Export your Audible Clips: A Step-by-Step Guide to Saving Audible Bookmarks in Obsidian

I am big fan of building a second brain by collecting all knowledge in one place. I use Obsidian for my note-taking system. However, there are no available tools to save audible bookmarks directly to any note-taking system. After doing some research, I have discovered a method for saving my Audible bookmarks to Obsidian. In this article, I will explain how I do this.

Save bookmarks in audible

To save bookmarks in Audible, you can use the audio clip feature. Audible will automatically save a 30-second clip of the highlighted section that you want to bookmark. If desired, you can adjust the length of the clip by clicking the preview button after clipping. Additionally, you have the option to enter a title for the saved clip. While not necessary, adding a title can be helpful in quickly locating a bookmark when you plan to transcribe and save the clip as text.

Install whisper obsidian plugin

Install the Whisper obsidian plugin and configure it. It uses open AI’s whisper model to convert speech into written notes.

Save bookmarks to Obsidian

1. Open the note in Obsidian where you want to save the bookmarks.
2. Launch the Whisper Obsidian plugin audio controls or press the hotkey Alt + Q to launch it.
3. Open the Audible app, select the book, and click on “Clips & Bookmarks” to browse through your bookmarks. To make this easier, I usually use Obsidian on my computer and Audible on my phone.
4. Click the “Play Clip” button to listen to the clip you want to save as a bookmark.
5. After the clip ends, stop recording or press Alt + Q again to stop.
6. The text transcription of the audio clip will be automatically inserted at your current cursor position in Obsidian.
7. Repeat these steps for each audio clip you want to save in Obsidian.

Other methods I considered

I tried using a Python tool Audible Bookmark Extractor to export my Audible clips to a CSV file. However, I encountered some problems during the process.

Firstly, there were some books that failed to convert from audio book format to MP3 format. This caused issues with exporting the clips.

Even when the tool successfully exported the clips, I had doubts about whether it accurately transcribed them from the correct starting and ending positions in the Audible book.

Additionally, it was difficult for me to associate the exported text entries with their corresponding Audible clips because the clip title was not included in the export.

What I like with my solution

• You can export only the bookmarks you want from Audible clips.
• This method works perfectly, even when playing the audio clip at 1.5x speed.
• The accuracy of the audio-to-text transcription is exceptional.
• It is seamlessly integrated with Obsidian.

What are the problems with my solution

• Saving audible bookmarks to Obsidian is not fully automated. It requires manual steps to play each audio clip that we want to save.
• This process can be quite time-consuming since we have to wait for each audio clip to play. For example, if we have clipped 2 hours of bookmarks, it will take more than 2 hours to save them.

Final thoughts

While I admit that this method may not be perfect, it is the best solution I have discovered during my research. Please leave a comment if you have found a better way to export Audible bookmarks.

Please give this method a try and inform me if you are interested in an even more improved solution. I am willing to continue my research.

Update on May, 2024:

I found a better solution for exporting audible highlights using PodQueue and Snipd. Please refer to this article for detailed instructions and other alternative solutions.

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