Maybe the reason Kobo blocked the intergration is that Kobo itself has come up with KOBONOTES. It's an app that gathers all your highlights from each book. I copy & paste this pdf into a Word doc to condense it before printing. Each highlight is numbered. I was on UA-cam trying to find a video of how to use KOBONOTES. I haven't found any yet. I hope someone (maybe Maneetpaul?) will produce a video soon so this facility becomes known. BTW, it is not only non-fiction readers who like highlighting text. I highlight a clever turn of phrase and other literary features that impress me.
It does work now! :D. Maybe this is useful for some people: I live in two countries, and in both of them a lot of ebooks are not available. With kobo, you don't need an address or anything similar.
You can sync kobo highlights and notes to Readwise just by connecting the kobo to your computer . Admittedly one extra step but it sure beats handing over my money to bezos
Yes you're absolutely right. I'm glad it's possible, and I do imagine they will eventually find a way to work with Kobo to do it without needing to plug in.
with this approach will it capture the location and original highlight associated with the note on kobo? does it also capture highlights you make on library books (eg overdrive)?
I love my Kobo, and the integration would’ve been such an amazing implementation to my e-reading! I love to annotate as I read and look back at my thoughts, so sad they didn’t go through with this integration ☹️
That’s super weird they would block this, so many people would benefit from the update to work with Readwise. Honestly both Kindle and Kobo have issues that seem like easy fixes. Here in Canada, Kobo works with our library systems to allow you to borrow books, but Kindle does not because of the proprietary format and licensing fees, so if you want to borrow eBooks from the library here, you have to get a Kobo or use your other non eInk devices, which bleh.
I had a kindle 3rd generation in a drawer for years. This year I started using again for my academic reading but died within a week. Purchase Kobo libra and it was a bit of work at the begining making it work for me. I really need my highlights and notes for my academic research and the easiest way to retrieve that is to plug Kobo to the computer and an annotation file will be there, within a folder. You can open it with a text editor but will have a lot of code around it, not easy to read. But if you open it with a Code editor, like Brackets, or copy past within Obsidian, my favourite note software, the highlights will be in a different color, very easy to read. Good enough for me.
I'm a Kindle reader but nonetheless I love open ecosystems and the opportunity to integrate services together, so it's always a bummer to see services trying to shut stuff like this down 😕
Kobo Libra 2 should have a nice firmware update. 1) You can pinch to zoom to increase/decrease font size. I installed this firmware yesterday 2) Swipe down to swap between last 3 used books. I haven't confirmed this yet, the firmware is taking long to download. Edit: both firmwares are confirmed and they're nice.
If we don't have an official announcement yet they are probably only having technical issues about it. Honestly I don't even knew what Readwise is but if is basically a better highlight/notes system I don't feel I'm missing much as don't use that feature even in the Kindle where is kinda encouraged since you can see what other people highlighted if you have that setting on. Personally I think the notice that Kindle is going to update their software to also be able to read epubs is a lot more game changing as I just jumped to the Kobo ship after years of feeling limited in the Kindle ecosystem.
Readwise is a central part of my workflow when it comes to taking notes. It all depends on how many notes you take. If it's not something you do, then it's not a big deal at all. I agree that EPUB support is huge. I'll be making a video about this soon!
I am a Kobo reader, reading mostly non fiction books. I am using KOReader and it works perfectly with Readwise, although I'm using Joplin for my notes, which also works very fine for me.
I've tried KOReader, and it works. But it's WAY too shady for me. I don't like the idea of hacking my Kobo to get this one feature. I wish they would just support it natively!
@@Maneetpaul Jailbreaking a Kindle may be a hack but installing KOReader definitely is not! Just see the Kobo device as an eReader with an open linux OS on it, where you can install whatever runs on it.
Also Plato is really polished and nice OS too. What I do is use Koreader SSH server and mount it as an indexed network drive (like dropbox) to easily sync/load epubs from libgen over the network And then use Plato to read them And occasionally use the stock software for the Overdrive integration which is nice. Oh and it has upgradable SD card so it runs/load pages faster and has 128GB :) Sure, its a bit of work but it’s all open source Linux based software! It’s the best.
