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Software Jailbreak for Any Kindle
- saagarjha 4y agoHmm, I should go pick up a Kindle…does anyone know how the device compatibility list works? I don't see the newer models in it?
- solarkraft 4y agoYou can jailbreak old Kindles (out of software updates) even more easily. Old Touch Kindles are getting dirt cheap and are still perfectly capable.
- minimilian 4y agoIs there a way to check whether the jailbreak was successful? I followed all the steps, I think, but see no indication of success.
- curiousgal 4y agoYou should have received a brief screen saying the jailbreak is being installed in one of the steps.
- solarkraft 4y agoThe Kindle/E-Reader development community is a great one. It's so cool that development keeps continuing to provide better and better jailbreaks.
- AydanKirk 4y agoWill jaibreaked Kindle allow copying text and share it from sideloaded books? Currently, kindle only allows copying and sharing from the amazon purchased books and not from the sideloaded books.
- BasilPH 4y agoWhat are the advantages and disadvantages of a jailbroken Kindle compared to one with the official firmware?
- usrn 4y agoI had a debian chroot on mine. The official firmware is just running awesome WM on X11 so you can run normal arm Linux software pretty easily.
- trevcanhuman 4y agoNice! Seems like a nice-to-have tablet! Does the framerate suck? My mom sometimes uses it to read digital books, but she's kind of tired of having to buy 'official' books through the kindle store, sign in, wait for it to connect to the internet.
- ctxc 4y ago(for educational purposes only, do not try at home) You can download books and send them via email to your Kindle. I do this all the time (with only free books, of course ;) )
- sofixa 4y agoOr you can use Calibre to get around the size limitations of email.
- usrn 4y agoThe framerate was surprisingly good. Plenty for text editing and IRC.
- trevcanhuman 4y agoNice, would you mind sharing more info on the benefits of jailbraking it? Apart from gaining root access, is there an ecosystem to still view my saved books, pdfs, maybe even other programs / text formats ?
- QuikAccount 4y agoIIRC it means you can install the Play Store instead of just having Amazon's terrible Fire store.
- Semaphor 4y agoBut the Kindle doesn’t run either, I think you mean the fire tablets and not the e-readers?
- trevcanhuman 4y agoYep. This is for [e]Kindles. It's a screen reader that uses e-ink screens that save a lot of power and barely have any of that blue light that hurts your eyes. It's just grey-scale colors. Completely different from Fire Amazon tablets.
- QuikAccount 4y agoYou're right I'm thinking of the Fire tablets. Allegedly if you jailbreak your Kindle you can manage your library and collections with Calibre.
- Semaphor 4y agoYou can manage your collection with Calibre (and at least used to auto-strip DRM in the process) without jailbreaking, I did that with the Kindle Keyboard many years ago. The only thing I remember about jailbreaking, was being able to use custom screensavers and fonts.
- QuikAccount 4y ago
- charleshan 4y agoThe Benefits of JailBreaking Your Kindle: - Customize your lock screen to the recently opened book cover, selected image, or randomized from a collection of images. Amazon added something similar recently but it took them 13 years for something so basic. - KOReader for reading epub and pdf. Also, you get access to the filesystem so you can organize your books however you want. - Customizable collections (similar to folders) with Calibre - Run Python so you can run w/e you want. Some ideas... - Sideload books via WiFi - Sync notes automatically The main idea of Jailbreaking is that you own your device and you can do whatever you want with it. However, I switched from a Jailbroken Kindle Paperwhite to an Android e-ink reader about a year ago and I'm never looking back. Regardless, I'm happy to see this on Hacker News!
- kajiryoji 4y agoI wonder does jailbreaking have any implication on battery life? I'd hate to jailbreak my kindle for a very much reduced battery life
- charleshan 4y agoUnless you run some automation on it, it shouldn't affect the battery life. The difference was negligible for me
- solarkraft 4y agoKOReader is brilliant. I sync my books with Syncthing and read them with KOReader.
