Highlights and notes in books you got from Amazon are backed up to your account and appear in the notebook, whichever Kindle device or app you made them on.
- My Clippings.txt on a Kindle e-reader. Every highlight, note and bookmark made on that device is appended to a plain-text file, including books you sideloaded or sent to your Kindle yourself. The Kindle apps for phones, tablets and computers don't create this file.
Method 1: Copy from the Kindle notebook in a browser
- Go to read.amazon.com/notebook (or your store's version, such as read.amazon.co.uk/notebook) and sign in with your Amazon account.
- Pick a book from the list on the left. Its highlights and notes appear on the right.
- Select the text you want and copy it into your notes app or document.
Good for: grabbing a few passages from one book. Limits: one book at a time and copying by hand; books you didn't get from Amazon aren't listed.
Method 2: Export a book's notebook from the Kindle app
The Kindle app for iPhone, iPad and Android can export the notebook of a single book. Open the book, open its notebook (the list of your highlights and notes), and choose the export option. Kindle lets you pick a citation style and then shares the export, typically by email, as a file you can open in a browser.
Good for: a tidy copy of one book's highlights. Limits: one book per export, Amazon books only, and the publisher's export limit applies. Menu names change between app versions, so look for “Notebook” and “Export”.
Method 3: Copy My Clippings.txt from a Kindle e-reader
Connect your Kindle e-reader to a computer with its USB cable, open the Kindle drive, then the documents folder, and copy My Clippings.txt. It contains every highlight and note made on that device, in every book, in one file. Our My Clippings.txt guide walks through it step by step, including what the file looks like and its quirks.
Good for: sideloaded books and a complete record from one device. Limits: only highlights made on that e-reader; edited highlights appear twice and deleted ones stay in the file.
Method 4: Sync everything into Quotabl
Exporting is only half of it: a file of highlights you never open again doesn't help you remember anything. Quotabl imports your highlights and then brings them back to you.
- Install Quotabl on your iPhone or Android phone and tap Connect my Kindle.
- Sign in on Amazon's own page inside the app (Quotabl never sees your password). Quotabl picks your Amazon store from your region; 13 stores are supported, including Amazon.com, .co.uk, .ca, .com.au and .de.
- Quotabl reads your Kindle notebook (book titles, highlights and notes, nothing else) and imports every book, usually in under a minute. Run Kindle sync again any time to bring in new highlights.
- For books that aren't in the notebook, use Import My Clippings.txt in the same app.
From then on, a few highlights come back each day in a two-minute spaced review, on your Home and Lock Screen widget (iPhone) and in reminders at the time you choose. You can search everything, make quote cards, ask Margo what you keep coming back to, and export the whole library as Markdown whenever you like.
Which method should you use?
| Method | All books at once | Sideloaded books | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kindle notebook (browser) | No, one book at a time | No | Yes |
| Kindle app export | No, one book per export | No | Yes |
| My Clippings.txt | Yes, for one e-reader | Yes | Yes, as separate entries |
| Quotabl Kindle sync + Clippings import | Yes | Yes, via My Clippings.txt | Yes, attached to highlights |
Why some highlights are missing
- The book isn't from Amazon. Sideloaded books and personal documents don't show up in the Kindle notebook. Their highlights are in My Clippings.txt on the e-reader you read them on.
- The publisher's export limit. Publishers can cap how much of a book can be exported. Past that limit, Amazon hides or truncates further highlights in the notebook, and a Kindle e-reader writes a clipping-limit notice into My Clippings.txt instead of the text. Your highlights are still in the book itself.
- Not synced yet. Highlights reach your account when the device you made them on syncs. Open the book on that device while connected to the internet, then check again.
Common questions
Where are my Kindle highlights stored?
In two places. For books you got from Amazon, highlights and notes are backed up to your Amazon account and shown in your Kindle notebook (read.amazon.com/notebook in the US). Separately, every Kindle e-reader writes each highlight made on it to a file called My Clippings.txt in its documents folder, including highlights in books you added yourself.
Can I export all my Kindle highlights at once?
Not from Amazon's notebook page, which shows one book at a time. My Clippings.txt holds every highlight made on that e-reader in one file. Quotabl's Kindle sync reads every book in your notebook in one go and imports all the highlights and notes.
Why are some of my highlights missing from the Kindle notebook?
Three common reasons: the book wasn't bought from Amazon (sideloaded books don't appear in the notebook), the publisher's export limit was reached (Amazon then hides or truncates further highlights), or the highlights haven't synced yet from the device where you made them.
Do my notes export too?
Yes. The Kindle notebook shows notes under the highlight they belong to, and My Clippings.txt stores each note as its own entry next to its highlight. Quotabl imports notes from both and attaches each one to its highlight.
Is it safe to sign in to Amazon in another app?
In Quotabl you sign in on Amazon's own sign-in page, shown inside the app, so your password goes to Amazon and Quotabl never sees it. Quotabl then reads only your Kindle notebook: book titles, highlights and notes.