How to export notes from iBooks

[signinstranger]

With .epub support coming in Scrivener 2.0, some users here might be tempted to use iBooks on the iPad for proof-reading manuscripts. Notes and bookmarks have been recently introduced to iBooks in an update, so we’re almost there. Well, almost. For some stupid reason, Apple decided against an export feature for notes in iTunes.
So you can sync notes and bookmarks across multiple iDevices, but you can’t read them on your mac.

My guess is that the notes are stored in binary form somewhere in your iTunes Library file, which is in Apple’s closed proprietary ITL format. There might be third-party software to read this file (?), but I haven’t heard of a tool that deals with notes and bookmark data.

The good news is, that (provided that you have the right tools) the data can be accessed directly on the iPad or iPhone via USB connection. iBooks’ bookmarks and annotations are stored in the iOS file system in /Books/iBooksData2.plist. You will obviously need a third-party tool like PhoneView ($20) or DiskAid ($10) to copy the file, but no Jailbreak is necessary.

The plist format is really simple, so if anyone’s interested, I might give it a try and build a tiny tool to convert the data into something that can be reimported into Scrivener.

[Barry]

@signinstranger

The plist format is really simple, so if anyone’s interested, I might give it a try and build a tiny tool to convert the data into something that can be reimported into Scrivener.

Wow, that would actually be amazing! Has anyone put this together?

[SteveJ]

@signinstranger

The plist format is really simple, so if anyone’s interested, I might give it a try and build a tiny tool to convert the data into something that can be reimported into Scrivener.

Oh, heck yeah. That would be wonderful.

Steve

[signinstranger]

This is what the output currently looks like:

Book ID: 372822058

Note: a bear of no brain at all

Text: thinking

Context: Pooh was walking round and round in a circle, thinking of something else, and when Piglet called to him, he just went on walking.

[Barry]

Wow, that’s terrific! Can there be a way to export notes from a specific title, or will it export every note from every title?

[signinstranger]

You can download an experimental version here. It’s nothing fancy, just a simple viewer for the notes.

[nomad1]

Wow, thanks a lot! Finally, I can start annotating documents in iBooks!

Yesterday, goodreader introduced pdf-annotations, but you cannot export them to a text file. So what’s the point then?

So now I’m happy about your ibooks plist viewer app!