- and0 4y agoWhat model of e-ink reader did you switch to?
- charleshan 4y agoOnyx Boox Poke 3. TBH it's a bit overpriced compared with Kindle Paperwhite which is what I had but the feature set is comparable to Kindle Oasis. More importantly, I wanted to be able to sync my books, highlights, and notes cross-platform. Uploading epub to Google Play Books lets me do this
- and0 4y agoGot the idea in my head the other day that I should look into Kindle jailbreaking for my older Paperwhite 2. Was surprised to find there wasn't much of a scene, and no meaningful OS to install. I'd absolutely love to read Twitter and other sites if they were formatted smartly for an e-ink device. An e-ink RSS reader would be a dream. I know there's a site out there that tries to be a hub/aggregator for reading some sites on the Kindle browser, but you have to type in the URL every time.. The Kindle browser is still experimental after a decade and has almost no features or real UX. All the JS out there probably killed the project.
- Sunspark 4y agoYou can install Duokan on it. It's a dual-boot. Has EPUB and PDF support. Company has pulled support for it now, but if you install it anyway, you can still load your files locally.
- csdvrx 4y ago> Was surprised to find there wasn't much of a scene, and no meaningful OS to install. I wish Amazon would support officially jailbraking/installing alternative OS for the old kindles. If they are not sold anymore, it would not lose them much while avoiding turning them into e-waste, thus gaining goodwill.
- longnguyen 4y agoI'm building a product[0] to do exactly what you're mentioning. It still requires you to push the content to your Kindle though [0]: https://ktool.io https://ktool.io
- icy 4y agoThis is great. I recently got a new KT4 running 5.14.1 which didn’t have a working jailbreak at the time. I know what I’m doing with my Sunday. ;)
- anthropodie 4y agoNow what if they patched it and sent an upgrade. I am away from home and I'm afraid my Kindle will update on its own and then I'll never be able to jailbrake it. I had already tried once.
- csdvrx 4y agoCould you ask someone at home to put it in airplaine mode for you?
- anthropodie 4y agoTotally forgot about this. No one was at home over weekend Anyways checked my Kindle after reading these replies. Turns out it was all drained out of charge. After waking it up, I put it in Airplane mode and checked the version to find out it is stuck at Oct 2021. I'm going to jailbreak it:)
- icy 4y agoMy Kindle has been on airplane mode from the second I unboxed it and turned it on -- waiting for this very moment. But yes, get someone to put it on airplane mode?
- anthropodie 4y agoTotally forgot about this. No one was at home over weekend Anyways checked my Kindle after reading these replies. Turns out it was all drained out of charge. After waking it up, I put it in Airplane mode and checked the version to find out it is stuck at Oct 2021. I'm going to jailbreak it:)
- yewenjie 4y agoKOReader (something you can install on a Jailbroken Kindle) is the best book reading app I have come across, in any platform.
- joecool1029 4y agoPDF text reflow which the Kindle can't do out of the box is reason enough to be interested in KOReader. I also found support for DjVu format very useful, which is used for many old book scans on archive.org (while it's possible to convert this format, the resulting file sizes will be much larger).
- ngcc_hk 4y agoLet over lambda is one of this. But you can find a good converter for pdf that work.
- adhesive_wombat 4y agoThe IA DjVus are great. They are encoded with a background separation method called MRC (mixed raster content), and they used a proprietary compressor to do it. The PDFs do the same thing, but they use JPEG2000, which is incredibly slow (10 seconds per page on an weedy ereader application processor). Sadly, the IA stopped making DjVus years ago, so anything scanned recently is incredibly painful to read on a mobile device.
- pabs3 4y agoI wonder how the jailbreak works; is this a Linux kernel exploit or?
