Converts a Kindle My Clippings.txt file into an mbox-format
mailbox, one message per highlight, for import into DEVONthink or any
mbox-compatible mail client.
Pull your My Clippings.txt file off your Kindle, then run:
$ cargo run -- <clippings.txt> <output.mbox>Rerunning with a subsequent version of the clippings file will add only new clippings; duplicates will be skipped.
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Clippings have deterministic message IDs. DEVONthink will skip message IDs it's already imported, so the mailbox is safe to re-import as it grows over time.
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Adjacent and overlapping highlights from the same book are merged into the longest contiguous passage.
- No support for Kindle notes, which will be skipped with a warning.
Each highlight becomes a message with:
- From: author's name (or the document's title)
- Subject: citation and page
- Date: when the highlight was made
- Body: the highlighted text
From kindle@clippings2mbox Thu Sep 18 20:46:43 2025
From: =?UTF-8?Q?Karl_Ove_Knausgaard?= <kindle@clippings2mbox>
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2025 20:46:43 +0000
Subject: =?UTF-8?Q?Knausgaard,_"The_Morning_Star",_309?=
Message-ID: <9af5bd567f2bb98d157aa10aac09d5931401e6b0@clippings2mbox>
X-Kindle-Location-Start: 5115
X-Kindle-Location-End: 5117
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Status: O
Content-Length: 199
Lines: 1
I thought to myself, or pictured in my mind—for thoughts come as both pictures and words, a bit like light, which comes as both particles and waves, one could imagine, as indeed I had, many times.