Second ReadHow do you export your Kindle highlights?
15 September 2026
Amazon has no export button and no public API for highlights. There are still four ways to get them out, and which one you want depends on whether you read on a Kindle device, in the app, or in the browser.
The most complete route is your Kindle notebook page at read.amazon.com/notebook, which lists every highlight from every book synced to your account, including books you read years ago on a device you no longer own. There is no download button, so you either copy each book by hand or use a tool that reads the page for you. Readwise does this as a paid service; Second Read does it free, with a Chrome permission scoped to that one Amazon address.
The second route is the My Clippings.txt file, which sits in the documents folder of a Kindle e-reader when you plug it into a computer by USB. It is a plain text file and it is yours outright. The catch is that it only contains highlights made on that physical device, and only since the last time it was cleared.
The third route is the Kindle mobile app, where you can share individual highlights one at a time. It is fine for a quotation and hopeless for a library.
Where is the Kindle notebook page?
The Kindle notebook page is at read.amazon.com/notebook, signed in with the Amazon account you buy books with. It shows your books down the left side and that book's highlights and notes on the right.
Amazon loads one book at a time, so there is no single screen showing everything, and there is no way to select all. The page also only shows books that have synced, which means a highlight made offline on a device that has not connected since will not appear.
If the page is empty and you know you have highlights, check that you are signed in to the right Amazon marketplace. An account on amazon.co.uk does not show its notebook on the .com domain.
Why does Amazon not let you export Kindle highlights?
Amazon has never given a public reason, and the practical answer is that highlights are one of the few things keeping a library inside the Kindle ecosystem. An export button would make it materially easier to leave.
There is also a genuine rights argument. Your highlights contain verbatim copyrighted text from books you licensed rather than bought, and a bulk export is, in the plainest reading, a partial copy of the book. The clippings file on a device you own sidesteps that because Amazon never handles it.
Whatever the reason, the effect is the same: the notebook page is the only complete copy, it exists only in your own signed-in browser, and anything that gets your highlights out has to read that page.
Is it safe to use a tool that reads your Kindle notebook page?
A tool that reads your Kindle notebook page is safe if it only ever touches that one page, and is not safe if it wants your Amazon account. Anything asking you to type your Amazon password into it should be refused outright; that password is your payment details and your order history as well as your books.
A browser extension does not need your password, because your browser is already signed in. What it needs is permission to read read.amazon.com, which Chrome asks you for explicitly and shows in the extension's permission list. Check that the permission names that one address and not "all your data on all websites", which is the difference between reading your notebook and reading your banking.
Second Read asks for read.amazon.com and nothing else, reads only the notebook page, and keeps the highlights in your own library. The permission can be revoked from Chrome's extension settings at any time without uninstalling anything.
Do exported Kindle highlights keep the date you highlighted them?
Usually not, and this catches people out. The notebook page at read.amazon.com shows the book, the highlight, the location, and the colour, but no date. Anything reading that page therefore cannot know when you made a given highlight.
The My Clippings.txt file is the exception: every entry in it carries a full date and time. If the chronology of your reading matters to you, that file is the only faithful record, and it is worth copying off your Kindle before it gets cleared.
The practical consequence is that imported highlights arrive dated by the import rather than by the reading, so anything that sorts or resurfaces by date treats a book you read in 2019 as new. It is a limitation of the source, not of the tool.
What is the My Clippings file and where do you find it?
My Clippings.txt is a plain text log written by Kindle e-readers, holding every highlight, note, and bookmark you make on that device, each with the book title, author, location, and timestamp. You find it by connecting the Kindle to a computer with a USB cable and opening the documents folder on the drive that appears.
Copy it before you do anything else with it. The file is cleared when the device is reset, and Amazon does not keep a backup of it.
It has real gaps: it does not include highlights made in the mobile app or the Cloud Reader, it does not include anything from before the last reset, and its format is loose enough that parsers regularly mangle entries with unusual characters in the title. Treat it as a valuable partial record rather than a complete one.