Hey, since you're a non-fiction reader, what's your opinion about other larger-screened devices? I read fiction on a Kobo Libra 2, but non fiction on a Boox 10" device. I'm not trying to push Onyx Boox devices here, there are a lot of big-screened devices, with Android or other proprietary OS's, I'm just curious because I can't imagine reading non-fiction on a regular 6"/7" Kobo or Kindle, and I'd like to understand what considerations make you choose differently than I'd do
I have returned several Kobos due to this. Have emailed them an tweeted at them. They do not care and do not listen. I gave up on Kobo and Amazon will continue to get my money.
readwise is a paid service, that's why there are always problems... I use kindle and I use my notes with other tools, already the books are expensive in digital format to be paying extra services just for the notes
Yeah, it's paid. I think it's worth the money though. It makes my life 100x easier. Doing the same thing with free / other tools would take much longer.
I think if you are looking for good out of the box experience and are interested in amazon ecosystem then kindle is best ereader on the market, but if you don't mind tinkering to get the koreader working then kobo is unbeatable as you will get the best possible ereader experience you can get. I got my kobo recently and I was very disappointed coming from a older kindle model with its features, interface and speed, but once I got koreader to work I knew I will probably never buy a kindle again.
Very true! It all depends on how much you're willing to tinker and play around with the software! KOReader is something I need to experiment with more. What are your favorite features of it?
@@Maneetpaul And I read about 50% nonfiction, yet I never take notes! Instead I sometimes highlight things I want to be able to go back and refresh later. I have never been a note-taker, I just don't know what I would write lol. I realize it's a me thing.
Recently I have had problems changing letter size on my Kobo Forma by "pinching" the screen, it's just too slow. Even the normal method through the menu is slow, do you have any idea what is going on? It's extremely annoying
My biggest problem with Kobo is that it doesnt sync with Google drive, I think Kobo should understand that they can't act like apple to restrict as Amazon is clearly better choice.
Hello, it seems like Kobo will bring the integration back. This is what Readwise told me about this issue: “Hey Camilo, thanks so much for reporting this issue! We just heard from the Kobo team and it turns out that they intentionally disabled our integration :confused: The good news is that they claim they're working on getting us a replacement API that we can use to reinstate this integration, but until this happens, the only way to sync your Kobo highlights with Readwise is using the manual method (with the October app). Sorry about that! We'll keep you posted when the automatic integration is back up and running! Have a great weekend! “
Sounds like you aren't alone. For me, as I read a lot of comics, I find myself limited by e-book platforms not allowing print-replica e-books to be annotated, so I have a dedicated book annotation notebook in Evernote, and create notes for each book that contain annotations (with page references) for each book. (Edit: The notebook is named 'Book annotations'!)
@@jessicamou Thanks! It's flexible too! I could read a physical book (that I'd borrow from a public library) and have my phone or laptop beside me, or I could open a desktop reading app and an individual Evernote window in split-screen on my laptop (or tablet with an external keyboard) The way I annotate is that I use one note for each book, bullet lists for each chapter (if the book has chapters), then points for each page, prefixed with 🔖 emoji if I bookmarked the page in the reading app I use. Each page point would then have my actual notes one level lower. For some books, I'd have tags in square brackets, sometimes highlighted if that's important enough to me, so for example, in my current read, I have an [Illustration] tag highlighted in blue for illustrations that I like, and another tag for ideas I came up while reading that could work for a fanfiction I'm writing of that book series.
Wonder why they’d shut it down? Wouldn’t they want the free publicity and marketing that came from the integration? I don’t use the Kobo notes. It takes too long to type in my thoughts. I prefer to highlight a passage and then when I’m on computer I’ll look up the passages on my kobo and type in more extensive thoughts into a word or notepad document. Also when reading something that catches my mind I’ll not type any notes on the kobo because I’ve closed my eyes and am following the thoughts through my head. I’ll lose 15 to 20 minutes just sitting or lying there with my eyes closed while I think about what I just read and the ramifications. Some folks think I’m sleeping (which, to be fair, has happened - the sleeping- more than once :).
