Did you know that every time you look up a word on your Kindle, the word — and its surrounding context — is saved to a special file on your Kindle device?
It's called the vocab.db file.
I use this file to create vocabulary flashcards in the popular spaced repetition application Anki. Reviewing ten to fifteen words per morning is easily one of the most enjoyable aspects of my daily routine.
Here's what one of my vocab flashcards looks like:
You'll notice at the bottom of this flashcard are three passages containing the word in question: codex. These aren't random passages copied and pasted from the internet. These are the actual passages where I personally encountered the unknown word and looked it up using Kindle's dictionary feature!
Most of us share painful memories of learning random vocabulary words in preparation for some standardized test. It was painful because we knew those were words we would never actually use or encounter in real life. Mastering the words in your vocab.db file, however, is completely practical. It's about expanding your vocabulary to include the words you're actually coming across. This is the huge innovation of Kindle-based vocab learning.
For example, I came across the word codex not just once, but three times in Clear and Simple as the Truth, Sapiens, and Meditations. Each time, I looked it up. Clearly, codex is a word that belongs in my lexicon (and not just because I am the cofounder of a book-related startup).
The Challenge
We're very interested in incorporating this kind of vocabulary feature into Readwise. In fact, we think our users will love it. But here's the rub:
The vocab.db file is not so easy to procure.
It requires you to:
- Plug in your Kindle device to your computer
- Navigate to a directory that is hidden by default (
/Kindle/system/vocabularyon Mac or[Kindle directory]\system\vocabularyon PC) - And then save and send us the
vocab.dbfile.
Therefore, we want to run a little experiment:
If enough Readwise users want this feature deeply enough that they're willing to send us their vocab.db file by emailing import@readwise.io, we'll strongly consider boosting a vocab feature to the top of our roadmap.
We look forward to hearing from you.