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

Rally your classmates and perhaps Apple will heed your call. When advising students on technology aids. exporting highlights and notes from Apple Books has been a top recommendation and the feedback has been uniformly positive. Let's hope Apple restores the feature.

Are you running the version of Books that accompanies iPad OS 16? Your instructions seem to apply to previous versions. If you’re on IPad OS 16, a more detailed set of your instructions would be helpful. I’m on 16.1.1 and despite several attempts, I’ve been unable to make your method work.

I wish I didn't update my ipad!! Luckily I have an older ipad that I have not updated and will not update until they fix this issue! I don't see how they thought that it would be a great feature to remove. I have so many notes for school that I can't use outside the book app to study. Super inconvenient.

It looks like Readwise only works with the earlier version of iOS/iPadOS/books

The method they describe on the website requires you to export the highlights from Apple Books and describes the interface as it existed before 16.1

It’s a shame! I’ve found this issue after I finished a tech book whose notes are to me important to study. It worked perfectly and was one of the reason why I switched out from Kindle.

I need alternative apps or the problem solved very soon

Hi @coreland. this might be very helpful in the short term. But I seem to loose all the highlights when I go to drop them into notes. Is there a maximum number of characters that this process can hadle?

And the multiple hands and gestures required makes it a very cumbersome process. As well, it seems the notes app has to be open in order to swipe to it. I have yet to execute the maneuver sucessfully.

I couldn’t believe this action by Apple to remove the ability export highlights. I have always tried to use Apple apps as I prefer them over others but when basic functionality like this is now nonexistent, I guess all new book purchases will be on Kindle. Hope they change this.

I have been a Mac user since 1987, but for the past few years I have been amazed at Apple’s tendency to make many features of their apps worse rather than better! They try to improve some things but damage others. This is like shooting yourself on the foot!

This highlight retrieval feature was very important to serious readers, leaving it out is like making Apple devices for child play only! Are they trying hard to make people switch to other systems? This is sad!

Thank you very, very much, Vladimir!!! I tried it and to works very well. It is somewhat cumbersome but your method does do the job nicely. The original Apple method told you the date and the chapter of the book, which really helps, but at least this method transcribes the whole highlight.

Hopefully Apple in their process of improving the Apps (Books, Pages, Numbers and Music for instance) has been leaving out some important features that were available in the previous versions... For me sometimes that feels like a downgrade, not an upgrade. I do not understand why they do it!!!

This makes Apple Books virtually useless for recipe books. I need to at least have an external link back to a recipe. I’ve spent a fortune in Apple Books on recipe books. This is not friendly at all.

Wow! Thank you very much.

I was looking for a way to export my notes and this is very helpful. Still waiting for Apple to give us back a way to natively do it, but your work is very much appreciated.

I think for this to work you have to shift/click etc to select all and then drag onto a text file right away. If you do anything intermediate, including clicking another window, it doesn't work. You'll have to click Table of Contents or Bookmarks (on upper left) and then click Highlights again, kind of refreshing the whole operation. Once again you'll get a single shot at selecting all via shift and dragging somewhere. It's finicky but plausible.

This is really a disappointment. And does make ibooks less useful. Even scrolling through highlights and notes the are abreviated.. you cannot see the full notes unless you expand them. ; This should be fixed. Really makes it harder to find your notations in ibooks. So disappointed.

you can't even search your own notes. you have to search the text; know exactly the word combination you highlighted on a standard search rather than scan your notes to find what you are looking for. really bad.

I have gone back to the Kindle an Google books app, both allow exporting the rather extensive notes I take. Unfortunately, I now have a number of books trapped in Apple Books that are no longer useful to me.

This is the kind of rubbish that Google usually pulls.

Regrettable.

Pretty much all ebooks come with DRM, so you need to choose carefully.

Much as I hate Amazon, Kindle does allow export of up to 10% of a book in notes and markings, so not really a problem. I do tend to do a lot of highlighting in non-fiction books...