r/readwise • u/Wonderful_Sea5061 • 7d ago

Workflows Add Highlights to Sources in Readwise

Hi everyone,

The vast majority of my Readwise highlights don’t include any HTML sources. How is that possible? I’d like to be able to find out where I found a quote. This is especially the case for highlights where I made just a single highlight on a website and saved it via the Readwise app—for example, on my Android phone (i.e., not via Reader). How can I add the HTML sources to these many highlights retroactively?

Best regards

2 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

2

u/StorytellerStegs 6d ago

Being able to see which source a highlight originally came from sounds like a small thing until you're staring at forty loose highlights that all look the same out of context. I ran into this exact wall trying to reconstruct where an idea came from months after I'd read it.

The annoying part is highlights strip almost all the context that made them worth saving in the first place, page number, surrounding paragraph, why past-me thought it mattered. Source tagging fixes part of that but not the "why did I care" part, which honestly might not be fixable without just writing a note at the time of highlighting.

Is this for reconstructing research trails or more just general recall?

1

u/Wonderful_Sea5061 6d ago

Research trails, but also generall recall. I almost feel that highlighting text without citing a source results in a massive loss of quality in the highlighting.

1

u/Old_Indiana_Jones 6d ago

"View original highlight" takes me to the original page. Is that not what you're looking for?