- mdaniel 4y agoThe three linked CVEs are still in "reserved" status, and I presume that's related to the first line of TFA > ... full writeup with technical details to be released after 5.14.3 has been widely rolled out. I don't own a kindle in order to have more in the weeds to offer
- ctxc 4y agoIs there some way we can do this: Bundle web articles I save as an ebook and send them to my Kindle. When I save new articles, that old book is updated on my Kindle - basically an append-only service. I've been looking for this for a while, but don't find an easy way to update an existing book to append more pages to it. Any pointers are welcome, I'm willing to implement it.
- solarkraft 4y agoI have made a quick-and-dirty script to save a website to an epub file: https://gist.github.com/solarkraft/2941ccf11a7aac5ebac3d173fb1bc6e7 https://gist.github.com/solarkraft/2941ccf11a7aac5ebac3d173f... Postlight's Mercury Parser can parse most websites. I likely wouldn't use nodepub again because you can't save books without a cover image; it's easy enough to just package the epub yourself (just a zip file with some XHTML). You can sync the file over with any armv6 Linux capable app; an old version of Syncthing works just fine.
- longnguyen 4y agoI think you cannot do it wirelessly (for a non-jailbroken device). If you connect with an USB cable, I think we can achieve it by removing the old file and replace it with a new one. But I'm curious, why not creating new book every time? Or if you don't want to read all of those articles yet, why not send it at some later time?
- ctxc 4y agoThe problem with replacing books is that I would lose my older highlights. If I create a new book for everything, it would become messy _really_ quickly. So if it's possible to append pages to a book, I can also create a book per category and append pages as I save articles.
- longnguyen 4y agoAh I gotcha. I'm building a product[0] for non-jailbroken Kindles and would love to solve new problems. In your case, if I can backup your highlights (and notes) to somewhere else, does that solve your problem? You can choose your storage service (dropbox, notion, s3 etc.) [0]: https://ktool.io https://ktool.io
- metadat 4y agoIs it possible to replace the batteries on the early kindles and Paperwhites? The devices work fine except they die really fast.
- throwmeariver1 4y agoThey are quite easy to change if you know your way around a screwdriver. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Kindle+Paperwhite+1st+Generation+Battery+Replacement/13044 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Kindle+Paperwhite+1st+Generatio...
- pryce 4y agoYes, I've done it myself. I bought a replacement battery for my early kindle from aliexpress for a very cheap price. I did need a hairdryer to heat the glued back and a proper plastic spudger would have been helpful. I believe I used the iFixit guides.
- denysvitali 4y agoJust thank you <3
- penguin_booze 4y agoIf I jailbreak, would I be able to install future firmware update releases from Amazon? Would it reverse the jailbreak?
- captn3m0 4y agoSome releases are safe to upgrade to, needing no changes. A few need a small hotfix patch. All upgrades will break apps, even if your jailbreak survives - but re-installing apps is a breeze. And finally, a few releases might brick your jailbreak badly. The guidance usually is to “Avoid upgrades, and check the forum thread when a new release is available to see the safe way to upgrade”.
- minimilian 4y agoI'm stuck at step 8. I can't seem to get the ``secret gesture'' to work, and it says `This demonstration device is either missing content or is disconnected from the network | CONFIGURE DEVIE'' and responds to nothing.
- minimilian 4y agoOK, that gesture was really hard to do.
- Pmop 4y agoHere you go: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JzuIGbGPpig https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JzuIGbGPpig
- ulfw 4y agoOr you could buy a non-amazon reader instead. I am very happy with my rakuten Kobo Libra 2. USB-C. epub. Pocket. No amazon lock-in or silly ads.
- zozbot234 4y agoLots of good stuff from the PineNote project as well. We might get a default free userspace for e-paper devices.
- beebeepka 4y agoThanks for sharing this one. Not going to preorder since I have no interest in fiddling with it but looks like something I would buy the minute it's ready. Pine64 kind of need more funding. Not too much, though
- arepublicadoceu 4y ago> Or you could buy a non-amazon reader instead. > I am very happy with my rakuten Kobo Libra 2. USB-C. epub. Pocket. This assume that these readers are widely available. In my country (and many others), the only reader officially sold (i.e., with local warranty) is kindle. Even if I were willing to forgo the warranty, the import taxes would be ridiculous, making it prohibitive at best. This is amazing news for many of us.
