How to Export Highlights and Notes from Libby (OverDrive): The 2026 Guide

Quick Answer: Libby added a genuine export feature in a February 2026 update. Open a title's Reading Journey screen, tap Actions, then Export Reading Data. Choose Table for a shareable, bookmarkable web page, or Spreadsheet for a file saved to your device — with separate options for Bookmarks and Highlights (highlights include any notes you wrote). The export captures highlight text, notes, color, chapter/location, the date you made each one, and your circulation dates (when you borrowed and returned the title). Crucially, it still works after the loan has expired, since library books disappear from your device but Libby keeps a record of your reading activity tied to the title. The one limitation: it is a per-title export, not a whole-library bulk export, so if you have highlighted twenty library books you will be doing this twenty times.

If you use Libby to borrow ebooks and audiobooks from your public library, you have probably run into the platform's biggest historical weakness: once a loan expires, the book vanishes from your shelf and, for years, so did any sense that your notes were safe. That fear was not unreasonable. Libby did not offer a real export tool until recently, and most readers who wanted their highlights out of the app resorted to manually screenshotting the "Notes & Highlights" screen before a loan ran out. As of the app's February 2026 update, that workaround is no longer necessary. Libby (and its parent platform OverDrive) now ship an actual export function, and almost no one has written about it yet. Here is exactly how it works.

Why This Matters More for Libby Than for Kindle or Apple Books

Kindle and Apple Books highlights live with a book you own (or at least a book that stays in your account indefinitely). Libby highlights live with a loan — a title you borrowed from a public library for two or three weeks, after which OverDrive's licensing terms require the book to disappear from your device. For years, this created a specific anxiety unique to library ebook readers: annotate a library book, then watch the clock, because once the loan ends you assumed your notes went with it.

That assumption turned out to be only half true. The book's content disappears (as it must, under library lending agreements), but Libby retains your Reading Journey — a per-title record of your activity, including every highlight, bookmark, and note you made — even after the title returns to the library. The new export feature is built directly on top of that retained record, which is what makes it usable well after the fact. If you finished a library audiobook three months ago and just remembered you wanted that one highlight for a book club discussion, you can very likely still get it.

Step-by-Step: How to Export Your Libby Highlights and Notes

Step 1: Open the Title's Reading Journey Screen

Libby organizes your annotation history per book, not in one master list, so you start from the specific title you want to export.

• For a title you currently have on loan: Go to your Shelf, tap Manage Loan on the title, then tap Reading Journey.
• For a Magazine Rack item: Go to Shelf, tap the status button on the title, then tap Reading Journey.
• For any title you have ever borrowed (including returned ones): Find the title's cover in your library's catalog and tap it, then tap Reading Journey from the title detail screen.

That last option is the one that matters for retroactive exports. You do not need the loan to still be active — you just need to be able to find the title in the catalog again.

Step 2: Open Actions and Choose Export Reading Data

From the Reading Journey screen, tap Actions, then select Export Reading Data. This is the option that did not exist before Libby's February 2026 update, and it is the single most useful addition to the app for anyone who takes notes on library books.

Step 3: Choose Table or Spreadsheet

Libby gives you two output formats, and they serve different purposes:

• Table: Generates a web page version of your reading data that you can bookmark in your browser or share with someone else via a link. This is the fastest option if you just want to glance at everything or send a friend your notes on a shared book club read.
• Spreadsheet: Saves a file directly to your device. Within Spreadsheet, you choose between Bookmarks (your saved bookmark locations) and Highlights (your highlighted passages, which includes any written notes attached to them). This is the format you want if your goal is to move the data into another tool — a note-taking app, a spreadsheet for a syllabus, or a spaced-repetition system.

If your only goal is portability — getting the highlights somewhere you actually control — pick Spreadsheet and Highlights.

Step 4: Check What's in the Export

The exported highlights data includes:

• The highlighted text itself
• Any note you wrote attached to that highlight
• The highlight's color (if you used Libby's color-coding)
• The chapter and location within the book
• The date you made the highlight
• Your circulation dates for the title — when you borrowed it and when it was returned

That circulation-date field is a small but genuinely useful detail. It means your export doubles as a record of when you read something, which is useful if you are trying to reconstruct a reading timeline for a course, a review, or your own records.

Step 5: Do This Per Title

There is no library-wide "export everything" button. Libby's export lives inside each title's Reading Journey screen, so if you want your highlights from every book you have borrowed this year, you will need to repeat Steps 1 through 4 for each one. This is the feature's one real limitation, and it means the export is best used deliberately — right after you finish a book, or in a periodic sweep of the titles you know you annotated — rather than as a single end-of-year archive task.

What This Looks Like After a Loan Has Already Expired

This is the scenario the feature was clearly built for, and it is worth walking through explicitly because it is the part most readers assume will not work.

