Use and download bookmarks, notes, highlights, definitions and translations

Most books on Google Play Books use Flowing text mode to adjust to fit your screen when you change page features like font size or line spacing. You can take notes, add bookmarks, translate, define and search for words.

Check whether you're in Flowing text mode

  1. On your computer, open Google Play Books.
  2. Open a book.
  3. At the top right, click Display options Colour text.
  4. If you're in Flowing text mode, under 'View', it will say 'Flowing text'.

Add bookmarks, highlights and  notes

  1. On your computer, open Google Play Books.
  2. Open a book.

  3. To add a note, click and drag to select your note location. Then click Add note.

Translate, define or search for a word

  1. On your computer, open Google Play Books.
  2. Open a book.
  3. Click and drag to select a word.
  4. Click an option:
    • Define: Get a definition of the word in English.
    • Translate: Select languages to translate to and from.
    • Search: Search for a word in the book or on the web.

Download notes and uploaded files in Google Drive

You can find your Play Books notes, highlights and bookmarks in Google Drive. Your notes are saved in a document specific to the book that you're reading.

You can download your Google Play Books notes and files that you've uploaded using Google Takeaway.

  1. On your computer, go to Google Takeaway. Make sure that you're signed in to the account from which you'll download data.
  2. Click Deselect all.
  3. Tick the Google Play Books box and click Next step.
  4. Choose the type of file and how to download it.
  5. Click Create archive.

Turn on Google Drive backup

Why can't I see the highlighted text in the notes document in Drive?

There are two reasons why highlighted text doesn't appear:

  • If no highlights appear: The publisher of this book didn't enable the copy-paste feature.
  • If some highlights appear: The number of highlights that you made exceeds the copy-paste maximum that the publisher set for this book.

To check the text that you highlighted, select the page number in the notes document.

Edit a notes document

If you make edits to a notes document in Drive, they'll be deleted the next time that you add notes to the same book. To edit and save to a synced document, make a copy of the document first.

  1. On your computer, open the notes document that you want to edit.
  2. Click File and then Make a copy.
  3. Name your new document.
  4. Make your edits to the new document.

Tip: If you add notes to a book, they'll only be saved in the original notes document. You can manually add them to the new document.

Download notes and files that you uploaded

  1. On your computer, go to Google Takeaway. Make sure that you're signed in to the account from which you'll download data.
  2. Click Deselect all.
  3. Check the Google Play Books box. Then, click Next step.
  4. Choose the type of file and how to download it.
  5. Click Create export.

Find your notes, highlights and bookmarks in Drive

  1. On your computer, go to Google Drive.
  2. Make sure that you're signed in to the same account that you used for Play Books.
  3. Open the folder that you created to store your notes.
    • By default, the folder is named 'Play Books notes'.

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