Readwise vs Kindle Notebook: where should highlights live?

Quick answer

Every Kindle highlight you make lands in Amazon's Notebook. Readwise pulls those highlights out and brings them back to you. Do you need both?

What 125x is: 125x is a web app at 125x.app. You connect your YouTube subscriptions, and it gives you a feed of the latest videos from the channels you follow, each with a summary: a verdict, the 5 key takeaways, and the spoiler, plus Actionable and Lessons tabs with more tips. You read that and decide what's actually worth opening.

Open 125x

Kindle Notebook

Built in. View your notes and highlights for Kindle store books in Kindle for Web (Amazon Help).
Export and share depend on Whispersync being on (Amazon Help).
Good for looking up what you marked in one book.

Readwise

Syncs Kindle highlights through its browser extension, which reads your Kindle Notebook and keeps syncing in the background (Readwise docs).
Built to help you revisit and learn from your highlights (Readwise).
Sends highlights on to note apps like Notion and Obsidian.

The personal documents catch

Highlights in documents you sent to your Kindle don't sync to the cloud like store books, so neither Notebook nor the extension sees them. On a Kindle device, they're in a file called My Clippings.txt that you can copy over USB and upload to Readwise (Readwise docs).

Which to use

A few books a year and you rarely look back: Kindle Notebook is plenty.
You want old highlights to come back to you, or flow into your notes: Readwise.
Either way, see export Kindle highlights.

How 125x fits

Same idea for videos: 125x keeps the takeaways and Lessons tab for each video in your feed, so the useful part is there when you need it.

FAQ: questions people ask

Does Readwise sync Kindle highlights automatically?

Yes, with the Readwise browser extension installed in Chrome or Firefox, per Readwise's docs.

Why are some Kindle highlights missing from Notebook?

Highlights in personal documents you sent to Kindle don't sync to the cloud the same way. Find them in My Clippings.txt on the device.

Can I choose which books Readwise imports from Kindle?

Readwise's docs say no. The extension syncs what's on your Kindle Notebook and skips duplicates.