About
Title: How to Use Readwise Authors: Readwise Team Category:#books Number of Highlights: 62 Date: 2022-07-17 Last Highlighted: **
Highlights
Getting to Know Readwise (0)
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Introduction to How to Use Readwise (1)
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Remember More the Daily Review (3)
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How to Use the Readwise Dashboard (5)
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How to View the Highlights of a Book (7)
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You can view all your highlights for any given book by selecting Books from the Readwise Dashboard. From the Books view, you can see statistics for each book such as how many highlights you’ve taken and the date of your last highlight, and you can perform actions such as increasing or decreasing the frequency of seeing a particular book in your Daily Review. You can do the same for highlights from any other type of content (including articles, tweets, and podcasts). (8)
How to Review a Specific Book (9)
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How to View and Review Specific Articles (11)
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How to Manage Your Readwise Account (13)
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How to Use Readwise on Your Phone (15)
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How to Invite Friends to Readwise (17)
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How Readwise Began (19)
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Many users ask us about how Readwise got started. It began in 2016 when Tristan Homsi and Daniel Doyon connected through an obscure comment about reading lists on Hacker News and subsequently bonded over a mutual interest in so-called “reading tech”. One thing led to another and they decided to collaborate on an MVP, which launched in May 2017. Readwise has organically evolved ever since. You can learn more about our newest ambition on the Readwise blog: The Next Chapter of Readwise: Our Own Reading App. (20)
How Readwise is Funded (21)
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Some users ask us why we’ve decided to bootstrap Readwise through revenues rather than raise venture capital. It’s a complicated answer to a complicated question, but long story short, we concluded that bootstrapping would better enable us to focus on our small niche market of “nonfiction power readers” rather than having to pursue the larger but more casual venture scale market. You can read more about this decision here: Why We’re Bootstrapping Readwise. (22)
Synchronizing Your Data (23)
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How to Automatically Sync Your Kindle Highlights (24)
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Any highlights you take in a Kindle ebook are automatically synchronized to the Amazon cloud — if (and only if) you purchased the ebook directly from Amazon. Readwise uses a browser extension to automatically save these Kindle highlights to your Readwise account. Please note that you have to use Chrome or Firefox with the Readwise extension installed for Kindle highlights to sync automatically. If you don’t use the Chrome or Firefox extensions, you’ll need to manually sync your Kindle highlights from time to time. (25)
How to Manually Sync Your Kindle Highlights Using My Clippings.txt (26)
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X If you don’t use Chrome or Firefox with the Readwise extension installed, you’ll need to manually “resync” your Kindle highlights from time to time. You can manually resync by selecting Import from the Readwise Dashboard and clicking on the Amazon Kindle icon from a desktop computer. Readwise will also send you a reminder email every time you’ve gone 45 days without a new highlight. (27)
How to Sync Your Apple Books Highlights (28)
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How to Supplement Your Account with Popular Highlights (30)
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How to Manually Sync Your Kindle Highlights Using My Clippings.txt (32)
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How to Sync Your Instapaper Highlights (34)
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How to Sync Your Pocket Highlights (36)
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How to Manually Add Highlights (38)
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How to Save Tweets and Twitter Threads (40)
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How to Manually Import Highlights in Bulk Using CSV (42)
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If you have highlights from an obscure source, such as a niche reading or note-taking app, you can often import those into Readwise using a CSV file (comma separated values). You can upload a CSV file by selecting Import from the Readwise Dashboard and clicking the CSV Import link. From there, you will need to follow the instructions and examples on how to properly structure your data. (43)
Customizing the Daily Review (44)
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How to Change the Readwise Email Frequency (45)
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How Email Frequency Adjusts Automatically (47)
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How to Customize Email Send Time (49)
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How to Change the Daily Review Length (51)
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How to Disable the Quality Filter (53)
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How to See Newer or Older Highlights (55)
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How to Exclude Specific Books (57)
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By default, your Daily Review will randomly select highlights from all books (and articles) contained in your library. If there’s a book you no longer want to revisit, you can exclude it from future Daily Reviews by selecting Books from the Readwise Dashboard, clicking the down arrow for the book in question, and then sliding the Review Frequency to “Never”. You can also conveniently disable a book during a Daily Review by selecting the down arrow in the upper right corner and clicking “Never show me this book again”.
