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Does anyone know of an alternative to Readwise?

I’m looking for a solution to easily keep bookmarks digitally of physical books I read. Previously I would type up the just I was wanting to save into a Google Keep note, but that is fairly disruptive to my reading time and really slows things down.

I just found Readwise which allows you to take a picture of the page and it OCR scans the page instantly and allows you to quickly drag and select the text you want to save.

Their other feature of aggregating your bookmarks from other sources (Kindle, Instapaper, et al) are nice, but I don’t use those apps very much. Really the primary feature I’m looking for is the quick bookmarker for physical books.

Readwise is essentially $5/month (slightly cheaper annually) which is more than I want to spend on something like this. I only read one or two books a month, so the price is hard for me to justify. I would much rather something with a cheaper subscription, or perhaps a one time purchase where the data is synced to an existing notes app like Keep.

Even outside of using an app like this, I’m curious how those of you who read physical books keep track of notes and bookmarks, if you do at all.

uberrice ,

With Google lens you can also take a picture and select to copy paste

calculuschild ,

What do you mean by keeping bookmarks? You mean like recording your place in the book so you can continue where you left off? I’m not understanding the benefit of that over a normal paper bookmark?

TheFunkyMonk ,
@TheFunkyMonk@lemmy.world avatar

I think they mean highlights/quotes. That’s what Readwise does, at least.

ragica ,
@ragica@lemmy.ml avatar

Never heard of Readwise. Interesting concept.

Not going to be nearly as convenient, but you can use google lens (part of Google assistant I think, or stand alone app) to quickly OCR a page into selectable text which then could be copied into a notes app or something. You’d have manually add a reference.

Anyhow maybe you can figure out a workflow using Google lens for the OCR copy/past part, that isn’t too onerous, if no other solutions appear. Let us know! .

bird OP ,

This is a great solution! I was searching around a bit more and couldn’t find any other apps doing this. I think I’m going to just create a Keep note for each book I read, then I can use Google lens to scan the text and copy what I want into the note and add the page number for reference.

ManosTheHandsOfFate ,
@ManosTheHandsOfFate@lemmy.world avatar

Years ago my mom cross stitched me a bookmark that reads “A good book is a good friend.” That’s what I use.

poppy ,

I believe OP is trying to save specific lines/parts of the text, not literally bookmark their place in the book. Similar to how on Kindle you can “highlight” passages and it’ll save a catalogue of all your snippet. OP has previously been typing up the parts they want to “highlight” from a physical book but recently discovered an app that lets you scan the page and just quickly copy the scanned text to save, but isn’t fond of the fee.

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