Kobo and organising annotations through Readwise

Kobo's use of Readwise is another example of using paid services as a substitute for natively supported productivity features

Kobo relies on paid third-party services to offer features that are not natively supported. Another example of adopting a third-party service is using Readwise to view and manage highlights and annotations. A Readwise account supports multiple platforms, including Kobo. Once logged into Kobo on the Readwise website or application, it is possible to access highlights and annotations within ebooks purchased from the Kobo store, read through Kobo Plus or borrowed from a public library. As personal ebooks are stored locally and not synced to the Kobo cloud, there is no way to view their highlights and annotations using Readwise.

After starting a Readwise account, you can search and use other tools to organise annotations and highlights. Kobo also advertises that you can export highlights and annotations from Readwise to third-party services like Notion, Evernote, and Obsidian. 

Unlike Pocket and Dropbox, Readwise is a third-party service not integrated into Kobo’s e-reader software. To use Readwise, users must access Kobo cloud-synced e-books through their website or application. 

Kobo does not have a native feature to export or organise highlights and annotations. However, it is possible to add a line of coding to activate the hidden feature to export highlights and annotations in text format (it makes little sense why Kobo insists on keeping the export feature hidden). Another option is to use Calibre to export highlights and annotations as a text file. 

Reliance on third-party paid services is part of a broader issue of an underdeveloped productivity toolkit. Services like Pocket, Dropbox, or Readwise are substitutes for features Kobo should develop. Amazon, to compare, natively supports exporting highlights and annotations into notebooks and creating flashcards for purchased and personal e-books.