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Guide
Kindle highlights: how to see them, export them, and actually use them
You highlight on Kindle because a line deserved keeping. Then Amazon keeps it — in a notebook view you rarely open, on servers you don't control, disconnected from the rest of your library. Years of underlining, effectively write-only.
This guide covers where your Kindle highlights live, every way to get them out, how to silence the "Popular Highlights" other readers left behind — and how to end up with your entire Kindle library and every note attached to its book, on a shelf you own.
Where to find your Kindle highlights
On the web: read.amazon.com/notebook
Amazon's Kindle Notebook shows every highlight and note from every book you've read, grouped by book, in any browser. This is the fastest way to browse everything you've ever underlined — most Kindle owners don't know it exists.
On your Kindle e-reader
Inside any book, tap the top of the screen → Go To → Notes to see that book's highlights. Your device also keeps a "My Clippings.txt" file with every highlight, visible when you plug the Kindle into a computer over USB.
In the Kindle app
Open a book and tap the notebook icon to see its highlights and notes. The app shows one book at a time — fine for revisiting a single title, tedious for reviewing a library.
How to export Kindle highlights
Viewing is fine; owning is better. Three ways out of Amazon's notebook, from most manual to most automatic:
Per-book export from the Kindle app
Open the book's notebook and use the share/export button to email yourself the highlights. Works, but it's one email per book, formatted for reading rather than reuse.
The My Clippings.txt file
Plug your Kindle into a computer and copy My Clippings.txt — every highlight ever made on the device, in one raw text file. Complete, but unstructured and full of duplicates.
Sync through Readwise
Readwise connects to your Amazon account once and continuously pulls every highlight from every book — no cables, no per-book emails, always up to date. This is the route serious highlighters use, and it's the one that unlocks the next section.
The destination
Put your highlights on your own shelf
Exporting highlights into a text file just moves the graveyard. What you actually want is your highlights with their books — open a title, see what it gave you. That's the flow Better Bookshelf was built around: connect your Kindle to Readwise once, connect Readwise to Better Bookshelf, and your entire Kindle library imports automatically with every note and highlight attached to the right book. No catalog app on the market does this.
- Your entire Kindle library imports automatically — every book, not a hand-picked few
- Every highlight and note attaches to its book, browsable on that book's page
- New highlights keep flowing in as you read — sync once, organized forever
- Favorite the passages you love, filter across books, and search inside your highlights
- Kindle books sit alongside your physical shelves and Audible library — one catalog for everything you own
- It's all stored locally on your phone and backed up to your own Google Drive — your highlights, actually yours
It's free to try with your first 50 books — no sign-up, no ads. Scan the QR code above or grab it from the store, connect Readwise, and watch your reading life assemble itself.
Bonus: turning off Popular Highlights
Those dotted underlines marking what "1,247 readers highlighted" are Amazon's crowd annotations, not yours — and for many readers they're noise. To turn them off on a Kindle e-reader, open Settings → Reading Options and switch off Popular Highlights. In the Kindle app, the same toggle lives under More → Settings. Exact menu names shift a little between device generations, but it's always in Reading Options.
With the crowd quieted, the highlights in your books are the ones you chose — which is exactly what makes them worth collecting.
Frequently asked questions
How do I see all my Kindle highlights in one place?
Go to read.amazon.com/notebook and sign in with your Amazon account — every highlight and note from every Kindle book, grouped by book. To get them somewhere more useful than Amazon's website, sync them through Readwise into Better Bookshelf, where each highlight attaches to its book in your own library.
How do I export Kindle highlights?
Three ways: email yourself a single book's highlights from the Kindle app's notebook view; copy the My Clippings.txt file off the device over USB; or connect Readwise, which pulls every highlight automatically and keeps pulling as you read. From Readwise, Better Bookshelf imports your whole Kindle library with the highlights already attached to the right books.
How do I turn off Popular Highlights on Kindle?
Those dotted underlines showing what other readers highlighted can be switched off. On a Kindle e-reader: Settings → Reading Options → turn off Popular Highlights. In the Kindle app: More/Settings → turn off Popular Highlights. Menu names vary slightly by device generation, but the toggle lives in Reading Options on all of them.
Can I keep my Kindle highlights if I leave Amazon's ecosystem?
Yes — but only if you get them out. Highlights live on Amazon's servers by default. Sync them through Readwise into Better Bookshelf and they're stored in a local database on your phone, backed up to your own Google Drive, and exportable to CSV. If your Amazon account vanished tomorrow, your highlights wouldn't.
Your books. Your highlights. One shelf.
Download Better Bookshelf free, connect Readwise, and your whole Kindle library arrives with every note attached. First 50 books free — no subscription, no sign-up, no ads.