Extract Highlights and Annotations from Kobo Ebook Reader

Productivity Sauce

Kobo ebook readers are great, but they have one weak spot: there is no easy way to export annotations and highlights. The good news is that Kobo readers run Linux and they store all data (including highlights and annotations) in the KoboReader.sqlite SQLite database inside the hidden .Kobo directory. Better still, you don't have to wrangle the desired data from the database manually: you can use a Python script developed by Alberto Pettarin to do all the hard work for you. Copy the KoboReader.sqlite from your Kbo reader to the local machine, download the script, and make it executable using the chmod +x export_Kobo_notes.py command. To export all highlights and annotations to a text file in the comma-separated format, use the following command:

./export_Kobo_notes.py -f KoboReader.sqlite -o highlights.csv

The script allows you to perform a couple of other actions, too. The ./export_Kobo_notes.py -t -f KoboReader.sqlite command, for example, lists all book titles containing annotations and highlights, while the export_Kobo_notes.py -c -f KoboReader.sqlite -b 'Book Title Goes Here' -o output.csv command saves highlights and annotations from a specified book in a text file.