Kindle readers have built-in highlight sync. Physical book readers have a highlighter and a problem. Bright Passages solves it.
Point your camera at a highlighted passage in a real book. Bright Passages reads the page, transcribes it, and detects what color highlighter you used — automatically categorizing the passage before you tap save. Didn't highlight it? Just select the text by hand instead — perfect for library books, textbooks, or any page you didn't mark up. Your highlights become a searchable, shareable library in seconds.
Finally, an app built for people who read physical books.
Bright Passages is a digital commonplace book — the tradition of collecting passages from real pages that move, challenge, or clarify your thinking.
Highlight detection that thinks with you.
Bright Passages' camera detects six highlighter colors — orange, yellow, pink, blue, green, and purple — and maps them to your personal categories, renamed however you like. Answer one quick question when you first open the app — student, book club, fiction, nonfiction, or religious study — and your categories are already set up to match how you actually read. The colors you already use in the margins now mean something in your library too.
Capture the highlighted words alone, or the full page with the marked passage bolded, italicized, or both. Need more than one page for a single passage? Take multiple photos and combine them into a single capture.
One category system, two levels of control.
Set your categories globally, then override them book by book — so "Quote" in one book can mean "Premise" in another, without changing anything else.
Add your own thinking.
After capturing a passage, add a note — your reaction, a connection you made, a question it raised. Edit any transcription with a built-in formatting toolbar for bold, italic, underline, and undo. Notes are saved alongside the passage and included in every export.
Your physical library, finally organized.
Every passage lives inside its book. Add a chapter number for citation-ready passages. Filter by chapter, category, or reading status. Search across every physical book you've ever read. Share a passage as a beautiful card. Export your library as CSV, Excel (formatting preserved), or Markdown. Your data is always yours.
No subscription. No account. No cloud you don't control.
One purchase. Your data syncs through your own iCloud — private, automatic, no third-party servers. The words you've marked in real books deserve better than another monthly fee.
FOR READERS WHO:
Highlight passages in physical books and want them saved permanently
Read library books, textbooks, or any book they'd rather not mark up
Use multiple highlighter colors, each with its own meaning
Keep a commonplace book — or always meant to start one
Read as a student, in a book club, or for serious nonfiction
Finish a book and want to actually remember what mattered
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Photograph a highlighted page, or select text by hand if it isn't highlighted
Combine multiple photos into a single passage
Capture the highlight alone or the full page, emphasized
Automatic highlighter color detection and categorization
A one-time reader-type quiz sets up your categories for you
Add personal notes to any passage
Built-in formatting toolbar — bold, italic, underline, undo
Chapter numbers for citation-ready passages
Rename categories globally or per book
Filter passages by chapter, category, or search
Share passages as designed image cards
Export as CSV, Excel (formatting preserved), or Markdown
Reading status tracking (Reading, Want to Read, Finished)
Bright Ideas — a random past passage on a schedule you set
The best physical books leave marks. Bright Passages remembers which ones.
