How to export your Kindle highlights
And what Refrain does with them once they're out. Updated September 9, 2026.
Your Kindle highlights live in two places, and neither is convenient. This page explains both, how to get at them, and, honestly, what Refrain does and doesn't do with them.
Where your highlights actually are
- Amazon's notebook
- Every highlight from a book you bought from Amazon is synced to your account and shown at read.amazon.com/notebook. It's a web page, one book at a time, with no download button.
- My Clippings.txt
- A plain text file on the Kindle itself, in its documents folder. It holds every highlight and note the device ever recorded, including books you sideloaded, which never reach Amazon's notebook. It also carries the dates Amazon's notebook leaves out.
Route 1: let Refrain read the notebook for you
In Refrain's Library tab, choose Sync from Amazon. Amazon's own sign-in page opens inside the app; you sign in there, and your password goes only to Amazon. Refrain then reads your notebook the way your browser would and brings every book, highlight, note, and cover across. Re-syncing later picks up only what's new.
This is the route for most people: no cable, no file, and it works from an iPhone. It covers books bought from Amazon.
Route 2: copy My Clippings.txt
- Plug the Kindle into a computer with its USB cable and wake it.
- On Windows, the Kindle appears as a drive; open its documents folder and copy My Clippings.txt. On a Mac, recent Kindle models don't appear as a drive on their own, which is the main reason Route 1 exists.
- Get the file onto the device running Refrain: AirDrop, iCloud Drive, or the Files app on iPhone and iPad; anywhere at all on a Mac.
- In Refrain, Library tab, tap + and Import My Clippings.txt. On a Mac, File → Import Clippings… (⌘O).
Use this route for sideloaded books, personal documents, older Kindles, or whenever you want the dates. You can use both routes on the same library: Refrain recognizes the same passage from either source and keeps one copy, and a clippings import quietly fills in the dates Amazon's notebook doesn't provide.
What Refrain does with them
- Imports all of them, free. No cap on books or passages, and nothing truncated. Import and your whole library are free forever; they're your highlights.
- Keeps them yours. There is no Refrain account and no Refrain server. The library lives on your devices and syncs between them through your own iCloud.
- Brings them back. A few passages return each day. That's the reason the app exists; import is plumbing.
- Finds what runs between them, on your device, if you unlock the discovery layer: threads across books, rhymes, search by meaning, and a daily echo from the wider canon.
Getting text out of Refrain
Refrain is not an export tool, and it's better to hear that here than after a download.
- One passage at a time, yes. Any passage can be copied, copied with its citation (the passage, then the book and author), shared to any app through the share sheet, or dragged out of Refrain on iPad and Mac. What lands in Notes, Mail, or Obsidian is quotable as-is.
- All at once, no. Refrain 1.0 has no bulk export to Markdown, CSV, or a notes app, and no Notion, Obsidian, or Roam integration.
- You never lose the originals. Amazon's notebook keeps your highlights regardless, and My Clippings.txt is already the complete, portable, plain-text export of everything your Kindle recorded. Keep a copy; it's the best backup there is.
Try it on a sample first
If you'd rather see the import path before touching your own account, there's a public-domain sample library in the exact shape of a My Clippings.txt file. It imports in a minute.
