Readwise is good at collecting quotes from many readers, but it keeps no books: a highlight lives in the cloud, apart from the text. If you want your quotes next to the books themselves and on your own disk, a Readwise export moves into Beresta as a single file.
At the bottom of the page choose CSV. A file with all your highlights downloads right away.
That is how the Readwise help describes the export. For me it still worked after the trial ended, without a subscription (checked 20261004).
Step 2. Import the file into Beresta
Mac: File → Import from Readwise… and choose the downloaded CSV.
iPhone: the shelves button at the top left → the Tools section → Import from Readwise…. On iPad the same item is in the sidebar.
While the import runs, the app shows how many books it has gone through. At the end comes a summary in words: how many highlights landed, how many records were added, what was skipped and why.
Where the highlights land
With their book or article. Beresta looks in the library for the same title — ignoring case, punctuation and a subtitle after a colon — and the author, if it does not contradict. Articles saved from the browser are found too.
No such book — a record appears in To Find, a card without a file. Add the book later and import the export again, and the highlights end up with it.
A note from Readwise becomes your thought next to the quote, tags become the highlight’s tags, document tags become the book’s tags. Colour comes over if Beresta has that colour; otherwise the highlight gets the default one.
You decide the doubtful cases
Sometimes the title matches but the author does not. Or a PDF has a file name instead of a title, like azbuka_umstvennogo_truda. Beresta does not merge such records silently: it shows a “Check the matches” sheet and asks whether it is the same book. The Link button moves the highlights to the library book and removes the extra record. Skip it and the record stays; the question comes back on the next import.
No duplicates
Importing again. Readwise exports everything every time, so importing the fresh file whole is the normal routine. Only what you highlighted since last time comes in. Colours and thoughts you changed in Beresta stay as they are.
Kindle and Readwise together. Readwise collects Kindle highlights itself. If you have already imported the Kindle file, the same quote is not added twice, and the Readwise note is appended to the existing highlight.
Honest limits
There is no connection to Readwise: this is a file import, not a sync. New highlights arrive when you export and import the CSV again.
Readwise pulls quotes from Kindle, Apple Books, Instapaper, Pocket and other services by itself, and works in the browser, on Windows and on Android. Beresta does none of that, and runs on Mac, iPhone and iPad.
A Readwise location is not turned into a Beresta position: the two apps count differently. The page, if Readwise knew it, is kept as a label.
What you get instead
Highlights live next to their books, not apart from them: open the book and the quotes are there. Everything stays on your disk, and the app works offline. You can come back to highlights at intervals, and they travel to your Obsidian notes by themselves. More on the home page.
Beresta is on the App Store, one purchase for Mac, iPhone and iPad. It needs macOS 26 or iOS 26.