I have been working on a project that has long sat on my list. I am finally getting started on it.
Over several hours, I downloaded all of the highlights and notes from my Kindle library into DEVONthink as OCRed PDFs. I now maintain three databases:
- All highlights and notes from my digital books
- All other research materials: PDFs, webpages, excerpts, and related documents
- An index of all prior writing and presentations
My task now is to classify and cross-link this material by topic. This will be an incremental and lengthy process. I suspect DEVONthink’s classifying function or its AI agent could assist with this work, but I have not yet determined how to connect my AI accounts to DT.
Nevertheless, once complete, I will have an integrated repository of information to inform future writing and presentations. Even in its incomplete state, this resource is invaluable. Previously, this information resided in Kindle, Amazon, and scattered iCloud folders: fragmented and therefore far less useful than it might have been.
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Very cool. Could you please elaborate on how you exported your highlights from Kindle?
You might have mentioned this in a different post, but do you happen to know if DEVONthink can access Apple Books highlights without an external tool? I did a quick look at their support site, but didn’t see it.
Certainly. You need to log in to your account, then go to: \https://read.amazon.com/notebook. You will be taken to a page with all of your Kindle books on the left. Click on one, and then you’ll see your highlights and notes on the right.
Then Print/Save as PDF
I added all the PDFs to DEVONthink for several reasons, but one of them is that DT automatically OCRs the PDFs when imported. This feature allows me to search across all the highlights and notes from my books. Additionally, I can create Smart Groups in DT for specific topics.
I hope this helps.
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I don’t use Apple Books so I have not tried to export highlights. Perhaps someone else knows the answer. Sorry I’m not more helpful.
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Like Barrett pointed it out, you can get them on your Amazon account. Also, some software like Readwise can automatically get them for you. There is even an Obsidian plugin that imports them automatically in Obsidian.
You can also scan into Apple Notes the text on the Kindle’s screen using your iPhone camera. That’s what I do.
