Exporting highlights from Books app no longer works on iOS 16 [bug report]

You can still export multiple highlights, but it takes some more work.

Tap-hold the first highlight, then tap the other highlights and they will be added to your selection. Finally swipe to the Notes app or any other that accepts dragged items, and drop your selection.

See demo here: https://cloud.apparatus.be/oOqMXl

An export function or automation via Shortcuts would of course be much easier, but for now this will have to do.

There is a way to export highlights, if you can get a spare older iPad running iPadOS 15. The overall idea is, sync the newer iPad Books to iCloud Drive, then sync the older iPad. From the old iPad you can email your notes out.

Here's the process, step by step:

1. Make sure the old iPad isn't syncing.

On the older iPad, running iPadOS 15:

Settings -> Books -> Syncing -> iCloud Drive -> Off

2. Make a full back up of your newer iPad and Library in case there are any problems in the sync process.

Be careful! You want to make sure the new iPad's books and highlights get copied to the old iPad, not the other way around! It's probably safest if the iPadOS 15 iPad starts with an empty Books Library, maybe even has just had a factory reset.

3. Turn on syncing on the new iPad, running iPadOS 16:

Settings -> Books -> Syncing -> iCloud Drive -> On

Wait until it starts showing progress on uploading your books and PDFs. I think it took a few minutes for me to see it start.

Then wait till it's says it's finished. I think it took around 10-15 minutes.

4. Now that the new iPad has finished uploading all your Library, turn on syncing on the old iPadOS:

Settings -> Books -> Syncing -> iCloud Drive -> On

5. Wait for the old iPad to finish syncing.

It will show progress as it goes, and it will take a while to fully sync.

For me, 100 books took about 20-30 minutes.

6. Now export your books from the older iPadOS:

while reading a book:

table of contents icon -> Notes -> Share icon -> Edit Notes -> Select All -> Share -> Mail

Workaround – use desktop application. Your books and highlights are synced via iCloud, so you can have them on your mac.

There you open Books app, open your book and tap on "Show highlights and notes" (left top corner).

Then you select all of them:

1. hold Shift and click on the first
2. scroll down and hold Shift again and click on the last

They are highlighted with grey now. Now you can to drag them and drop to you favorite text editor.

I hope this helps.

Here's another workaround I've used for exporting highlights and notes from Apple's latest Books app. Annoying but effective.

1) In Books on an iPad, highlight and make notes in your book as usual.

2) Enter Split View and select the Notes app.

3) In the Books section of the Split View, select Highlights.

4) Touch the first highlight and hold until the image brightens.

5) While continuing to hold the highlight, slide it over to the Notes view until a green circle appears with a white plus-sign in it.

6) While continuing to hold the highlight, touch each other highlight and note in the Books app, one at a time. The plus symbol in the green circle will become a number, showing the total highlights and notes touched.

7) Continue the process by scrolling down in the Books app until all highlights have been moved into the Notes page, then lift your finger. All designated text should then appear in the Notes screen section.

The next step is to eliminate the language "Excerpt from. . . may be protected by copyright." This can be done in Word on a Mac, but not in Pages, and not on an iPad.

8) In the Notes app on a Mac, select all of the contents just copied to Notes on your iPad and paste it into a new Word document.

9) In Word, select the first instance of the text "Excerpt from. . . may be protected by copyright."

10) Using the Find Replace, paste the Excerpt into the Find box and a symbol of your choice—such as the ^P paragraph mark—and replace all.

11) Then do another Find Replace to eliminate the symbol you just inserted.

Those eleven steps should give you what you used to be able to do with a single step in the previous version of Books.

I created a tool to export Apple Books highlights. It works as long as you have access to the database files. So it's easiest to use on a Mac. https://oliwang.github.io/BooknoteWorthy/?source=applediscussions

For anyone also using macOS, I've found that using Readwise is the easiest way to sync all highlights. You can then use them directly in Readwise or sync automatically with other apps like Obsidian etc.

Link: Readwise

Good news is, we have a fantasitc tool Klib, which could import Apple Books's highlights with one click. https://klib.me

Book Fusion is another option. It claims to export all highlights. Also: "We support all major eBook formats, like PDF, MOBI, and EPUB, among others." So perhaps this is a one-stop solution . I tried Book Fusion briefly but had problems with the built-in reader (which you don't have to use evidently). Klib appears to be quite useful, especially if you're a Mac user, and for now at least this will be my solution. Gets highlights out of EPUB but not PDF (for the latter, use Zotero, which I recommend in any case).

Interesting -- I can't surface the specified UI when I'm in iBooks on the iPad (or any of the other Apple book platforms) (per https://help.readwise.io/article/35-how-do-i-import-apple-books-highlights-from-my-iphoneipad)

step 3: Select the overview screen (three horizontal lines, top left)

Isn't available on iOS 16.1 using any method I've tried-- overview screen selection comes up in the bottom right now, with the details shown

if there's something I'm unaware of I'd be (very) happy to discover it.

Just for clarity: I'm (& I think most of the people on this thread) are trying to export their own notes from the apple books app to a "text" document that they can access in other apps -- as noted above, the "easiest" way I've found is to individually copy notes into a text document on me mac and then run a grep script to strip them down to a manageable format.

Initial selection

Details:

Here is the link for Apple Books feature requests. I encourage everyone to submit a feature request to bring back notes export. Be polite (I used to work at Apple and it does make a difference). Thanks everyone, let's get this feature back.

Feedback - Books for iOS and iPadOS - Apple

Late iOS16 adopter and just ran into this extremely poor "betterment" to Books. I HATE when developers remove useful features for no good reason. After reading all these comments I've settled on using Google Play Books and so far like the feature of setting up Google Drive to auto sync notes. Just make sure to turn on the feature first (had to Google that one to figure it out). Stupid Apple...this is disappointing.

It looks like you can export notes on the macOS books app again.

• Open the Book
• Open the "Highlights and notes" menu at the top
• Select the first note
• Scroll to the last note
• SHIFT + Click the last note
• Now all notes should be selected
• Click "Share" and use email

Can't recall if I mentioned this but Bluefire Reader is pretty good at exporting highlights, and as I recall works for EPUB and PDF. It's free.

What was Apple thinking? This latest update to Books is a major mistake.. I can get tap-and-hold with shift to select multiple highlights in Books on the Mac but not on the iPad. And on the Mac I find no way to export or copy the highlights. In addition, the menu options are inconveniently placed and awkward to use. I have long been recommending Books to students as a convenient way to highlight the important parts of assigned reading and then to save those highlights for review and study. After this latest so-called improvement to the app, I will no longer make that recommendation. I will continue to recommend GoodReader, which is an excellent alternative but, unfortunately, only works with PDF text. Luckily, many assigned texts and academic papers are available in PDF. The latest version of Books for IOS and IPadOS 16 should immediately be recalled with apologies and a rethought version issued in its place.

For iBooks EXPORT ALL notes feature: Ditto both the need for this feature to be reinstated and the urgent nature of this need!

I'm a student in school. Using books, annotating, and exporting ALL notes at once is a critical part of my study workflow. I do this for every class, every book, every day!

The iOS Book app update has many faults, but not having an export ALL notes is the fault that breaks the experience!! Books is useless to me without the EXPORT ALL feature. Please fix urgently and push out in next patch!!