I wonder the same thing. They're missing out on free marketing and support! I like your method of thinking about your highlights deeply before capturing them. I do that too. I haven't fallen asleep yet, but I've come close 😅
@@Maneetpaul I like to tell myself I can fall asleep because I've trained myself to nap so I'll be rested for the vigorous physical activity when we arrive on site. In reality, it's much more likely I can fall asleep because I'm getting old. :)
I just read an non fiction book on my Kobo for the first time and about halfway in I synced my kobo with readwise and it worked without any issues. However, after finishing the book and wanting to update the highlights Readwise can't detect any changes which is a huge downer. Not sure what that's about but I shot them an e-mail and I'm waiting for a response. If I'd known exporting highlights from e-readers was a thing, that I would come to rely on it and that Kobo is pretty crap at it then I'd most likely had gone with a different brand to being with.
Maybe the reason Kobo blocked the intergration is that Kobo itself has come up with KOBONOTES. It's an app that gathers all your highlights from each book. I copy & paste this pdf into a Word doc to condense it before printing. Each highlight is numbered.
I was on UA-cam trying to find a video of how to use KOBONOTES. I haven't found any yet.
I hope someone (maybe Maneetpaul?) will produce a video soon so this facility becomes known.
BTW, it is not only non-fiction readers who like highlighting text. I highlight a clever turn of phrase and other literary features that impress me.
It does work now! :D. Maybe this is useful for some people: I live in two countries, and in both of them a lot of ebooks are not available. With kobo, you don't need an address or anything similar.
You can sync kobo highlights and notes to Readwise just by connecting the kobo to your computer . Admittedly one extra step but it sure beats handing over my money to bezos
Yes you're absolutely right. I'm glad it's possible, and I do imagine they will eventually find a way to work with Kobo to do it without needing to plug in.
with this approach will it capture the location and original highlight associated with the note on kobo? does it also capture highlights you make on library books (eg overdrive)?
I love my Kobo, and the integration would’ve been such an amazing implementation to my e-reading! I love to annotate as I read and look back at my thoughts, so sad they didn’t go through with this integration ☹️
I totally agree! I hope they will change their mind!
That’s super weird they would block this, so many people would benefit from the update to work with Readwise. Honestly both Kindle and Kobo have issues that seem like easy fixes. Here in Canada, Kobo works with our library systems to allow you to borrow books, but Kindle does not because of the proprietary format and licensing fees, so if you want to borrow eBooks from the library here, you have to get a Kobo or use your other non eInk devices, which bleh.
Does Kodo have a store like kindle has or do you have to just borrow from the library?
@@justinakerr3102 Kobo had their own digital book store where you can buy books. Like Amazon, they tend to have monthly and daily sales too.
I had a kindle 3rd generation in a drawer for years. This year I started using again for my academic reading but died within a week. Purchase Kobo libra and it was a bit of work at the begining making it work for me.
I really need my highlights and notes for my academic research and the easiest way to retrieve that is to plug Kobo to the computer and an annotation file will be there, within a folder. You can open it with a text editor but will have a lot of code around it, not easy to read. But if you open it with a Code editor, like Brackets, or copy past within Obsidian, my favourite note software, the highlights will be in a different color, very easy to read. Good enough for me.
I'm a Kindle reader but nonetheless I love open ecosystems and the opportunity to integrate services together, so it's always a bummer to see services trying to shut stuff like this down 😕
Couldn't agree more.
Kobo Libra 2 should have a nice firmware update.
1) You can pinch to zoom to increase/decrease font size. I installed this firmware yesterday
2) Swipe down to swap between last 3 used books. I haven't confirmed this yet, the firmware is taking long to download.
Edit: both firmwares are confirmed and they're nice.
