Readwise Reviews

by Carlosivanr

I’m a researcher and read a lot of PDFs for my job. I was hoping that this app would be a good way to keep track of my notes and highlights from academic journals, but the pdf support need a lot of work. I found that the text in the highlights and notes was often jumbled and incomprehensible. I tried it with Mac using preview and windows using Adobe acrobat pro dc, and had a similar experience. I also noticed that the iOS app would show badge notifications but o couldn’t figure out why. I would tap around Readwise and still couldn’t get the badge to clear. I also don’t like how the magnifying glass is where you have to tap to get all of your highlights, it’s not intuitive and should be a library icon or something similar with the search within that screen. Using Readwise felt clunky to me in this respect. Your mileage may vary though if you’re intended purpose is to keep track of Kindle notes. But for me I’ll pass on Readwise and it’s subscription service.

by Cotter45

I switched from reading via kindle to paper books and am trying Readwise to try and synchronize notes from my paper book collection. Readwise has around 80% of my paper library, but these books are not included in ‘my books’ on Readwise even after I uploaded them into the supplementary books page on their web address. If they can improve the synchronization of the quotes/notes from paper books better into the reader’s ‘my books’ this product will be quite useful.

by Fatheroftheyear

I LOVE the recap of highlights I’ve made over the years... it feels like long lost gems have been found/ brilliant idea! Makes me want to highlight more!
BUT, imagine sitting down after a long day, winding down and excited to see what meaningful words will come back to mind, and the biggest buttons pop up asking you to swipe right or sipe left, like a nagging stranger asking you to judge your memories. It completely ruins the experience. I give it 3 stars because it’s near perfect, but I’m a day or 2 away from dumping Readwise and finding a different way to review my notes...

by KazutoKirigaya

For daily reviews this is great, but capture on iOS needs work. Sharing to Readwise in Safari doesn’t preserve the page title or metadata, which means anything you save from iOS will just go to a “Passages from iOS” “book” in this app, which makes it hard to organize. iOS 15 added Safari extensions but there isn’t any integration with this app there yet, so despite the fact that it’s an obvious way to get highlights into Readwise , you can’t use that. Also, it’s a reader app that doesn’t have dark mode. And the widget doesn’t actually do anything other than show highlights (it says it should show daily review stuff before that’s completed but it doesn’t).

by SteveB MA

I started the trial skeptical but hoping that this app would help me organize notes and highlights. It’s good for that, but the daily review exercise is a an amazing way to rediscover things I’ve read a while ago and also internalize relevant, important notes, not to mention discover new books. And the daily review also makes for a nice incremental way to organize things.

There are a few minor features I wish Readwise and website had, and the developers have been very responsive. I recommend this time beyond I know who reads interesting things.

by Kerry1234567

Readwise and this app in general has been an absolute game changer for me. I LOVE to read non-fiction but even though I often highlight, I very rarely go back and look at them. So I would read great books, take a lot of ideas from them, and then promptly forget everything I’ve read once I moved onto the next book. With this app, I am reminded everyday of all these great ideas. I can star certain ones and adjust how frequently the highlights will appear from certain books and keep the info front of mind has helped a lot.

I’ve used the service for a year now and it has become a treasured part of my morning routine. Readwise has made that even better bc now I don’t have to check my email and become distracted by something else. They even have a “feed” to endless scroll highlights which IMO is a much better way to spend my time than scrolling a FB feed.

I highly recommend this service!!

by Ptw76

I've been extracting highlights and notes from books for years. It is a slow and excruciating process, but one I will spend the remainder of my life doing. this app has helped me save a tremendous amount of my free time by extracting notes in my books as I read. It is wonderful.

As with all new apps, there's some improvements that can be made (camera capture stuff), but all in all, I use it daily.

