In my review of the Amazon Kindle, one of my quibbles was how the passages I highlight are “locked in” on the device. Well, it turns out this isn’t true. (Thanks to Kindle Genius Scott McNulty for the tips and tricks.)

There are two ways you can access your highlights:

  • If you go to kindle.amazon.com you can view all your highlighted passages. At first, I was unaware that this site even existed. And then, when I did log in, it was showing no highlights for me.

However, under my username in the top-right corner, is a link to “Manage Your Kindle“. Clicking on that sent me over to the Amazon page where I can fiddle with all the items in my Kindle Library. When I then went back to the Kindle Highlights page, all my highlights were now there. For some reason, clicking that link must have jogged the system.

  • If you plug your Kindle into your computer it will go into USB mode. From there you can view the files on your Kindle from the Mac’s Finder. Navigate to /Documents/My Clippings.txt and guess what? It’s a text file with all your highlights. Open it up, select all, copy, and then paste into a new document and you’re done.
How to Access your Kindle Highlights