If we don't have an official announcement yet they are probably only having technical issues about it. Honestly I don't even knew what Readwise is but if is basically a better highlight/notes system I don't feel I'm missing much as don't use that feature even in the Kindle where is kinda encouraged since you can see what other people highlighted if you have that setting on. Personally I think the notice that Kindle is going to update their software to also be able to read epubs is a lot more game changing as I just jumped to the Kobo ship after years of feeling limited in the Kindle ecosystem.
Readwise is a central part of my workflow when it comes to taking notes. It all depends on how many notes you take. If it's not something you do, then it's not a big deal at all. I agree that EPUB support is huge. I'll be making a video about this soon!
interesting. I wonder if Kobo ever gave a reason for why they shut-down that integration.
I'm curious about that too
Hi, your videos are so helpful and informative.
I think Kobo is supported now… is that true?
Could you give us an update please?
Yes! I haven't used it recently, but they did release an updated integration, which seems to work now.
I am a Kobo reader, reading mostly non fiction books. I am using KOReader and it works perfectly with Readwise, although I'm using Joplin for my notes, which also works very fine for me.
I've tried KOReader, and it works. But it's WAY too shady for me. I don't like the idea of hacking my Kobo to get this one feature. I wish they would just support it natively!
@@Maneetpaul Jailbreaking a Kindle may be a hack but installing KOReader definitely is not!
Just see the Kobo device as an eReader with an open linux OS on it, where you can install whatever runs on it.
@@satchillananda That's true. I'm just not a fan of the UI and the process to get it working. With that being said, it does work!
Also Plato is really polished and nice OS too.
What I do is use Koreader SSH server and mount it as an indexed network drive (like dropbox) to easily sync/load epubs from libgen over the network
And then use Plato to read them
And occasionally use the stock software for the Overdrive integration which is nice.
Oh and it has upgradable SD card so it runs/load pages faster and has 128GB :)
Sure, its a bit of work but it’s all open source Linux based software! It’s the best.
Hey, since you're a non-fiction reader, what's your opinion about other larger-screened devices? I read fiction on a Kobo Libra 2, but non fiction on a Boox 10" device. I'm not trying to push Onyx Boox devices here, there are a lot of big-screened devices, with Android or other proprietary OS's, I'm just curious because I can't imagine reading non-fiction on a regular 6"/7" Kobo or Kindle, and I'd like to understand what considerations make you choose differently than I'd do
I have returned several Kobos due to this. Have emailed them an tweeted at them. They do not care and do not listen. I gave up on Kobo and Amazon will continue to get my money.
readwise is a paid service, that's why there are always problems... I use kindle and I use my notes with other tools, already the books are expensive in digital format to be paying extra services just for the notes
Yeah, it's paid. I think it's worth the money though. It makes my life 100x easier. Doing the same thing with free / other tools would take much longer.
I think if you are looking for good out of the box experience and are interested in amazon ecosystem then kindle is best ereader on the market, but if you don't mind tinkering to get the koreader working then kobo is unbeatable as you will get the best possible ereader experience you can get. I got my kobo recently and I was very disappointed coming from a older kindle model with its features, interface and speed, but once I got koreader to work I knew I will probably never buy a kindle again.
Very true! It all depends on how much you're willing to tinker and play around with the software! KOReader is something I need to experiment with more. What are your favorite features of it?
How to download in kobo pdf from laptop
Hi! Just to let you know that I mostly read fiction and yet I still do take notes.
That's awesome! I always assume most note takers are nonfiction readers, but you're right, fiction readers take notes too!
@@Maneetpaul And I read about 50% nonfiction, yet I never take notes! Instead I sometimes highlight things I want to be able to go back and refresh later. I have never been a note-taker, I just don't know what I would write lol. I realize it's a me thing.
Recently I have had problems changing letter size on my Kobo Forma by "pinching" the screen, it's just too slow. Even the normal method through the menu is slow, do you have any idea what is going on? It's extremely annoying
My biggest problem with Kobo is that it doesnt sync with Google drive, I think Kobo should understand that they can't act like apple to restrict as Amazon is clearly better choice.
