How to Export Highlights and Notes from Google Play Books
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Quick Answer: Google Play Books has three real export paths, and none of them are surfaced anywhere obvious in the app. The most reliable is the auto-backup: on the web at play.google.com/books, open a book, click the three-dot More menu, choose Save annotations to Google Drive, and toggle it on — this creates a per-book file in a "Play Books Notes" folder in your Drive, and it keeps updating as you add annotations (after you make at least one new highlight, note, or bookmark to trigger the first sync). For a one-time pull instead of ongoing sync, open a book's Annotations panel, click More > Export annotations, and pick specific collections or highlight colors to export as a file. A third option, Google Takeout, lets you export your whole Google Play Books annotation history at once — but it truncates highlight text past whatever character limit the book's publisher allows for copying, so long highlights can arrive clipped. For most readers, the Google Drive auto-backup is the best default because it is the only method that keeps working automatically after the initial setup.
If you read on Google Play Books — often because you bought an ebook directly from the Play Store, or you're on Android and it's the path of least resistance — you have probably wondered where your highlights actually go. There is no highlights export button on the home screen, no obvious settings toggle, and unlike Kindle's "Your Highlights" web page, Google does not maintain a single dashboard listing every highlight you have ever made. The functionality exists, but it is scattered across three different surfaces, each with different tradeoffs. This guide covers all three.
Why Google Play Books Highlights Are Easy to Lose Track Of
Kindle centralizes your highlights on a single web page (read.amazon.com/notebook) covering your entire library. Google Play Books does the opposite: annotations live per-book, inside that book's own Drive document, with no single "everything I've ever highlighted" view. This is workable once you know where to look, but it means most readers who switch from Kindle to Play Books assume the export capability simply does not exist — it is just not where they expect it to be.
The other wrinkle specific to Play Books: publishers set a maximum percentage of a book's text that can be copied or exported, the same restriction that governs copy-paste inside the reader. If you highlight past that limit, exports (particularly through Takeout) can truncate the highlighted passage rather than reject it outright, which is worth knowing before you assume an export is complete.
Method 1: Auto-Backup to Google Drive (Best for Ongoing Use)
This is the closest thing Play Books has to Kindle's automatic highlight sync, and it is the method worth setting up if you read on Play Books regularly.
On the Web
- Go to play.google.com/books and open any book in your library.
- Click the three-dot More menu in the top right.
- Select Save annotations to Google Drive.
- Toggle on Save annotations to Google Drive.
- Optionally click Edit folder name to rename the destination folder (it defaults to "Play Books Notes"), then click Save.
On Android
- Tap your profile icon in the top right, then Play Books settings.
- Under General, tap Save notes, highlights and bookmarks in Google Drive.
- Check the box to enable it.
- Customize the folder name if you want, then tap Done.
The catch on both platforms: turning the setting on does not immediately back up existing annotations. You need to add at least one new highlight, note, or bookmark to that specific book to trigger the first sync. After that, all of your past and future annotations for that book save automatically, and stay updated as you keep reading.
Each book gets its own file inside the "Play Books Notes" Drive folder, editable like any Google Doc — though if you add more annotations later, Play Books overwrites the file, so manual edits you made directly in Drive will be lost on the next sync.
Method 2: One-Time Annotations Export (Best for a Single Book, Right Now)
If you just finished a book and want that book's highlights without setting up ongoing sync, use the direct export instead.
- Open the book on play.google.com/books.
- Click Annotations at the top of the reader.
- Click More, then Export annotations.
- Choose which collections or highlight colors to include (useful if you color-code by theme or priority).
- Name the export and save it.
This produces a standalone file for that book only, without turning on continuous Drive syncing — a better fit if you only occasionally want your highlights out of the app rather than for every book you read.
Method 3: Google Takeout (Best for a Bulk, One-Time Pull)
Takeout is Google's account-wide data export tool, and it includes Play Books alongside every other Google service.
- Go to takeout.google.com.
- Click Deselect all, then check the box for Google Play Books.
- Choose your preferred file format and delivery method.
- Click Create export.
