Highlights from the Kindle

If you read on a Kindle and highlight as you go, you can take the highlights into Obsidian as notes – just like the notes made with F4 while reading in Fraktur-Korrektor (see Usage). Following Niklas Luhmann’s card index: one highlight per note, each with its source.

How it works

1. Connect the Kindle to the computer with the USB cable.
2. In the library, below the list of books, click Kindle highlights to Obsidian …. If the Kindle appears as a drive, the program has already found the file; otherwise choose it with Choose file … (where it comes from is explained in the next section).
3. Choose the book. The ones read most recently are at the top, each with the number of highlights and notes of your own.
4. Check the folder in your Obsidian vault the notes on this book go into. The program suggests one: if a book with the same title is in your library and already has a notes folder, that one – so the notes from the Kindle and from Fraktur-Korrektor sit together. Otherwise a new folder named after the book, next to the notes folder of the book you opened last. A new last folder is created.
5. Create notes. The window says how many there are and shows the folder if you like.

You can also point to the file with Open …: the program recognises it and takes you to the same window.

The file My Clippings.txt

The Kindle writes all highlights, notes and bookmarks into a single file: My Clippings.txt in the documents folder.

• Older Kindles appear on the computer as a drive, like a USB stick. The program then finds the file by itself.
• Kindles from 2024 on (such as the 12th-generation Paperwhite, the Colorsoft and the Scribe) connect as a media device. In Windows the Kindle appears in Explorer as a device: open the documents folder there, drag My Clippings.txt to the desktop and choose that copy. On a Mac you need an extra program, for instance Amazon’s Send to Kindle app for Mac; its menu Tools → USB File Manager opens the files on the Kindle (as of September 2026).
• Highlights made in the Kindle app on a phone or tablet are not in this file, only those made on the device.

What the notes contain

Every highlight becomes a note, numbered consecutively like the notes from F4, for example 12 Page 57.md:

**Note**

Cf. Stumpp, p. 40

---

> The colonists moved east. The way was long.

Page 57, Location 180–183, [[0 Source|The Journey to Russia]]

• Page and location. The page is only there if the e-book carries the page numbers of the printed edition; many do not. The location is the Kindle’s own count and finds the place in the e-book again.
• Your own notes from the Kindle go on top as the remark above the quotation they belong to. A note without a highlight becomes a note without a quotation.
• Extended highlights. If you drag a highlight longer on the Kindle, it adds a new entry and leaves the old one in place. The program takes only the longer version.
• The clipping limit. Some publishers limit how much of a book can be highlighted. Once the limit is reached, the Kindle stores only a notice instead of the text. The program says how many highlights are affected.
• The source note. With the first note the program creates the file 0 Source.md in the folder, with title, author and the entry Kindle edition. Enter the citation there as Zotero gives it – every note links to it with a click. A source note that is already there stays as it is.

After reading on

Simply read the file in again. Highlights that are already notes in the folder are skipped – the program recognises them by the quotation and the place (page, location). New notes get the next numbers. If you later wrote a note on the Kindle to a highlight that was already taken over, it is added as a note of its own with the same place; the existing note is left unchanged. If you changed the quotation or the source line in a note by hand, the program no longer recognises it and creates the highlight again.

The program changes nothing on the Kindle and never overwrites a note.