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Basic Features (59)
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Favoriting (60)
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Discarding (62)
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Tagging (64)
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Noting (66)
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We highly recommend taking notes alongside your highlights. After all, the best way to read between the lines is to write between the lines. Any notes you take in Kindle, iBooks, Instapaper, and elsewhere will be automatically imported to Readwise and attached to the respective highlight. You can edit this note in the Readwise web app by clicking the note icon, clicking into the body of the note itself, or using the keyboard shortcut n. Of course, you can also add notes to any highlight that doesn’t have one already. (67)
Sharing to Twitter or Facebook (68)
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Copying Highlight to Clipboard (70)
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Opening in Kindle App (72)
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Many times a highlight resurfaced in Readwise will not be enough. You’ll want to return to the highlight in the context of the book or article. You can automatically launch the Kindle app (assuming it’s installed) and open the book to the appropriate location by clicking the down arrow in the upper right of each highlight and selecting “Open this book in Kindle”. Note: Due technical limitations, this only works on desktop (not mobile) and only from the web app (not email). (73)
Processing Highlights (74)
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Using Keyboard Shortcuts in the Web App (76)
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Readwise is built for power readers so the web app has been designed for power users. This means, of course, that we have all kinds of keyboard shortcuts. There’s not enough room to list them all here, but almost all shortcuts are discoverable if you hover over an action in the web app. (77)
Searching (78)
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One of the nice things about having all your highlights synchronized in a single repository is that it’s easy to retrieve the excerpt you’re looking for. You can hunt for a particular highlight by browsing the particular Book or Article, by using your Tags, or, of course, by using good old fashioned search. A search box is displayed in the upper right corner of most Readwise screens. Alternatively, you can go to the Search page to query your entire Readwise catalog. (79)
Bonus Highlight (80)
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Advanced Usage (82)
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Scroll Mode versus Review Mode (83)
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The Readwise web app has two views which we call “Scroll Mode” and “Review Mode”. Scroll Mode displays highlights vertically. This is great for quick scanning, juxtaposing highlights, or Cmd/Ctrl + Fing with a search term. Review Mode displays highlights one at a time in a horizontal view. This is great for focusing all your attention on a single passage and taking actions, such as tagging, noting, or spaced repetition, before moving on to the next. You can switch between these views by toggling the button in the upper right corner of the Readwise web app or using the keyboard shortcut ll. (84)
Readwise Resurfacing Algorithm (85)
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Book Tuning (87)
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In-Line Book Tuning (89)
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Why Retention? (91)
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Spaced Repetition Basics (93)
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Spaced Repetition Feedback Buttons (95)
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Active Recall (Mastery) (97)
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Cloze Deletion (Mastery) (99)
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Question & Answer (Mastery) (101)
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NEW! Readwise offers increasing degrees of active recall intensity (Mastery). The least demanding is cloze deletion, but the most powerful is question & answer. Q&A is exactly what it sounds like: You convert a passage containing a piece of wisdom you wish to master into a question paired with the answer. The next time you see the highlight, you’ll be prompted with the question, forcing you to actively recall the answer. This is scientifically proven to form stronger memories enabling you to retain profoundly more of what you’ve read. To convert a highlight to Q&A, hit the Master icon in the web app (keyboard shortcut m). (102)
Question & Answer Tag (103)
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NEW! Not only can you convert a highlight to a Question & Answer flashcard while using Readwise, you can also create Q&A while you read. You create a flashcard by taking a special note while you read. Simply highlight the passage containing the memorable idea and add a note beginning .qa (for question & answer). Then type your question to your future self ending with a question mark followed by the answer. When this highlight is resurfaced in Readwise, it will be in the form of a question. Talk about retaining what you read! (104)
Terms (Mastery) (105)
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COMING SOON! In addition to the general purpose methods for mastering a passive highlight in Readwise (cloze deletion and question & answer), there’s also a special active recall method called term. If you pay attention, much of any nonfiction book is spent “coming to terms” in which the author carefully explains what he or she means by specific words. Sometimes authors even introduces new terms. For example, the term antifragile in Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile. If you master the terms in a nonfiction book, your understanding will skyrocket compared to a passive reading. To convert a highlight to a term, hit the Master icon in the web app (keyboard shortcut m). (106)
Inline Tagging (107)
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Heading Tags (Creating a Table of Contents) (109)
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Concatenation Tags (Combining Highlights) (111)
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Export to Evernote (113)
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Deleting Books (115)
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Export to Markdown (117)
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Deleting Highlights in Kindle (119)
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Kindle Highlight Limits (121)
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Gift Readwise (123)
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Highlights from PDFs (125)
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Streaks (127)
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