The only thing I'm upset about is that I didn't think of this wonderful idea myself.

by Mfitzhugh

Highlighting resonant passages across ebooks, articles, paper books and more puts their most memorable bits in the spotlight. Keeping those gems in mind, however, is tough. this app collects all those memorable moments of reading in one place, making them easily searchable and, better yet, serendipitously brings them back to mind via daily reviews. It’s super-easy to use and rewarding to revisit daily. I was skeptical at first, but the more I use this app, the more I love it.

by Jerry Brito

this app is the best app/web service that I’ve used in years. I’ve been looking for something like it for a long time and they absolutely nailed it. It does two main things for me. First, I read a lot of books and articles, but I have a hard time retaining what I’ve learned. this app lets me easily review what I want to remember using spaced repetition, which is proven to help with retention. The second thing it does is a bit unexpected: it serves as my second brain. Because I systematically tag all highlights as I review them, I am creating a database of knowledge that I can later easily search or browse. And because I can download all my highlights and the metadata I’ve added in plain text, I can use other tools on my data. It’s amazing and I can’t wait to see how they make it better.

by Y I N A ✨

I use this app almost every day. It has become engrained in my morning habits as a way to review previously learned information.

There are so many reasons to explain why this app has been beneficial, both for knowledge and general well being, I’ll have to write a more in depth review later.

The unique value proposition of resurfacing old material, and allowing for shareability in a visually pleasing way is wonderful. It allows for review in an age of information overload.

by Corndog8

I’ve been highlighting Kindle passages for years, but as time went by I’ve been doing it less and less, because I never go back and look at them, since it’s kind of a pain, and completely out of context. this app now gives me random highlights every day, which I can keep or discard, and best of all they all sync with Notion, so I can further organize and bold, highlight, etc. This is one of the very few apps I open every single day.

by Frank Simme

Take a moment and think of all the knowledge books hold. Now take another moment and imagine never reading, or at least avoiding it as much as possible, because of the lack of ability, or maybe just know how, to retain that information. Now imagine having a magical tool that pulls all the important things you read together and allows you to learn it and make it part of your life over time. Life Changing.

by Time To Train

this app is an absolute must have if you are a student or teacher. Not only do the daily emails keep your highlighted content from fading out of your memory—It’s fascinating to see what ideas and thoughts struck you as important at your time of reading. On several occasions now those highlights have helped to sharpen my understanding of how my perspective on topics have evolved.

Furthermore, I really appreciate how all of my highlights are in one place where I can actually review them quickly and organize and connect them for my research needs.

Finally,I would be remiss not to mention the incredible experience I have had with their customer service folks. This truly is a company that cares about its users. Plus, it’s a bootstrapped company… And how can you not cheer for a company who cares about growing at a pace that doesn’t outrun their ability to serve their users?

I’m a Fan!

Jason

by Braddmills

I held off for far too long. Everyone I follow has been talking about this app. I thought it was a useless gimmick. As a pastor, I write a minimum of 2,000 words per week. this app has helped me to incorporate relevant highlights from past reading material into my current thinking. In the process it has revolutionized how I highlight and take notes. this app has also become an indispensable source of illustrations. It’s a brilliant app. I purchased the full subscription before the end of my 30 day free trial in order to take full advantage of the integration with Obsidian. this app + Obsidian = 🤯

by RedbackSpider

I read a lot. And as part of my job as an Agile coach, there is a lot to read and absorb. But for too many years I would not retain what I read, or at least not to the level I would like. Enter this app. The basic function is that it presents a series of highlights from Kindle or iBooks or Instapaper, or ... every day so that you can be reminded of important ideas.

I’ve been using this app since it was a web app, not an iOS app. The web app was good; the iOS app is great in that the integrations appear to work more smoothly.

If you read to learn, this app will help. Recommended.

by Longhinid

I love both Readwise and this team that built it. The #1 most important thing for me is how quickly can I learn information BUT can I retain it and use it in daily life. this app helps me satisfy this and more. I use Readwise as a way to build my business, build my friendships, and myself as a person. It basically helps you cultivate the most important quotes and ideas in your life, and then feed them back to you in a way you control. Every morning I use it to remind myself of new things and send them out to friends and employees as conversation starters and reminders. It’s a 100x return on investment.

by Terceiro

I’ve used this app on the web and via email for years now, and I love it. Readwise makes it more convenient.

I read a mix of fiction and non-fiction, and my aim isn’t to learn or memorize anything. I just really enjoy rediscovering nuggets from books that sometimes I forgot that I’d read at all. Because it slurps in all my kindle highlights, I will occasionally find a highlight and a note from something I read a decade ago, and I’m transported back to what I was doing then. It’s a time machine!

