How to Export Your Kindle Highlights (2026 Guide)
Two real ways to export Kindle highlights in 2026: the My Clippings.txt file over USB and the Kindle Notebook at read.amazon.com.
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There are two real ways to export your Kindle highlights, and most guides only tell you about one. The My Clippings.txt file on the device holds every highlight you have ever made, including books you sideloaded, and copies off over USB in about a minute. The Kindle Notebook at read.amazon.com/notebook shows clean, per-book highlights in your browser, but only for books bought from Amazon. Which one you need depends on where your books came from. Many readers need both.
This guide covers both routes step by step, the app export that emails you a file, the clipping limit that silently truncates exports, and what to do with your highlights once they are out.
How we judge an export route: what it covers (Amazon purchases, sideloaded books, or both), whether your notes come along with the highlights, what format you end up with, and whether the publisher clipping limit applies.
Quick verdict:
- Everything on the device, one file: My Clippings.txt over USB
- Clean per-book copy in the browser: Kindle Notebook
- An emailed file for a single book: the Kindle mobile app
- CSV, Word, or Excel: Clippings.io on top of My Clippings.txt
- Ongoing sync and review: Readwise
- A permanent home for the books themselves: Achriom
Why export at all
Your highlights live inside Amazon’s system, and Amazon has been narrowing the exits. In February 2025 it removed the option to download purchased books over USB. Highlights were not affected, but the direction is clear enough: anything you want to keep long-term is worth copying out while the door is open. A decade of marginalia is one of the most personal records you own. It should exist somewhere you control.
Route 1: My Clippings.txt
Every Kindle e-reader keeps a single plain text file called My Clippings.txt. Each time you highlight a passage, add a note, or set a bookmark, the Kindle appends an entry. It covers every book on the device: Amazon purchases, sideloaded EPUBs, PDFs, and personal documents alike.
To copy it:
- Connect your Kindle to a computer with a USB cable.
- Open the Kindle as a drive and look inside the documents folder.
- Copy My Clippings.txt to your computer. That is the whole export.
The file looks like this:
Piranesi (Susanna Clarke)
- Your Highlight on Location 1226-1228 | Added on Tuesday, March 3, 2026 11:42:10 PM
The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.
==========
Project Hail Mary (Andy Weir)
- Your Note on Location 3410 | Added on Sunday, April 12, 2026 9:15:03 PM
Rocky deserves his own book.
==========Ten equals signs separate entries, and highlights from different books are interleaved in the order you made them, so a long-used Kindle produces a messy file. It is also append-only: deleting a highlight on the device leaves it in the file, and editing one adds a second copy. Treat it as a raw archive, then clean it up with a converter if you want structure.
A Mac gotcha: Kindles released from 2024 onward connect over MTP rather than mounting as a normal drive. Windows handles this in File Explorer, but macOS needs a free MTP tool such as OpenMTP or Android File Transfer before the documents folder becomes visible. Older Kindles mount normally on both.
Best for: sideloaded books, complete history, and readers who want one file they own outright.
Route 2: Kindle Notebook
The second route needs no cable. Go to read.amazon.com/notebook and sign in with your Amazon account. The left sidebar lists every book you have highlighted; click one and its highlights and notes appear in a clean, readable column, already grouped and in book order.
There is no download button. The workflow is select, copy, and paste into wherever your notes live. For a handful of books that is quick. For a hundred it is an afternoon.
The bigger catch: the notebook only shows books purchased from the Kindle store. Sideloaded books and personal documents never appear here, no matter how much you highlighted them. Their highlights exist only in My Clippings.txt on the device.
Best for: Amazon-purchased books, readers who want a tidy per-book copy without touching a cable.
The app export: an emailed file per book
The Kindle app on iOS and Android has a third, smaller door. Open a book, open the notebook icon, and choose the share or export option. The app emails you that book’s highlights and notes as an attachment, with a choice of citation styles on iOS.
It is genuinely convenient for a single book you just finished. It is one book at a time, it requires the email dance for each, and the same purchase-only and clipping-limit rules apply. Use it as a supplement, and use one of the two main routes for a full export.
The clipping limit: why exports come up short
Publishers set a per-book export cap, usually a percentage of the text. Highlight past it and everything still looks fine on the Kindle itself, but the export replaces the passage with a notice that you have reached the clipping limit for the item. This applies to My Clippings.txt, the Notebook page, and the app export equally, and there is no official way around it.
Two things soften the blow. Sideloaded personal documents have no clipping limit at all. And the limit bites heaviest on books you highlighted very heavily, so an export that looks complete for most of your library may still be truncated for your two or three most-marked books. Spot-check those before you assume the export got everything.
Converters and sync tools
Raw text is an archive, but sometimes you want structure.
