Readwise to Obsidian export settings

These are settings for the Readwise-to-Obsidian export template settings page — with some additional context and explanation.

Jump straight into the configuration or keep reading for more context.

the goal (examples + context)

Here's the primary outcome I'm after — easily referenceable highlights that can be embedded in other notes, like this:

🔑 The key to making this happen is a block ID like ^rwhi1234567890 on the exported highlights. See this explanation. There's some other customization to the frontmatter and filename and such, but they're much less important.

Here's context about my current Readwise usage: readwise features and how i use them

I also strongly suggest: treat readwise exports as read-only

obsidian extension settings

Useful settings in the readwise obsidian plugin itself:

• base folder: readwise/exports
  • because then i can keep other files in readwise and just delete/sync readwise/exports as needed (treat readwise exports as read-only)
• resync deleted files: checked
  • so it re-syncs files i delete in obsidian

the configuration

Sections ordered by how they appear on the Readwise-to-Obsidian export template settings page, but the highlight settings are definitely the most important of the configuration.

file name

Readwise's default export settings for filenames aren't sanitized to Obsidian's restrictions on filenames, so this snippet should help avoid most bad characters in the filenames:

{{ title|replace('@', '')|replace('#', 'no.')|replace('^', '')|replace('[', '(')|replace(']', ')')|replace('^', '')|replace(': ', ' - ')|replace(' | ', ' - ')  }}

# → no. is opinionated, but i am designing for my common case — numbered podcasts like Podcast Name (episode #123) → Podcast Name (episode no.123).

If you want to remove # from a title altogether so it isn't replaced with no.: how to edit Readwise document metadata

page title

# {{ title }}

page metadata

{% if image_url -%}
![rw-book-cover]({{image_url}})
{% endif %}

{% if document_note -%}
## Document note: {{document_note}}
{% endif -%}

highlights header

{% if is_new_page %}
## Highlights
{% endif -%}

highlight

{# this line adds a space between highlights #}
{# this line adds a space between highlights #}
{{ highlight_text }}{% if highlight_location and highlight_location_url %} ([via]({{highlight_location_url}})){% elif highlight_location %} ({{highlight_location}}){% endif %} ^rwhi{{highlight_id}}
{% if highlight_note %}
{{ highlight_note }} ^rwhi{{highlight_id}}-note
{% endif %}

rwhi is meant to represent all readwisehighlights, and the number that follows is the highlight's ID in Readwise's database. This is a convention I invented so the ^blockid is always stable for referencing.

If the readwise highlight contains breaklines, they may not appear quite the same in Obsidian.

This is intentional because of how "blocks" work in markdown — the ^blockref wouldn't work if there's actual breaklines.

The solution is to style the <br> that Readwise uses in your Obsidian theme. Here's how I do that:

/* spacing for embeds */*
.internal-embed br {
    margin: 1em 0;
    display: block;
    content: "";
}

/* increase <br> in reading mode */
.markdown-reading-view p br {
    margin: 1em 0;
    display: block;
    content: "";
}

YAML front matter

aliases:
  - "{{title}}"
title: "{{title}}"
{% if author %}author: "{{author}}"{% endif %}
{% if url %}url: "{{url}}"{% endif %}
{% if document_tags %}related to: {% for tag in document_tags %}
rw-category: "{{category}}"
  - "[[{{tag}}]]"{% endfor %}{% endif %}
tags:
  - artifact/readwise{% if category %}/{{category}}{{ "📚" if category == "books"}}{{"📰" if category == "articles"}}{{"🐦" if category == "tweets"}}{{"🎙" if category == "podcasts"}}{% endif %}

YAML frontmatter example: