Obsidian Yandex Books Plugin

Obsidian plugin for syncing highlights and notes from Yandex Books into an Obsidian vault.

Yandex Books is the service formerly known in Russia as Bookmate. This plugin is not affiliated with Yandex, Bookmate, Amazon, Kindle, or Obsidian.

Current Status

The plugin currently supports:

• Yandex Books OAuth/session setup
• Yandex Books highlight sync
• Highlight note rendering
• Template editing and preview
• Vault file/frontmatter management
• Book ignore list
• Diff-based updates for already-synced notes

Background

This project started as a fork of hadynz/obsidian-kindle-plugin. The Kindle/Amazon sync code has been removed and replaced with a Yandex Books integration while keeping the useful Obsidian plugin foundation: rendering, template editing, vault file management, ignore-list handling, cancellation state, and diff-based note updates.

The code in this fork was written with assistance from OpenAI Codex. This is disclosed intentionally: the project is small, experimental, and benefits from being honest about how it is being built and reviewed.

API References

Yandex Books does not provide a documented public highlights API. The integration uses private/undocumented endpoints and may break if the service changes.

Useful public references reviewed during development:

• stepan163s/yandex-book-api — unofficial Python API for Yandex Books / Bookmate with OAuth and REST/GraphQL notes.
• ilyakharlamov/bookmate_downloader — historical Bookmate downloader. It targets the non-Yandex Bookmate service, so it is not used directly, but it is useful context for how Bookmate-era clients handled authentication/session data.

Installation

Manual install from a release

1. Download the latest release archive from this repository's GitHub Releases page.

2. In your Obsidian vault, create the plugin directory:

   mkdir -p "<your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-yandex-books-plugin"
   

3. Copy these files from the release into that directory:

   main.js
   manifest.json
   styles.css
   

4. Restart Obsidian, or reload Community Plugins.

5. Enable Yandex Books Highlights in Settings -> Community plugins.

6. Open the plugin settings and connect your Yandex Books account.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/alunyaka/obsidian-yandex-books-plugin.git
cd obsidian-yandex-books-plugin
npm install
npm run build

Then copy the built files into your vault:

VAULT="<your-vault>"
PLUGIN_DIR="$VAULT/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-yandex-books-plugin"
mkdir -p "$PLUGIN_DIR"
cp dist/main.js dist/manifest.json dist/styles.css "$PLUGIN_DIR/"

Restart Obsidian or toggle the plugin off/on after copying updated files.

Templates

The generated note format is configurable in the plugin settings:

• File name controls the note filename.
• File content controls the full note body, including YAML/Obsidian properties.
• Highlight controls the rendering of each individual highlight.

The default file template includes yandex-books-* properties used by the plugin to identify synced notes. If you customize properties, keep a stable book id property, or future resyncs may not be able to match a note back to its Yandex Books book.

Development

Command	Expected
npm run lint	0 errors (warnings OK)
npm run test	All tests pass
npm run build	dist/main.js

Node 20.x is expected.

License

MIT