A Shortcut for Bear and Readwise

Annotate in Bear and Upload to Your Readwise Library of Highlights Using Their API

NOTE: While the Shortcut listed here works great as a starting point for you to adapt or add more to it. There’s an updated version over at this post:

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If you enjoy learning and annotating, chances are you're familiar with Readwise, an online highlights manager. For several months already I've been using their new app, Reader, for most of my online reading and content consumption. Reader combines read-it-later functionality with the ability to connect RSS feeds, newsletters, and email forwarding. It also allows importing and reading ePubs, PDFs, and more, creating a comprehensive library of personalized content. While I love the way that Readwise and Reader connect or go hand in hand with one another, there are instances when I wish there was a simpler way to add highlights. This is especially true for my own content, inaccessible online material, or paid classes that I can't annotate using Reader.

Yes, there’s several workarounds. I used to rely on a Shortcut that converted Bear notes (with highlights) into a CSV file, which I then had to manually upload to their website. However, in the past few days I decided to learn a bit more on how Readwise API works and explore incorporating it into a Shortcut that can be used with Bear.

I am happy to report that I got this working and want to share it with you!

HERE IT IS

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How to Use

Note. Most of the shortcuts that I use on Bear depend a lot on my own particular note design. Using regex my shortcuts extract the source, the author, notes for each highlight, and convert Bear markdown into Readwise markdown (which differs a little bit). HOWEVER, I made this version of the Shortcut I’m sharing with you as a simple template for you to go in there, try to figure out how everything works, and see if you can adapt it to your own case.

• Your Bear note must have a title, and every highlight must go in its own bullet point (starting with *). There should not be any line breaks within your highlight.

• Before running the Shortcut make sure you have the Bear Note ID in your clipboard, or you can also share the note from iOS share menu (this only works on iOS).

• In this sample, every field must be completed except URL, but URL is necessary if the type of content you choose is “article.”

• You can customize this with several more fields, check the complete documentation online.

The Other Way Around

I have another Shortcut for getting my documents off from Readwise and into Bear. Check this out:

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And that’s it!

If this was useful to you, I hope you consider buying me a coffee :)

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