Zotero ➡️ Readwise

zotero2readwise is a Python library that retrieves all Zotero annotations† and notes. Then, It automatically uploads them to your Readwise§.

This is particularly useful for the new Zotero PDF Reader that stores all highlights in the Zotero database. The new Zotero, also available for iOS app (currently in beta). In the new Zotero, the annotations are NOT saved in the PDF file unless you export the highlights in order to save them.

If you annotate your files outside the new Zotero PDF reader, this library may not work with your PDF annotations as those are not retrievable from Zotero API.

This library is for you if you annotate (highlight + note) using the Zotero's PDF reader (including the Zotero iOS)

👉Updating an existing Zotero annotation or note and re-running this library will update the corresponding Readwise highlight without creating a duplicate!

† Annotations made in the new Zotero PDF reader and note editor.

§ Readwise is a paid service/software that integrates your highlights from almost everywhere (Pocket, Instapaper, Twitter, Medium, Apple Books, and many more). It even has an amazing OCR for directly importing your highlights on a physical book/article into Readwise and allowing you to export all your highlights to Obsidian, Notion, Roam, Markdown, etc. Moreover, It has an automated Spaced Repition and Active Recall.

Installation

You can install the library by running

pip install zotero2readwise

Note: If you do not have pip installed on your system, you can follow the instructions here.

Usage

Since we have to retrieve the notes from Zotero API and then upload them to the Readwise, the minimum requirements are:

Readwise access token [Required]: You can get your access token from https://readwise.io/access_token
Zotero API key [Required]: Create a new Zotero Key from your Zotero settings
Zotero personal or group ID [Required]:
- Your personal library ID (aka userID) can be found here next to Your userID for use in API calls is XXXXXX.
- If you're using a group library, you can find the library ID by
  1. Go to https://www.zotero.org/groups/
  2. Click on the interested group.
  3. You can find the library ID from the URL link that has format like https://www.zotero.org/groups/<group_id>/group_name. The number between /groups/ and /group_name is the libarry ID.
Zotero library type [Optional]: "user" (default) if using personal library and "group" if using group library.

Note that if you want to retrieve annotations and notes from a group, you should provide the group ID (zotero_library_id=<group_id>) and set the library type to group (zotero_library_type="group").

Approach 1 (running a python script)

For this approach you can download run.py script (from here). Run python run.py -h to get more information about all options. You can simply run the script as the following:

python run.py <readwise_token> <zotero_key> <zotero_id>

Approach 2 (through python terminal)

from zotero2readwise.zt2rw import Zotero2Readwise

zt_rw = Zotero2Readwise(
    readwise_token="your_readwise_access_token",  # Visit https://readwise.io/access_token)
    zotero_key="your_zotero_key",  # Visit https://www.zotero.org/settings/keys
    zotero_library_id="your_zotero_id", # Visit https://www.zotero.org/settings/keys
    zotero_library_type="user", # "user" (default) or "group"
    include_annotations=True, # Include Zotero annotations -> Default: True
    include_notes=False, # Include Zotero notes -> Default: False
)
zt_rw.run()

Just to make sure that all files are created, you can run save_failed_items_to_json() from readwise attribute of the class object to save any highlight that failed to upload to Readwise. If a file or more failed to create, the filename (item title) and the corresponding Zotero item key will be saved to a txt file.

zt_rw.readwise.save_failed_items_to_json("failed_readwise_highlights.json")

Zotero2Readwise-Sync

👉 Set up a scheduled automation once and forget about it!

You can fork my repo Zotero2Readwise-Sync repository that contain the cronjob (time-based Job scheduler) using GitHub actions to automatically retrieve all your Zotero annotations/notes, and then push them to Readwise. You can use the forked repo without even changing a single line (of course if you're happy with the default settings!)

Request a new feature or report a bug

Feel free to request a new feature or report a bug in GitHub issue here.

floriankilian/Zotero2Readwise