ReadStor - A CLI for Apple Books annotations

ReadStor is a simple CLI for exporting user-generated data from Apple Books. The goal of this project is to facilitate data-migration from Apple Books to any other platform. Currently, Apple Books provides no simple way to do this. Exporting is possible but not ideal and often times truncates long annotations.

Version 0.1.x contained the core functionality: (1) save all annotations and notes as JSON (2) render them via a custom (or the default) template using the Tera syntax or (3) backup the current Apple Books databases.

Note that this repository is a heavy work-in-progress and things are bound to change.

Usage

See the documentation for usage information.

Installation

Using Homebrew

brew tap tnahs/formulas
brew install readstor

readstor --version

Using Cargo

cargo install readstor

Version Support

Apple Books' database schema can change with any update. The following versions have been verified as working. This is an ever-growing list, if a version isn't listed, it doesn't necessarily mean it isn't supported.

• macOS Ventura 13.x
  • Apple Books 5.0
• macOS Monterey 12.x
  • Apple Books 4.4
  • Apple Books 4.2
  • Apple Books 4.1
• macOS Big Sur 11.x
  • Apple Books 3.2

Note that libraries that are synced with iCloud Drive are not supported!