From reading books to listening to audiobooks to surfing the web, your Kindle can do it all. But there are a lot of features and tips to Optimize Your Kindle Reading Experience that people don’t know about – that’s why I am providing this article to help you.
Tips to Get the Most Out of Your Kindle
These 22-pointers will help you to Optimize Your Kindle Reading Experience. Whether you have a newer 11th Generation Kindle or an older 10th or even 8th Generation Kindle, these tips and tricks will work on all.
Customize Reading Experience
While reading, at the top menu, press on the Aa. It brings you to a menu with lots of adjustabilities. You can change the font, font size, margins, spacing, and boldness of your books to your liking. In the layout section, you can change the orientation of the book alignment and the margins and spacing, which is a great feature and allows you to read easier.
Quickly Adjust Text Size
You can quickly adjust the font size of the Kindle. Just pinch two fingers in and out to change the text size on the Kindle.
Use Book Cover As Lock Screen
Another cool feature of Kindle is showing the currently reading book cover on your lock screen. To do this, go to All Settings→device options→turn on Display Cover. Now, whenever your Kindle is off, you’ll be greeted with the title of the book you’re currently reading.
Create Collection
If you are an avid reader like me and have lots of books, it can be pretty hard to keep track of and manage all of your books on your Kindle.
So you can create a collection by pressing the three dots to the top right on the Kindle home screen. Then you press new collection and name it whatever you want. Next, go through your books and select the ones you want to add to this collection. Once you’ve chosen them, the collection has been created. To view your new collection, go to your library, and it’ll be there.
Listen To Audiobooks
In addition to reading ebooks, your Kindle can also be used to listen to audiobooks. To do this, simply connect a pair of Bluetooth headphones or speakers to your device and then select the “Audiobooks” tab in the Kindle store.
Access Notes On Other Devices
You already have access to your notes on your Kindle. However, you might want to access your notes on other devices. If you purchase your books from the Amazon store, you can access all of your notes and highlights on your phone and other devices. It syncs through the cloud, which is really useful.
Link Notes And Highlights With Your Goodreads Account
Kindle has the ability to link your notes and highlights with your Goodreads account. To do this, you need to connect your Goodreads account with your Kindle, which you can do under all settings →your account→social networks. Here you can sync up your Goodreads account. Once that’s done, log on to your computer or download the Goodreads app. Then under my books, go to your Kindle notes and highlights. You will find all the notes and highlights from your Kindle.
Take Advantage Of Whispersync
If you purchase both the Kindle and Audible versions of a book, your Amazon account will sync the two of them together. For example, if you read 50 pages on your Kindle, the audiobook version will pick up where you left off the next time you open it on Audible. When you return to the Kindle edition after listening for a while, It will be exactly where you left off on the audio version. You can switch from one device to another or from reading to listening without losing your place. To enable Whispersync, Go to Manage Your Content and Devices→Preferences tab→Device Synchronization (Whispersync Settings)→ Turn on the feature.
Access Notes and Highlights of Your Sideloaded Books
If you sideload your books, your notes and highlights won’t sync across the cloud. You have to obtain your notes and highlights through other methods. You can use a free website like clippings.io to store and manage all of your highlights. You can access all of your clippings by connecting your Kindle to your computer and importing the “My Clippings. txt” file.
Amazon X-Ray Feature
If you’re reading a book that’s part of the Amazon X-Ray program, you can use your Kindle to look up information about the book’s characters, places, and events. To access Amazon X-Ray, press the three dots at the top right of a book and then press the X-ray button. Now, you can see notable clips, people, terms, and images related to the book.
Vocabulary Builder and Flashcards
You can find definitions of words by pressing down on unfamiliar words when reading books on a Kindle. Yet, you might forget the word later. Kindle includes a vocabulary builder and flashcards to help you tackle this.
To access vocabulary builder When you are in a book, press the top right section of the display and tap three dots to enter vocabulary builder. Here you will see all of the words which you have been learning. You can also use flashcards to show the word and context.
Show Clock While Reading
You can enable the time on the Kindle to show the time up to the top of your book. You can enable the time by going into reading options→more and turning on the show clock while reading. This will show the clock at the top of the book, which is helpful.
Reading Time
The reading progress bar on the Kindle is another helpful feature. You can check how much of your reading and chapter time is left. When you’re reading a book, you press to the bottom left of your Kindle screen, and it will cycle through the page, time left in the chapter, and time left in the book. The right side of the screen will also show the percentage of the book you’ve read.
Reset Reading Time
Sometimes though, this reading estimate of the chapter or entire book is very wrong. However, there’s a straightforward way to reset this and have the Kindle relearn your speed. To do this, press the magnifying glass and enter “;ReadingTimeReset” and make sure you spell it correctly. Now, when you press enter, no search results will come up, but It will reset your reading time, and it will relearn your reading speed.
Use Page Refresh To Stop Ghosting
On Kindle, you can see a faint imprint of the previous page whenever you change pages. This is called ghosting. Turn on the page refresh to stop ghosting. Now it’s not a massive deal for me. But if it bothers you, you can turn on the page refresh. To do this, click Settings→ Reading Options→ turn on Page Refresh. However, turning on this option will decrease your battery life a little bit, and it might also introduce a little bit more lag onto your Kindle.
Protect Your Device Privacy With A Passcode
If you don’t want anyone to look for your books or if you have annoying siblings around the house. You might want to use a password. To set a passcode on your Kindle, go to Settings→ Device Options→Device Passcode. Enter the passcode you want to use, then confirm it. And now, when you turn the Kindle back on, it’ll ask you for a passcode.
Dark Mode And Adjustable Warm Light
I always use dark mode to read at night more comfortably. At night the white background of my Kindle strains my eyes. In newer Kindles, you can enable Dark mode by swiping up to the top menu. The black background and white text make it far more comfortable to read at night. Additionally, The adjustable warm light also enables more comfortable reading at night. All Kindle devices, except the Kindle Basics, support adjustable warm light.
Take A Screenshot
Just hit the top right and bottom left corners of your Kindle screen to take a screenshot. If the screen flashes and this tells you that a screenshot has been taken. To access your screenshots, plug your Kindle into your computer, select the Kindle storage device that appears, and all your screenshots will be stored there.
Extend Battery By Using Airplane Mode
The Kindle already has an insanely long battery life that can last for several weeks at a time. However, if you wish to extend the battery life of your Kindle, you can activate airplane mode. To activate airplane mode, swipe down from the top of the Kindle screen and tap the airplane icon. By doing this, your Kindle won’t be able to connect to any Bluetooth or Wi-Fi networks. Leave it on airplane mode unless you’ve got to download a new book.
Use The Experimental Browser
Kindle has a web browser to access the web. The experimental browser on your Kindle is based on Amazon’s Silk browser and is designed for speed and efficiency. It is not the most capable, but you can browse a basic version of the web, Which is pretty cool. To access the experimental browser, go to Home Screen→Click Three dots on the Right Top corner→select “Experimental Browser.”
Calibre
Calibre is a game-changer for managing your book. Your very own documents and books can also be sideloaded onto your Kindle via Calibre. For instance, websites like Project Gutenberg offer free books. To sideload those books onto your Kindle, you download calibre and put all of your books onto it. Then you can convert them into AZW3 and send them to your Kindle.
Wirelessly Charging
This is not a tip and trick but a simple reminder. You can wirelessly charge your Kindle. Unfortunately, only Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition supports it.
Conclusion
Most likely, there are more Kindle tips and tricks available. Please share your suggestions in the comment section below if I missed any.
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