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Turn your Kindle vocabulary into Anki flashcards

Turn your Kindle's vocab.db into Anki flashcards that keep each word's original sentence, or into a clean CSV. It all runs in your browser.

Where to find the vocab.db file

  1. Connect your Kindle with the USB cable

    It shows up as a regular drive (usually named «Kindle»). If the Kindle asks, choose «USB drive mode»; on recent models it can take a few seconds to appear.

  2. Open the system/vocabulary folder

    The system folder is hidden. On Windows, type the path straight into the Explorer address bar (for example D:\system\vocabulary). On a Mac, press Cmd + Shift + . (period) in Finder to reveal hidden folders.

  3. Drag vocab.db onto this page

    Inside that folder you'll find vocab.db. Drag it to the box above: your words appear instantly, grouped by book, ready to export.

vocab.db, turned into an Anki deck that keeps the sentence you met the word in

Every word you look up in the Kindle dictionary is recorded — the word, the form you met it in, the sentence around it, the book it came from — in a small SQLite file called vocab.db. The device's own Vocabulary Builder then does almost nothing with it: no scheduling worth the name, and no way out. This page opens that file with SQLite compiled to WebAssembly, right in the tab, and writes a real Anki deck out of it. With the context, because a word without the sentence you met it in is a word you will look up again.

  • A real .apkg deck: open it in Anki or AnkiDroid and it imports — no plugin, no CSV column-mapping step.
  • Each card carries the sentence from the book, plus the title and the author, so you revise the word where you found it.
  • Three card directions: word → sentence, the sentence with the word blanked → word, or both, for two cards per word.
  • Filter before exporting — by language, by book, by the Kindle's own learning/mastered flag, or by searching the sentences.
  • Or take a CSV, if you would rather build the cards your own way.
  • The database never leaves your browser: SQLite runs locally as WebAssembly and no file is uploaded.

Kindle vocabulary to Anki: the details

Where is vocab.db?

Connect the Kindle by USB and open system/vocabulary. The system folder is hidden: on Windows, type the path into the Explorer bar (for example D:\system\vocabulary); on a Mac, press Cmd + Shift + . in Finder to show hidden folders.

Does it add definitions or translations to the cards?

No. It exports what the Kindle recorded — the word, its base form, and the sentence you met it in. If you want dictionary definitions on the front, Anki's own add-ons fill them in after the import.

My vocab.db is missing, or has nothing in it.

Vocabulary Builder has to be switched on, and it only records words you look up in a dictionary while reading. If it has been off, the file exists but stays empty.

Which languages does it handle?

Whichever dictionaries your Kindle used. The file records a language per word, so mixed reading can be filtered down to the language you are actually studying before you export.

Can I do this from the Kindle app on my phone?

No. Only the e-ink devices expose the file over USB; the phone apps keep their vocabulary inside the app.

Is the file uploaded in order to be read?

No. The SQLite engine is compiled to WebAssembly and served from this site, so the database is opened on your own machine and nothing is sent anywhere.

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