Takeout is the only method that pulls your entire Play Books annotation history in one pass rather than book by book, which makes it appealing for a first-time bulk export. The tradeoff is the truncation issue mentioned above: because Takeout respects each publisher's copy-limit setting, sufficiently long highlights can come back cut off rather than complete, so treat a Takeout export as a good starting inventory rather than a guaranteed word-for-word archive.
Google Play Books vs. Kindle vs. Apple Books vs. Libby: Export Compared
| Google Play Books | Kindle | Apple Books | Libby (OverDrive) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Native export exists? | Yes — three separate methods | Yes, via "Your Highlights" web page or My Clippings.txt | Limited — no official bulk export | Yes, since Feb 2026 |
| Single dashboard for all highlights? | No — per-book files, or one Takeout archive | Yes — read.amazon.com/notebook | No | No — per-title Reading Journey |
| Automatic ongoing sync? | Yes, once Drive backup is enabled per book | Yes | Partial, via iCloud sync | No — export is manual, per title |
| Risk of truncated text? | Yes, via Takeout, if past the publisher's copy limit | Rare | Rare | No |
| Works after you "return" or remove the book? | Yes — annotations are stored separately from the book file | N/A (you own the file) | Usually, if you re-download a purchase | Yes — Reading Journey persists after a loan ends |
The practical pattern across all four platforms is the same: publishers and platforms are increasingly good at retaining your annotations independent of the book file itself, but none of them make retrieving that data particularly obvious. If you also read on other platforms, see our guides to exporting Kindle highlights, exporting Apple Books highlights, exporting Libby highlights, exporting Nook highlights, or exporting Everand (Scribd) highlights — or the general-purpose guide to exporting highlights from any reading app if your platform isn't listed here.
What to Actually Do With the Export
Getting your annotations out of Google Play Books solves a data-ownership problem, not a memory problem. A Google Doc full of highlights, or a Takeout archive sitting in a downloads folder, is not meaningfully different from highlights trapped in the app — in both cases, nothing is prompting you to actually revisit and use what you saved. The research on retention is consistent here: passively re-reading a highlight does little for long-term memory. What works is spaced retrieval practice — being prompted to recall an idea, in your own words, at increasing intervals after you first captured it.
This is the gap Chapterly closes. Import your exported Google Play Books highlights and Chapterly turns them into a review system: your highlights resurface on a schedule tuned to when you're about to forget them, an AI tutor can discuss the passages you're still fuzzy on, and the export you just made stops being a one-time archive and starts being an ongoing habit.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is the export button in Google Play Books?
There isn't one obvious button — the functionality is split across three places: the More > Save annotations to Google Drive toggle (per book, ongoing), the Annotations > More > Export annotations option (per book, one-time), and Google Takeout (account-wide, one-time, at takeout.google.com).
Do I need to turn on Drive backup for every book individually?
Yes. The Drive auto-backup setting is per-book — turning it on while reading one title does not retroactively or automatically apply to the rest of your library. You need to enable it (and trigger a first sync with a new annotation) separately for each book you want backed up going forward.
Why did some of my highlighted text come back cut off in my export?
This usually happens with a Google Takeout export. Google Play Books respects each publisher's copy/export limit — a percentage of the book's total text that can be copied out — and if a highlight exceeds what's left of that allowance, the exported text can be truncated rather than fully included. The Drive auto-backup and the one-time Annotations export are generally more reliable for capturing full highlight text.
Can I get all my Google Play Books highlights in one place, across every book?
Only through Google Takeout, which pulls your entire Play Books annotation history in a single archive. The Drive auto-backup and the per-book Annotations export both work one book at a time, saved as separate files.
How does Chapterly help with highlights exported from Google Play Books?
Chapterly is a nonfiction reading superapp built around AI-driven active reading and spaced repetition. Once you've exported your Google Play Books highlights through any of the three methods above, Chapterly turns that static export into a review system — resurfacing highlights on a spaced schedule and letting an AI tutor discuss the material with you, instead of leaving your notes to sit unreviewed in a Drive folder.
Exporting your Google Play Books highlights is the easy part — Chapterly turns that export into a spaced-review habit so what you read actually sticks. Try it free.