In my series on note-taking apps, I have shown various ways to organize your notes. Now there’s an app I’d like to introduce: Readwise.
Readwise addresses a problem that we may all have: We have already made notes in various places and now switch from app to app. Wouldn’t it be convenient if we could now bring all these notes together in one place?
One App to Rule Them All
Readwise automatically collects all your notes from various sources. Particularly interesting is that notes from e-books are also captured.
This is invaluable for learning: If you like to use electronic learning materials, you can now combine your notes from the Amazon and Apple iBooks universe. Common research tools and read-it-later apps also serve as sources.
Particularly clever is the sync with Hypothes.is. With this service, you can annotate the web – if you have the Hypothesis plugin installed in your browser, you can make notes on any website and share them with others.
Using Collected Notes
But Readwise goes even further: once you’ve collected the notes, you can further annotate them in Readwise (in the Pro plan), assign tags, and pass your notes on to other apps like Evernote and Notion. This closes the note-taking circle.
The emails that you can have Readwise send you are also useful for learning: you are reminded of notes at regular intervals and can better remember topics over time.
Data Protection?
I would like to add a critical word about Readwise: The app is quite new, and for what it does (accessing my most personal notes), I still have too little information about data protection. Of course, Readwise writes all the right things in the terms and conditions (“Your data belongs to you”), but I’m still a bit suspicious: firstly, there are some trackers installed on the website that trigger my (strictly set) ad blocker, and secondly, the sync with Kindle requires an extension that does something in the background…
At least the business model is clearly focused on paid subscriptions, so I’m paying with currency, not primarily with data.
