💡 WiseUp! Vol. 72 — From Readwise to Obsidian, and add your own PDF highlights

📍 Let's start with a reading recommendation

Text is king

Adam Mastroianni’s 2024 piece on de-bogging oneself stuck with us, so we’ve kept an eye out for new work from him. His latest article takes on the much-reported, possibly overstated “death of reading,” and makes the case for why nothing else quite does what a book does. “Finishing a great nonfiction book feels like heaving a barbell off your chest. Finishing a great novel feels like leaving an entire nation behind. There are no replacements for these feelings. Videos can titillate, podcasts can inform, but there’s only one way to get that feeling of your brain folds stretching and your soul expanding, and it is to drag your eyes across text.”

From the support inbox

Have questions about using Readwise or Reader in your workflow? We'd love to be your guide! Reply to this email with your question and you might be featured in an upcoming issue. Even if your question isn’t featured, we’ll respond to every message.

❓ A Readwise question from Caleb R:

Can I import highlights from my PDF app into Readwise?

If you do a lot of reading in PDFs, you can bring those highlights into Readwise without any copy-and-paste. Send a highlighted PDF to add@readwise.io or upload it directly through the PDF Import option. Many popular PDF readers are supported, including Preview on Mac, Adobe Acrobat, PDF Expert, Foxit, and others. Check the PDF import guide for the full list of compatible apps and import tips.

❓ A Reader question from Alexis P:

How can I import all my RSS subscriptions into Reader from mobile without adding each feed manually?

Bring your existing feed subscriptions into Reader without having to set everything up again. If you primarily read and triage your library on mobile, you can share an .opml file from another app directly into Reader to import your feeds. It's a convenient way to migrate from another RSS reader or restore a saved collection of subscriptions.

📖 New help doc of the week

Fine-tune your Readwise to Obsidian workflow

For many users, the Obsidian integration is more than a highlight exporter, it’s a complete reading archive. This week, Cayla expanded the documentation to clarify how full document content moves from Reader through into Obsidian and how you can tailor the export template to your needs.

🎬 New video of the week

Are books getting worse?

One opinion we’ve seen flourish on YouTube and Reddit this past year is that contemporary bestsellers can’t hold a candle to the classics. But philosopher Jared Henderson has a different opinion on why books today aren’t hitting the way they used to.

📰 June 6 - June 12 updates

What's new in Reader and Readwise

🔁 Fixed Sidebar Loading — Thanks to Krzys, the "Could not load component" error that sometimes appeared in the sidebar is now fixed. If you kept a Reader tab open across one of our updates, the sidebar could get stuck on that error until you refreshed the page yourself. Reader now notices the stale tab and refreshes itself once automatically, so everything keeps loading smoothly.

🐦 Fixed Twitter Connections — Krzys tracked down a bug where healthy X/Twitter bookmark connections were occasionally disconnected in bulk, complete with an unwanted "reconnect your Twitter" email. If you got one of those emails despite an active connection, this was why. Connections now stay connected, and those emails should only arrive when something is actually wrong.

🐤 Fixed Tweet Saving — After a change on Twitter's end, saving tweets and articles to Reader started failing, and a Twitter article could fail to save entirely if it had a tweet embedded inside it. Tristan restored the way Reader fetches tweets and made embedded tweets fail gracefully, so tweets and articles save reliably again.

📧 Unified Email Opt-Outs — Krzys made automated Themed Connections emails respect your Daily Review email opt-out. If you've turned off Daily Review emails, Readwise will no longer start sending you Themed Connections emails either. Themed Reviews you set up yourself are unaffected.

🔊 Fixed TTS Controls — Thanks to Krzys, tapping the bottom bar during text-to-speech playback now properly brings up the voice and speed controls in both standard and long-form reading view, instead of only appearing in long-form mode.

🎬 Fixed YouTube Resizing on Android — Mati fixed the resize handle on embedded YouTube videos on Android, which had stopped responding to drags. You can now drag the handle to resize a YouTube video again.

👆 Fixed Skim Swiping on Android — Krzys fixed a bug on Android where a single swipe in the Skim feed mode could jump past several articles at once. Swiping now advances one article at a time as expected.

📖 Fixed iOS Back Button — Krzys fixed a bug where leaving an article using the back button on iOS could leave the screen mostly blank until you tapped a few more times. Going back to your feed now loads reliably the first time.

🔀 Fixed Diigo Imports — Diigo moved their API to a new address, which quietly broke authentication and left valid credentials looking incorrect. Mati shipped a fix pointing the integration at the new host, so connecting your Diigo account works again.

📥 Fixed OPML Sharing — Krzys fixed a bug that kept Reader from showing up in the iOS share sheet for .opml files. You can now share an .opml file into Reader from another app to import your feed subscriptions.

🛜 Parsing Updates — Krzys improved how Reader handles documents from inc.com, japanistry.com, and dw.com.

👍 Three featured finds from the team

From technical writer Cayla

Something to read 📖
Cayla is about halfway through A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. So far, she’s really enjoying its combination of political space opera, quick-witted characters, and surprisingly intricate linguistic and anthropological world-building.

Something to focus 🤳
After rocking the same slowly dying phone case for over two years, Cayla finally caved and ordered a Caudabe Sheath. She’s loving the tactile clickiness of the buttons, and the textured material gives an added sense of security for someone who’s prone to clumsy drops. Plus, the slim design means that her phone still slides nicely into the pocket of her jeans.

Something to unwind 📺
Cayla has been spending her evenings rewatching Fringe, a sci-fi TV show from 2008 that follows an FBI division investigating "fringe science" cases: parallel universes, telepathy, genetic mutations, and weirdnesses beyond. The show holds up by being both a satisfying monster-of-the-week procedural and an emotional long-arc story about family ties, the nature of reality, and the ethical quandaries of scientific curiosity gone too far. (Bonus: if you watched Lord of the Rings and thought, “Wow, this Denethor guy is kind of a dick,” it’s worth giving Fringe a try just to see how masterfully John Noble plays the delightfully unhinged Walter Bishop.)

💬 From the Readwise group chat

World Cup fever

As a distributed team, we have people rooting for all sorts of teams during the World Cup. And to make matters worse (lol) Emily created a sweepstakes that has us rooting for other countries! The result is a very engaged team that can name the defense line of Cape Verde. Fun!