# Export Apple Books to Markdown

Alto Index writes each book in Apple Books as Markdown with its highlights, notes, progress and cover, kept in sync. The first 20 books are free.

Export your books with annotations and highlights.

## What you get

- A file per book: its author, genre, progress, rating, whether you finished it and its cover in the front matter, then its description, and the full text of books without DRM
- Its highlights in a second file, as quotes, and notes that have no passage in a third
- An `ibooks://` link that opens the book in Books
- After each sync, `journal/media.md` lists the books you finished and the highlights you added

## Where the files go

```
alto-index/books/The Long Garden - Ana Ribeiro.md
alto-index/books/The Long Garden - Ana Ribeiro_highlights.md
alto-index/books/images/
```

## What you choose

- Tick the books to export; All, Recent and Finished help you find them

## Left out

- Hidden books and samples
- The text of store books with DRM
- The page or location of a highlight

## Free and paid

Your first 20 books export and keep syncing free. Then one purchase unlocks Apple Books: on its own, as one of any three apps, or with all of them. See [pricing](/pricing).

## With Claude

The [MCP server](/mcp) lets Claude Desktop search your highlights, and `/altoindex:search` in the [Claude plugin](/claude-plugin) searches them with everything else.

Source: https://altoindex.com/books