Kindle + Obsidian Split View on iPad: The Reading Workflow

You can use Kindle and Obsidian together in Split View on iPad by opening both apps side by side, letting you read and write notes at the same time without ever leaving either app.

This particular combination works well because Kindle handles long-form reading — books, long documents, manuscripts — while Obsidian gives you a proper note-taking environment with backlinks, tags, and a personal knowledge graph. Toggling between them one app at a time breaks your reading flow and makes it hard to keep context. Seeing both at once changes how you read.

Why this pair works

Here are a few real ways people use Kindle and Obsidian together in Split View:

• Book notes and literature reviews: Highlight a passage in Kindle, then immediately write an atomic note in Obsidian — your own summary, a question it raised, or a connection to something else you've read. No copy-paste lag, no context switching.
• Study and research: Students reading assigned texts in Kindle can keep a running Obsidian note open on one side to capture definitions, arguments, and page references while working through the material.
• Building a second brain from books: If you follow a progressive summarization or Zettelkasten method, reading in Split View lets you process the book directly into your vault as you go, rather than returning to highlights later and losing the original thinking.

The result is that reading stops being a passive activity. You're processing as you go, and your notes are already linked into your existing knowledge base by the time you close the book.

How to set it up with Splicon

If you haven't already, Download Splicon free from the App Store — it creates a single Home Screen icon that opens any two apps side by side in one tap.

1. Open Splicon and search for Kindle, then Obsidian. Select them as your pair. Splicon will show you a preview of the combined icon.
2. Choose a split style — left-right, proportional, or mirrored — then generate the icon and save it to your Photos library.
3. Open the Shortcuts app, create a new shortcut, and add an "Open App" action configured for Split View with Kindle and Obsidian as the two apps. When prompted to choose an icon, select the image you saved from Splicon.
4. Add the shortcut to your Home Screen using the share sheet inside Shortcuts. It will appear as a tappable icon that launches both apps together instantly.

After setup, the icon sits on your Home Screen like any other app. One tap and you're reading in Kindle with Obsidian open beside it, exactly where you left off.

A few tips once you're set up

Obsidian's mobile editor works well in the narrower Split View pane — using a simple template for book notes (title, author, date, atomic note) keeps things consistent without requiring much setup time mid-reading. In Kindle, turning off the brightness auto-adjust can help when you're working in a well-lit room with both panes visible.

If you read across multiple books or projects, you can create more than one Splicon shortcut — for example, one that defaults Obsidian to a specific vault folder for fiction notes and another for non-fiction research. Each gets its own Home Screen icon.

The Kindle and Obsidian Split View combination is straightforward, but having a dedicated Home Screen shortcut for it removes the small friction that usually stops people from doing it consistently. That consistency is where the habit actually forms.