Closed ecosystems stifle adoption. You'd think Kobo would know this.
Sorry for off-topic, but how to highlight across pages in Kobo Libra 2? It drives me nuts 🙀
Looking for the same answer
Hello, it seems like Kobo will bring the integration back. This is what Readwise told me about this issue:
“Hey Camilo, thanks so much for reporting this issue!
We just heard from the Kobo team and it turns out that they intentionally disabled our integration :confused:
The good news is that they claim they're working on getting us a replacement API that we can use to reinstate this integration, but until this happens, the only way to sync your Kobo highlights with Readwise is using the manual method (with the October app).
Sorry about that! We'll keep you posted when the automatic integration is back up and running!
Have a great weekend! “
I hope this turns out to be true! 🤞🏽
I have a KOBO Sage. much better than kindle. I love it. many more features than the kindle oasis and cheaper too
This is all wrong, native readwise support on Kobo works fine.
They just recently added it...again!
I still use physical notebooks or note apps on my iPad for nonfiction reading lol. I’m ancient. Maybe I should try readwise.
Sounds like you aren't alone. For me, as I read a lot of comics, I find myself limited by e-book platforms not allowing print-replica e-books to be annotated, so I have a dedicated book annotation notebook in Evernote, and create notes for each book that contain annotations (with page references) for each book.
(Edit: The notebook is named 'Book annotations'!)
@@kbhasi that’s a good system 👍
@@jessicamou
Thanks! It's flexible too! I could read a physical book (that I'd borrow from a public library) and have my phone or laptop beside me, or I could open a desktop reading app and an individual Evernote window in split-screen on my laptop (or tablet with an external keyboard)
The way I annotate is that I use one note for each book, bullet lists for each chapter (if the book has chapters), then points for each page, prefixed with 🔖 emoji if I bookmarked the page in the reading app I use. Each page point would then have my actual notes one level lower. For some books, I'd have tags in square brackets, sometimes highlighted if that's important enough to me, so for example, in my current read, I have an [Illustration] tag highlighted in blue for illustrations that I like, and another tag for ideas I came up while reading that could work for a fanfiction I'm writing of that book series.
Wonder why they’d shut it down? Wouldn’t they want the free publicity and marketing that came from the integration?
I don’t use the Kobo notes. It takes too long to type in my thoughts. I prefer to highlight a passage and then when I’m on computer I’ll look up the passages on my kobo and type in more extensive thoughts into a word or notepad document.
Also when reading something that catches my mind I’ll not type any notes on the kobo because I’ve closed my eyes and am following the thoughts through my head. I’ll lose 15 to 20 minutes just sitting or lying there with my eyes closed while I think about what I just read and the ramifications. Some folks think I’m sleeping (which, to be fair, has happened - the sleeping- more than once :).
I wonder the same thing. They're missing out on free marketing and support! I like your method of thinking about your highlights deeply before capturing them. I do that too. I haven't fallen asleep yet, but I've come close 😅
@@Maneetpaul I like to tell myself I can fall asleep because I've trained myself to nap so I'll be rested for the vigorous physical activity when we arrive on site. In reality, it's much more likely I can fall asleep because I'm getting old. :)
I just read an non fiction book on my Kobo for the first time and about halfway in I synced my kobo with readwise and it worked without any issues. However, after finishing the book and wanting to update the highlights Readwise can't detect any changes which is a huge downer. Not sure what that's about but I shot them an e-mail and I'm waiting for a response.
If I'd known exporting highlights from e-readers was a thing, that I would come to rely on it and that Kobo is pretty crap at it then I'd most likely had gone with a different brand to being with.
I hate it everything I search for author they never show up I will stick with kindle
I’m Canadian so unless I move to the US, it’s Kobo forever
don't like readwise ... I use the PC for my notes, but yes, kindle is my favorite right now
I think in Canada kobo has a draw
It's junk no matter what author I seach for it dose show up I will stay with kindle
Glad I got a Kindle lol
Interesting.!
Kindle is much better.