Clippings.io takes an uploaded My Clippings.txt and turns it into searchable highlights organized by book, with export to CSV, Word, Excel, and Evernote. The basics are free, and it handles the dedupe problem the append-only file creates. This is the shortest path from Kindle to spreadsheet.
Readwise is the ongoing option: it syncs your Kindle highlights continuously and resurfaces a few each day for review. It is a paid subscription after the trial, aimed at people who want to revisit highlights rather than simply store them.
Achriom: where the books themselves go
Exporting highlights solves half the problem. The passages are safe, but the record of your reading life still lives wherever Amazon keeps it. Achriom is the other half: one private library for your books alongside your films, TV shows, albums, and anime, with an AI librarian that reads across the whole collection.
The highlights you just exported are a map of what you actually cared about in each book. The librarian works at that level. Ask what your five-star novels have in common, or which film in your library rhymes with the book you underlined half of, and it answers from your own shelves. Bring your reading history in from Goodreads in a couple of clicks, and export everything back out whenever you want. The exit door you just used on Kindle is a standard feature here.
You just spent an evening getting your own words out of a locked drawer. Put the library itself somewhere that opens. Achriom keeps your books next to your films, TV, albums, and anime, with an AI librarian that connects them, and full export back out any time. Free to start, no card.
Import your library →Quick comparison
| Route | Sideloaded books | Notes included | Format | Clipping limit | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| My Clippings.txt | Yes | Yes | Plain text, one file | Applies to store books | Free |
| Kindle Notebook | No | Yes | Copy and paste per book | Applies | Free |
| Kindle app export | No | Yes | Emailed file per book | Applies | Free |
| Clippings.io | Yes (via the txt file) | Yes | CSV, Word, Excel | Inherits the file’s | Free / paid extras |
| Readwise | Partial | Yes | Continuous sync | Applies | Paid subscription |
| Achriom | n/a (library, ratings, export) | n/a | CSV export of your library | n/a | Free / $9.99 mo |
Which route should you use?
Use My Clippings.txt if: you sideload books, you want your complete history in one shot, or you simply want a file that is yours. This is the route most guides skip, and it is the more complete one.
Use Kindle Notebook if: your library is all Amazon purchases and you want clean, per-book text without a cable. Fastest for a few books, tedious for many.
Use the app export if: you want one book’s highlights emailed to you right after finishing it.
Use Clippings.io if: you want the txt file turned into a spreadsheet or organized documents.
Use Readwise if: you want highlights synced continuously and resurfaced for review, and the subscription is worth that to you.
Use Achriom if: you want the books those highlights came from in a library that connects your reading to everything else you watch and listen to, and that will never make you write a guide like this to leave.
The honest answer
Do both routes once. Copy My Clippings.txt for the complete archive, then use the Notebook page for clean text on the books that matter most. Check your most-highlighted books against the clipping limit, run the file through Clippings.io if you want structure, and keep the raw txt somewhere safe regardless. It costs fifteen minutes and ends with your marginalia in your own hands.
Then decide where your reading life lives going forward. If the answer is a library you can always walk out of, Achriom is built that way on purpose, and your books get to sit next to your films and albums for the first time. If you are still choosing an app, the book discovery apps comparison and StoryGraph vs Goodreads cover the field.
Common questions
Where is the My Clippings.txt file?
In the documents folder at the top level of your Kindle when it is connected to a computer over USB. It is plain text and opens in any editor. On 2024-and-newer Kindles, Mac users need an MTP tool like OpenMTP to see the folder.
Does the Kindle Notebook show sideloaded books?
No. The notebook at read.amazon.com/notebook covers Kindle store purchases only. Highlights from sideloaded EPUBs, PDFs, and personal documents live solely in My Clippings.txt, which is why the USB route matters.
Why are some highlights replaced with a clipping limit message?
Publishers cap how much of each book can be exported, usually as a percentage of the text. Past the cap, highlights display fine on the device but export as a limit notice instead of the passage. Sideloaded documents have no cap.
Can I get my highlights into a spreadsheet?
Amazon offers no CSV export. Copy My Clippings.txt off the device and run it through Clippings.io, which organizes the file by book and exports CSV, Word, and Excel.
Do deleted highlights disappear from My Clippings.txt?
No. The file is append-only. Deletions stay, and edits create duplicates. Converter tools handle the dedupe, and the upside is that nothing you ever highlighted is truly gone.
Can I import my Kindle highlights into Achriom?
Achriom imports your reading library rather than raw highlight files: bring your books in from Goodreads or add them by search, then rate, shelve, and talk them through with the librarian. Keep the exported highlights file alongside; the library gives the AI the context of what you have read, and everything in it exports back out as CSV whenever you want.