Highlights, notes and bookmarks work in books and PDFs, and sync to your other devices with iCloud Sync.
Highlight text
Mac: select text and right-click. Pick one of the five colors (yellow, red, green, blue or orange), or choose Add Note.
iPhone and iPad: select text. A bar appears above it with the five colors, Add Note, Copy, Look Up and Translate.
A note is saved as a purple highlight with your text attached.
Change or remove a highlight
- Mac: right-click the highlight to change its color, edit or delete the note, or choose Delete Highlight.
- iPhone and iPad: tap the highlight. Pick another color, or edit the note; tap › for more options, including delete.
Bookmarks
- Mac: click the bookmark button in the reader toolbar, or press ⌘ D. Press it again to remove the bookmark.
- iPhone and iPad: open the reader menu and tap the bookmark icon (⌘ D with a keyboard).
Comics have bookmarks too, in the same places.
Find them again
Open the list inside the book:
- Mac: Annotations (⌘ ⇧ H) lists highlights and notes; Bookmarks (⌘ ⇧ B) lists bookmarks.
- iPhone and iPad: the notes icon and Bookmarks in the reader menu.
Click or tap an entry to jump there. Right-click or long-press an annotation for Edit Note, Go to Location, Share and Delete.
Export highlights
Export writes a book’s highlights and notes to a file:
| Format | Good for |
|---|---|
| Markdown | Notes apps such as Obsidian, Bear or Notion |
| JSON | Your own scripts and tools |
| CSV | Spreadsheets |
To export, right-click or long-press the book in your library and choose Export Annotations, then the format. The Mac asks where to save the file; iPhone and iPad open the share sheet. On a Mac you can also use Export Annotations in the inspector (⌘ I).
Note: Exporting highlights is part of BookShelves Pro.