Say you borrowed an audiobook six weeks ago, made a dozen highlights and a few written notes while listening, and the loan expired at the end of the lending period. The book no longer plays. It is off your shelf. According to Libby's own documentation, your Reading Journey for that title — and the export built on it — still works "even after it's returned". Navigate back to the title through your library's catalog (search for it if it is not already in your recent history), tap into Reading Journey, and run the export exactly as described above. Your notes and highlights are still there, because they were never stored inside the book file — they were stored as a separate record tied to your reading activity on that title.

This is a meaningful design change from how most readers assumed Libby worked, and it is the reason this update deserves more attention than it has gotten. For a deeper look at the feature straight from OverDrive, see their Export Notes and Highlights resource.

Libby vs. Kindle vs. Apple Books: How Export Actually Compares

	Libby (OverDrive)	Kindle	Apple Books
Native export exists?	Yes, since Feb 2026	Yes, via "Your Highlights" web page or My Clippings.txt	Limited — no official bulk export; relies on syncing or workarounds
Export scope	Per-title only, no bulk option	Per-book on the web tool; My Clippings.txt covers everything on a jailbroken/USB-connected device	Per-book via copy/paste or third-party tools
Export formats	Table (web page) or Spreadsheet (Bookmarks or Highlights)	Plain text file or HTML table (via Kindle's "Your Highlights" page)	No standard format; typically copy-paste or iCloud-based workarounds
Works after the item is "returned" or removed?	Yes — Reading Journey data persists after a library loan expires	N/A (you own the file, so this scenario does not apply the same way)	N/A, but re-downloading a purchased book usually restores highlights
Includes notes, not just highlight text?	Yes	Yes	Limited — notes attached to highlights sync but are not always included in export workarounds
Includes borrow/return or purchase dates?	Yes — circulation dates included	No	No

The practical takeaway: Libby's export is now more structured in some ways than Apple Books' export situation, specifically because it explicitly accounts for the library-lending lifecycle (circulation dates, post-return access) that Kindle and Apple Books do not need to handle. Its main disadvantage is the lack of a bulk, whole-library export — something Kindle's export workflow has partially solved for years through My Clippings.txt on directly connected devices. If you also keep highlights on other borrowed or non-Kindle platforms, the same native-versus-manual divide plays out elsewhere — our walkthroughs for exporting Nook highlights, exporting Google Play Books highlights, and exporting Everand (Scribd) highlights all cover platforms that sit at the harder, no-native-export end of the spectrum.

What to Actually Do With the Export

Getting your highlights out of Libby is the easy part. The harder problem — the one that determines whether any of this was worth doing — is what happens to that spreadsheet after you download it.

Most exported highlight files end up in one of two places: a folder you never open again, or a note-taking app where they sit as an unreviewed wall of text. Neither produces retention. The research on memory is consistent on this point: highlighting and re-reading are weak encoding strategies on their own. What actually works is spaced retrieval — being asked to recall a highlight, in your own words, at increasing intervals after you first captured it. A spreadsheet of Libby highlights is raw material, not a study system.

This is the gap Chapterly is built to close. Rather than letting your exported Libby highlights become another dead file, you can bring them into a system that resurfaces them on a spaced schedule, prompts you to explain them back in your own words, and lets an AI tutor push on the passages you are fuzzy on — turning a one-time export into an ongoing review habit instead of a folder you forget by next month.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I export my Libby highlights after the book has already been returned to the library?

Yes. Libby's Reading Journey data for a title persists after the loan expires, and the export feature works on that retained data. Navigate to the title through your library's catalog (rather than your active Shelf), open Reading Journey, and tap Actions > Export Reading Data as usual. The book's content is gone, but your highlights, notes, and bookmarks are not.

What is the difference between the Table and Spreadsheet export options in Libby?

Table generates a web page version of your reading data that you can bookmark in a browser or share via a link with someone else. Spreadsheet saves a file directly to your device and gives you a further choice between exporting Bookmarks or Highlights (Highlights includes any notes you wrote). Choose Spreadsheet if you want to move the data into another app; choose Table if you just want a quick, shareable view.

Does Libby's export include my written notes, or just the highlighted text?

It includes both. When you choose the Spreadsheet format and select Highlights, the export contains the highlighted passage itself plus any note you attached to it, along with the color, chapter or location, and the date you made the highlight.

Can I export highlights from my entire Libby library at once?

No. As of the 2026 update, Libby's export is per-title only — you export from a specific book's Reading Journey screen, not from a library-wide dashboard. If you want highlights from several books, you need to repeat the export process for each title individually.

Where do I find the Export Reading Data option in Libby?

Open the title's Reading Journey screen (via Shelf > Manage Loan > Reading Journey for current loans, or by tapping the title's cover in your library's catalog and selecting Reading Journey for any title you have ever borrowed), then tap Actions and select Export Reading Data. From there, choose Table or Spreadsheet.

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Exporting your Libby highlights is the easy part — Chapterly turns that exported spreadsheet into a spaced-review habit so your library reading actually sticks. Try it free.