- beebeepka 4y agoI also bought the Libra 2 and it's hands down the best electronics purchase I've made in years. So light and comfortable. Tablets should come in this amazing form factor, just like the olden days. Screw this 16:9 nonsense. I wish it had some kind of support, though. Or a hover technology. Holo projectors can't come soon enough so that our hands and eyes can be free and comfy
- baisq 4y agoCan I use this to remove the ads from the lock screen? Or is there any other method that does not involve jailbreaking? Removing the ads from the filesystem using a computer and keeping the kindle in airplane mode does the trick but I really liked the feature of sending books by mail.
- PawBer 4y agoJust try asking Amazon support. Usually it's a person from India that doesn't care and will remove them without asking.
- SalimoS 4y agorm -r /Volumes/Kindle/system/.assets Then touch /Volumes/Kindle/system/.assets I tried it but it only worked for couples of days Got it from the script https://github.com/mariopepe/KindleAdRemover/blob/master/KindleAdRemover.sh https://github.com/mariopepe/KindleAdRemover/blob/master/Kin...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- OtomotO 4y agoHm, my Kindle is in Airplane mode since I bought it 7 years ago. So this should work wonderfully
- curiousgal 4y agoSame here! I actually had to manually update the firmware to a supported version by this jailbreak and did it.
- DavideNL 4y agoSame here since i bought the Oasis, now i can finally get proper dictionaries on it...
- nyanpasu64 4y ago> Once the demo is setup, skip the misconfiguration lockout using the "secret gesture" (double finger tap on bottom right of screen then swipe left) The last Kindle I owned (and cracked) didn't have a touch screen. I feel old now...
- ravish0007 4y agoThanks to this post, was able to jailbreak my oasis 3, struggling in understanding jargons to get koreader working.
- ravish0007 4y agoTLDR; Had to install MRPI first (extension of KUAL), simply by extracting it into kindle's root, and keeping KUAL (coplate's patch) in mrpackages, original KUAL didn't show up. Then simply following koreaders guide.
- ravish0007 4y agoIt's a rabbit hole. a) https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kindle_Touch_Hacking https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kindle_Touch_Hacking b) https://github.com/zaoqi/kual-linuxdeploy-armhf/ https://github.com/zaoqi/kual-linuxdeploy-armhf/
- flatiron 4y agoI have a kindle paper white 2 with KOReader and love it. Has anyone had an issue that whenever you connect to the network KOReader sets the time to UTC? Has anyone figured out a fix. I have to manually set the time every time I do a wireless Calibre sync. Bit of a pain.
- kybernetyk 4y agoIt's atrocious that you have to jump through such hoops just to get control over a device you own.
- salmo 4y agoPretty cool for me. I was looking to use the kindle for a dashboard for some metrics. I really want it to start up and "just work" and not have to mess with the browser every time. I like the idea of framing an eInk display on the wall, but don't want to buy one when I have unused Kindles. Between this, some stuff I wandered into there, and a raspberry pi or whatever, it looks totally doable. May fall back to a TUI, but whatever.
- jrm4 4y agoNice. I'm still continually baffled that there isn't a bigger push for the following fundamental idea: "Any human being can hold an effectively infinite library, which is to say infinite knowledge in their hand for about $100. Any barrier to this should be regarded as negative, if not straight up evil."
- therealdrag0 4y agoDon’t most people have access to the internet already with more information then they’ll consume? And many of us live where there are public libraries. That’s a pretty weird/loose definition of evil. Isn’t it more if a “nice to have”? How about the inverse, it should be regarded as evil to expect people to work for a pittance or free to provide you with cheap devices and unlimited libraries?