Obsidian Kindle Plugin

Sync your Kindle notes and highlights directly into your Obsidian vault. You can choose to sync using one of two methods:

Amazon's Kindle Reader

Sync from the cloud any ebooks that you've purchased directly from Amazon. The plugin will screen scrape your highlights from Amazon's Kindle Reader and keep them in sync.

This method will not work for highlights from books, articles, PDFs, and personal documents not purchased from Amazon.

Kindle Device (My Clippings)

Sync your highlights by uploading your My Clippings.txt file stored on your Kindle device. This file includes highlights, bookmarks and notes for any book on your Kindle regardless if it has been purchased via Amazon.

You can extract your My Clippings.txt file by plugging it into your computer using USB.

Mission statement

Inspired by Obsidian's principle of "your data sitting in a local folder" and "never leaving you're life's work held hostage in the cloud again", this plugin tries to do exactly that with your precious Kindle notes and highlights. Why should you struggle in accessing your own data, or paying for a third party service to access information that you own?

Usage

After enabling the plugin in the settings menu, your Obsidian's status bar will start showing your Kindle sync status. Click on the status bar to start adhoc syncing or to see more detailed information on your sync status to date.

Configure the settings of the plugin to specify the folder location for your syncing.

Features

Sync your highlights using your Amazon account via Amazon's Kindle Reader
Sync your highlights by uploading your My Clippings.txt file from your Kindle device
Enrich your notes by downloading extra metadata information about your book from Amazon.com
Configure your own (Nunjucks) template to generate notes in exactly the way that you want
Sync on demand or on Obsidian startup (via Amazon account method only)

Settings

Highlights folder: Vault folder to use for plugin to write synced book highlights and notes
Note template: Template (Nunjucks) to use for rendering your highlights when writing them to disk
Sync on startup [default: on]: Download extra book metadata from Amazon.com (works for Amazon sync only)
Sync on startup [default: off]: Enable to always automatically sync your latest highlights using your Amazon account
Reset sync: Wipe your sync history (number of books and highlights synced). Does not delete any previously synced notes from your vault
Amazon region: Select the Amazon account region which has your Kindle highlights data. Currently only global (.com) and Japan are supported
Sign out: Log out from your Amazon account (appears only if you have logged in)

Usage

You can start the sync process by clicking on the Kindle icon in the ribbon bar or clicking on the plugin's status bar message at the bottom of Obsidian. You will be presented with a modal that gives you several two options to sync.

Start syncing by choosing between uploading a copy of your My Clippings.txt file or using your online Amazon account.

Template tags

Tag	Description	Amazon sync	My Clippings sync
`{{title}}`	Shortened book title	Always available	Always available
`{{fullTitle}}`	Full book title	Always available	Always available
`{{author}}`	Book author	Always available if book purchased from Amazon	Optional
`{{asin}}`	Book ASIN	Always available if book purchased from Amazon	Not available
`{{url}}`	Book URL on Amazon	Always available if book has an ASIN	Not available
`{{imageUrl}}`	Book cover image URL	Always available if book purchased from Amazon	Not available
`{{appLink}}`	Link to open book in Kindle app	Always available if book has an ASIN	Not available
`{{isbn}}`	Book ISBN	Usually available. Download metadata option must be turned on	Not available
`{{pages}}`	Print length	Always available. Download metadata option must be turned on	Not available
`{{publication}}`	Publication date	Always available. Download metadata option must be turned on	Not available
`{{publisher}}`	Publisher	Always available. Download metadata option must be turned on	Not available
`{{authorUrl}}`	Book author URL on Amazon	Always available. Download metadata option must be turned on	Not available
`{{highlights}}`	List of highlights for book	Always available	Always available

Properties of every item in {{highlights}}:

Tag	Description	Amazon sync	My Clippings sync
`{{text}}`	Highlighted text	Always available	Always available
`{{location}}`	Highlighted text location	Usually available. If not, then `{{page}}` will be available	Usually available. If not, then `{{page}}` will be available
`{{page}}`	Highlighted text page	Usually available. If not, then `{{location}}` will be available	Usually available. If not, then `{{location}}` will be available
`{{note}}`	Associated note to highlight	Optional	Optional
`{{appLink}}`	Link to open highlight in Kindle app	Always available if highlight location and book ASIN available	Not available
`{{color}}`	Color of the highlight	Always available	Not available

Highlight colors available

Pink
Blue
Yellow
Orange

Security consideration

If you choose to sync your highlights via Amazon's online Kindle Reader, it is important to note that by logging in to your Amazon account via Obsidian your Amazon session becomes available to any other plugin across your vaults until your session expires.

You can mitigate this risk by logging out after every sync (from settings) or using the offline method of syncing by uploading your My Clippings.txt file instead.