How to Export Kobo Highlights to Notion

Notion is a common home for reading notes, but Kobo has no built-in way to send highlights there. This guide covers the manual routes people use today, then walks through Kobo Note Up's direct, one-click Notion export — including exactly what data leaves your device and why.

Manual ways to get Kobo highlights into Notion

Before any dedicated export tool, most readers use one of these:

Copy-paste from the Kobo device or app. Works for a handful of highlights, but doesn't scale past a few books and loses any formatting or chapter structure.
Export to Markdown, then import into Notion. Notion has a native Markdown importer (Import → Text & Markdown from the Notion sidebar). If you already have a Markdown export of your Kobo highlights — from Kobo Note Up or another tool — dragging that file into Notion's importer turns headings and bullet points into native Notion blocks automatically.
Kobo's official export, then reformat by hand. Only realistic if your library is entirely Kobo Store purchases with short highlights — see the Kobo export troubleshooting guide for why this breaks down for sideloaded books.

All three manual routes share the same weakness: they scale with how much patience you have, not with how many books you own. Retyping or reformatting highlights for a handful of books is tedious but doable; doing it for a library of fifty books is not a realistic way to spend an afternoon.

The built-in option: Kobo Note Up's Notion export

Kobo Note Up can export a book's highlights and notes directly into a Notion page, without you touching a Markdown file at all. Here is exactly how it works, step by step.

Load your Kobo library into Kobo Note Up as usual (connect your Kobo via USB, select its folder in the browser).
Open a book, then choose "Connect & Export to Notion" from the export menu on that book's notes page.
The first time, you'll be sent to Notion to authorize the connection (standard Notion OAuth). Notion returns you to Kobo Note Up once you approve access.
Pick an existing Notion page from the searchable list that appears — your export is created as a new sub-page underneath the page you choose.
Kobo Note Up builds the Notion page from your highlights, notes, and (if present) handwriting-annotation images, and shows a progress indicator while it uploads.

Repeat the same flow for any other book you want in Notion — each export lands as its own sub-page, so you end up with one Notion page per book underneath whichever parent page you picked, similar to how a bookshelf works.

What the resulting Notion page looks like

The export mirrors the same structure Kobo Note Up shows you in the browser: the book title and author at the top, followed by your chapters in order. Each highlight becomes its own block, any note you attached appears as a quote directly beneath the highlight it belongs to, and handwriting-annotation images are inserted inline as image blocks rather than left as a link. Nothing is reformatted or summarized — it's the same content you see in the app, just laid out as native Notion blocks instead of a Markdown file.

What actually gets transmitted, and where

This is the one export path on Kobo Note Up that isn't fully local, so it's worth being precise about it. Local Markdown export (used elsewhere on this site) runs entirely in your browser using SQL.js, a WebAssembly build of SQLite — nothing is uploaded. Notion's API, by contrast, requires server-side OAuth and authenticated calls, so a pure browser-to-browser export isn't possible.

When you export to Notion, your browser sends the book's highlights, notes, and any handwriting images to Kobo Note Up's server, which forwards them to Notion's API on your behalf. That content passes through the server in-flight — it is not written to a database there. Your Notion access token is kept in an encrypted, httpOnly browser cookie that expires after seven days, not in server-side storage. For the complete, unfiltered breakdown of this and every other data flow on the site, see the privacy page.

Frequently asked questions

Does exporting to Notion send my highlights to a third-party server?

Yes, and it's the one flow on this site where that happens. Notion requires a server-side OAuth connection and authenticated API calls, so a pure browser-to-browser export isn't possible the way local Markdown export is. Your highlights, notes, and any images pass through Kobo Note Up's server on their way to Notion's API — they are forwarded, not stored in a database. Full details are on the privacy page.

Can I export my whole library to Notion at once?

Not yet — Notion export currently works one book at a time, from that book's notes page. If you want your entire library in one place quickly, exporting the whole library to a single combined Markdown file and importing that into Notion is faster today.

Do handwriting annotations from a Kobo stylus come through?

Yes. If you own a Kobo with stylus support, the Notion export uploads your handwritten annotation images alongside the text highlights, so they appear in the resulting Notion page.

Do I need a Notion account or a paid Notion plan?

You need a free Notion account and at least one existing page to export into — Kobo Note Up creates the export as a new sub-page underneath a page you choose. No paid Notion plan is required.

Related guides

Ready to try it? Open Kobo Note Up — it's free, open source, and the Markdown export path never leaves your browser.