Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your PHL file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.
Convert PHL to another file type
To convert PHL highlight files to another format, you need Amazon Kindle or other Data software.
Convert a file to PHL
To convert other file formats to the "Application Data File" file type, you need software like Amazon Kindle or a similar tool.
About PHL files
A .PHL file primarily functions as a Kindle Popular Highlights file used by Amazon e-readers, or as a Luminaire Photometric Data file used in lighting design software. On the consumer side, these files are managed directly by Kindle devices to store heavily highlighted book passages. On the professional side, lighting CAD tools like DIALux evo and Philips photometric viewers use them to map light distribution. You can read more about the ecosystem on the Amazon Kindle Wikipedia page. The Kindle .PHL file is heavily restricted to the Amazon ecosystem. It is often GZIP compressed or uses a proprietary XML structure, making it extremely difficult to read natively on a PC or phone. It requires a specific device environment to function. The Philips lighting .PHL files are highly specialized and are not supported by standard 3D software without specific plugins. Converting the Kindle variant to TXT or XML allows users to read highlights freely on any device. For photometric data, converting to standard IES or LDT ensures compatibility with universal CAD and architectural software. Because these formats are heavily proprietary, standard online converters usually fail to process them. We can inspect the internal data and extract text or embedded formats if supported.
Convert.Guru analyzes your PHL file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert PHL file to PDF, EPUB, MOBI, AZW, AZW3, KFX, PRC, LIT, OPF, CBZ, CBR or CB7, you can use Amazon Kindle or similar software from the "Application Data Storage" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert FB2, MOBI, CBT, RTF, CB7, DOCX, DJVU, AZW, CBA, PDF, DOC or EPUB files to PHL, try Amazon Kindle or another comparable tool in the "Application Data Storage" category.
The PHL Converter Story
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our PHL converter.