I rarely write reviews, but this app deserves it. I’ve recommended the service to a dozen friends or more. Now that it’s an app, it’ll be even easier to do so.

by Boastoria

Readwise has answered for all many of my challenges in keeping track of information for the long term after I find it.

I am a huge Evernote fan and have been expecting book notes there once I’ve completed my reading. The problem of course is that the formatting is awful and I only then have access to my highlights and notes once the book in finished.

this app takes care of all that, and syncs my notes and highlights not only to Evernote, but also to its own system where it allows me to review what I’ve been learning and thinking about.

It also lets you design your highlights for “active recall” and choose how often something resurfaces.

Truly, one of my favorite apps. It helps me keep books articles and other highlights all in one place, which means when I go to use that information it’s easy to find, or I might have already remembered the information I need because they resurfaced it a few times for me and it’s already become a part of my knowledge.

Can’t recommend enough.

by MicheleGG

I beta-tested Readwise and found it to work very well for multiple purposes. First, it presents me with snippets of my book and article highlights to review daily, reminding me of key passages from books that I found meaningful or significant. Second, it allows me to collect highlights from multiple sources, including Kindle, Instapaper, Pocket, and Medium. Most importantly, I can then export these highlights to Evernote to save them in my “second brain.” That way, knowledge isn’t lost or dependent on my spotty memory.

There are others ways to do most of this manually, but this app makes it simple and convenient, and to me, that makes it worth the subscription cost.

by Kali0

If you dedicate time to a lot of non-fiction reading, this app is a necessary companion!

I love that this app resurfaces my highlights from all of my favorite books, and more than anything I love being able to organize my kindle highlights, iBook highlights, and even highlights from Medium. The ability to further manage my reading by creating tags and adjusting which books I want to resurface in daily reviews has been nothing short of amazing.

this app is the product I never knew I always needed. Highly recommend!!

by Johnco42

Every good book has a handful of gem like passages that shape my mind and inform my outlook on the world. this app reminds me of these things. I routinely re-experience profound passages that I thought I could never forget, but did. I thought I had a good memory until this app. It also functions as a nice replacement for mindlessly scrolling social media when you have a few minutes. Digging it.

by Kyleschen

This has become the only thing I make sure to read every morning. this app surfaces highlights you’ve made previously and gives you control to shape those (you can like, favorite, or discard quotes—and you can choose to not get quotes from certain books). It’s one of the few apps that helps support a healthy habit.

by PackyM

I have been using this app to capture and retain what I highlight in Kindle for almost a year, and it’s changed the way I remember everything I read. I have a bad memory, so I’m shocked at how much I remember after re-reading a highlight a couple of times. I want to start using it with physical books, but for now, I use this app every time I read on my Kindle or Kindle app.

by Danieldkang

this app has been an integral part of my morning routine for the past year. They make it so easy to capture anything you want to remember and has truly increased my desire to learn since I now know I won’t forget the important highlights.

The compounding impact of this app is priceless and the product has turned into something I look forward to gifting all my friends and family.

by Warrior4_JC

I found this app a month or so ago and it immediately skyrocketed to one of my favorite and most-used apps. I read a LOT and remember a little. this app had changed that and made reading not only enjoyable, but now that this app bubbles what I read and highlighted back up frequently, I actually remember and use what I've read previously. If you are even a light reader, you should check Readwise out. I can't recommend it enough.

by G From AZ

If you’ve ever wanted to remember anything from what you’ve read, and I imagine that includes just about everyone that has ever read anything, then this is a must have app. This is simply the best learning tool ever designed and built. No student in any disciple should be without Readwise. And aren’t we all students for life? And isn’t life for learning? GET Readwise!! Not only will you learn, you will actually enjoy what you’ve read even more!

by Tyson Junkers

I haven’t change my home screen in over a year. That is until last week when I found Readwise and promptly placed it in the top row. I read every morning, but always had trouble remembering what I read. Not anymore! With its daily review, this app reminds me of what I read every day and even quizzes me on highlights I want to master.