Highlight from the page
Select a sentence and Excerpt makes a highlight of it, with the audio of that passage attached.
Excerpt iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch
Highlight audiobooks like on Kindle.
Excerpt makes taking highlights from audiobooks feel as easy as highlighting an ebook. Press highlight to capture the last 30s you heard, to have it transcribed on device, and keep every highlight organized, editable, and ready to export, so you can find it again without hunting through the audio.
- Tap in the player, on the Watch, or ask Siri — the book carries on playing
- Transcription happens on the phone: nothing to upload, no cloud storage, and no limits
- Highlights can be sent to Readwise, Obsidian or exported as plain text
While you're listening
One tap grabs the last 30 seconds.
Save a timestamped highlight right from the player, then jump back to it later with the audio, transcript, and chapter context intact.
- Highlight straight from playback, nothing pauses: take one, then another
- Revisit fresh and archived highlights
- Open a highlight and the audio jumps back to that moment
- Drag the highlight's start and end, then re-transcribe if the wording is off
- Edit the highlight text directly to add context and notes
Phone in your pocket
Take a highlight without touching the phone.
Most listening happens with the phone in a pocket, so you don't have to open Excerpt to keep what you just heard. A short chime confirms the highlight, and the book carries on.
- Tap Take Highlight on the Lock Screen or in the Dynamic Island
- Triple-press your AirPods or other headphones
- Press the Action button, or add the control to Control Centre
- Tap the highlighter on your Apple Watch
- Ask Siri to “Take highlight in Excerpt”
Say goodbye to transcription errors
Get the author's exact words.
A transcription is a close guess at what the narrator said. Link the book's epub and Excerpt replaces each highlight's transcription with the exact passage from the ebook, in the author's own words and punctuation.
Transcribed
“Embarrassingly for our species as a moth laws remain state-of-the-art…”
From the ebook
“Embarrassingly for our species, Asimov’s laws remained state-of-the-art…”
LibriVox books tagged Matching ebook are linked for you. For your own books, the first match is free.
With the ebook linked
Read along while you listen.
Excerpt shows the sentence being narrated and moves the text on with the audio. On iPad the page sits beside the player; on iPhone it takes the place of the artwork.
Move the edges
Stretch a highlight back to where the sentence starts, or trim it, on the page.
Sentence or paragraph
Follow the narration a sentence at a time, or a paragraph at a time.
Into your notes
Send highlights to your notes.
Share a book's highlights as Markdown and Obsidian opens the file as it is: a heading for each chapter, and each highlight as a quote.
# Highlights ## Chapter 1 > It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
- Share a book's highlights as Markdown, HTML, CSV or JSON
- Archive a highlight and it goes to Readwise, with a link back to it
- Export from a Shortcut, and save the file into your notes folder
Automation
Ask Siri, or put it in a Shortcut.
The jobs you'd rather not do by hand are Shortcuts actions: take a highlight, export a book's highlights, back the library up, count what you've kept. The same jobs are Siri phrases.
- Take a highlight, play or open a book, by voice
- Export highlights, or back the whole library up
- Feed books and highlights into your own shortcuts
Finding it again
Search every highlight you've ever saved.
All your highlights from every book live in a private, searchable vault. Find any passage by keyword in seconds — on device, with nothing sent to a server.
- Full-text search across your entire highlight library
- Results from every book in one place
- Stays private and on device
Discover
Download straight from LibriVox.
Bring public-domain audiobooks into your library without hunting around in browsers and folders. Search by title or author and the book arrives with its chapters in place. Where a Project Gutenberg ebook exists, Excerpt links it automatically.
Built-in search
Find free public-domain titles from inside the app.
Library-ready import
Move from discovery to listening and highlighting in one flow.
Tidying up
Fix the chapters, then export the book again.
Editing a book is easier while listening. Clean up the book itself: fix chapter boundaries, update metadata, swap out the cover, and export a tidier audiobook file for long-term use.
- Split, merge, add and rename chapter marks
- Correct the title, the author and the cover art
- Export your edited book as a chaptered m4b file, no data lock-in
Also in the box
The rest of the toolbox.
Apple Watch capture
The Watch app is a remote, not a player: audio still comes out of the iPhone. It gives you the book you're on, skip controls and a Take highlight button, and it costs nothing.
Readwise sync
Archive a highlight and it goes to Readwise with the book, the author and a link back to the moment.
Import anything local
Import m4b, m4a, mp3 or a zip of audio files and Excerpt to join them into a chaptered book.
Transcription and the Vault stay on the iPhone; no Excerpt account, nothing to sign in to.
Highlights leave as text, Markdown, HTML, CSV or JSON; books as m4b.
Capture on the wrist, read it on the phone or the iPad.
Common questions
Can I use my Audible books?
Amazon locks their books with DRM so no external players can read them. We can't officially recommend circumventing it, but (if it's legal in your jurisdiction) many people use the free tool Libation to be able to use their books in other players.
Is Excerpt free?
Yes. There is no account, and no limit on books, highlights, exports or automations. Excerpt Premium is one optional yearly subscription: it links an ebook to every one of your books, and adds Whisper transcription and AI clean-up for the books that have no ebook. Your first ebook match is free, and so is every LibriVox book.
Can I import from my own server?
Yes. In Settings you can add your Audiobookshelf server and pull books straight from it.
How do I get my highlights out?
Archive them into Readwise with a link back to the in-app highlight. Or export a book's set as Markdown, HTML, CSV or JSON.
Can I back up my library?
Yes. Excerpt keeps versioned local backups automatically, and a Shortcuts action writes one wherever you like.
What can Shortcuts do?
30+ actions: open or play a book, take a highlight, find, count and export highlights, back up the library, and read your listening stats.
What can I say to Siri?
"Continue book in Excerpt", "Play ⟨book⟩ in Excerpt", "Take highlight in Excerpt", "Open ⟨book⟩ in Excerpt".
Do I need the epub?
No. Excerpt highlights the audio on its own, using transcription. Linking the book's epub replaces each transcription with the author's exact words, and adds Read Along and highlights made by selecting text on the page.
Keep what you hear.
Excerpt is on the App Store for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch.