68
votes
Amazon killing purchasing, borrowing and downloading books for older Kindles
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- Title
- Amazon is cutting off support for older Kindles
- Published
- Apr 8 2026
- Word count
- 223 words
ATTENTION ARCHIVISTS: It is now of critical importance to archive the official update packages from Amazon from this support page ASAP.
Device owners who would like to keep using it: Take your kindle offline immediately, jailbreak it if you can, and block OTA updates. If you can't jailbreak now, stay offline until an exploit on the 'final' firmware is found.
For many older kindles, updates are not cumulative and must all be applied in order. I don't think they'll keep them online for long, given half the motivation probably has to do with their continued jailbreakability. Should probably save hashes, name files appropriately, and create torrents.
I'll be starting myself as well, but the more people archiving independently to compare hashes the better.
Another planned obsolecence driving ewaste haters to piracy.
Kindle's software is actually pretty shockingly poor in quality. With my jailbroken kindle, I run koreader with the "no framework" option which completely shuts down the Kindle framework and even with koreader's network and SSH servers on, battery life is notably better. Koreader also has drammatically more options and features, better controls, and is extensible on top of that. Jailbreaking a Kindle offers massive improvements over stock. Anyone who owns one should give it a try; it's not terribly difficult and you get a million improvements.
I hacked mine (per my post the other day), but actually didn't like it.
I don't doubt that increased functionality, but for me it just ended up being too fiddly. My Libby books wouldn't sync anymore and I didn't like trying to navigate the Koreader interface. I generally don't mind tinkering, but I just appreciated that the Kindle interface just worked and was easy to use.
I won't argue that jailbreaking brings some extra stuff, but it also feels like there's something in terms of easy useability that's lost in the process. But maybe that's just because mine is 14 years old.
Well clearly that’s because you’re doing something wrong and there are problems with your brain. /s
In all seriousness I’m surprised you don’t like the navigation. That was something i found to be a major improvement. You can also customize it quite a lot. Mine is also an old model - I’m not sure exactly how old, but it’s one of the first paperwhite models. I’d like to know more about why you think that koreader is less easy to use than the Kindle reader given that most of the advanced options are somewhat hidden away.
I can’t tell you much about Libby syncing because I never used that feature but I wouldn’t be surprised if you had problems with it given that it relies on Amazon’s DRM platform.
Yeah, I don't know what it was. I like the original Kindle interface, where I just see my books and can easily find them to read; with KoReader, I felt like I was drilling into Menus and stuff, but again, I hacked my Kindle several months ago and then didn't use it, so I couldn't remember what the hell I was supposed to be doing. So maybe I wasn't even in KoReader or whatever? I just ended-up in a Menu where I could see the file system and I just didn't feel like putting in the effort to figure out how to navigate it.
I'm a born tinkerer, but a lot of times these days with my technology, I just want it to work when I'm ready to use it and after jailbreaking my Kindle, I didn't feel like it "just worked" anymore.
And my primary use for it these days has been with Libby, so it didn't really make sense to continue using it and leave it Jailbroken if I couldn't use that.
You may have been in KUAL, which is typically how you launch koreader.
If you were in koreader you also had the option of changing where it considers to be your home folder where your books are. That way you don’t have to navigate beyond subfolders if you have any. It’s the only “must configure” option IMHO. You also have the ability to configure the view in a lot of nice ways, including the ability to hide books you’ve already read.
Ah ok, KUAL sounds familiar, you're probably correct.
I gave up pretty quickly at any rate, since it wasn't syncing my Libby book and all I really wanted to do was read. Either way, I'd been considering replacing that Kindle for over a year, so it just gave me an excuse when I reformatted it anyway and it wouldn't reconnect to Amazon.
From the article:
Well, this ensures that my next e-reader won't be made by Amazon. I can get away with no support, I can even understand that. But bricking it (if there is a need to reset for any reason)? No thanks, I'm not supporting this.
I thought this was apropos.
A couple of months ago, I jailbroke my 2012 Kindle Paperwhite, which was functioning just fine. No real reason to do so, I just thought it could add extra functionality; but after finally picking it back up again, I couldn't remember how to use it properly and realized I didn't really care about any extra features of the jailbreak.
So I factory reset it and tried to register it again with Amazon. It kept turning me down. I deleted it from my account and tried over the next several days, figuring there was maybe some issue on Amazons end.
Turns out, they maybe already disabled support for it, per this article. Ah well, I figured after owning it for the 8 years I have, it was time for something different, so I picked up a used Boox Go 6, which I've been pretty happy with. I like that it runs Android, which feels like it'll end up having decent amount of life in it and I enjoy that I can put whatever I want on it, given it's a more open platform.
I guess you didn't own it after all
As proven by jailbreaking, there is no reason that even the OG kindle can't be used as an e-reader.
It's just inconvienient for Amazon to let people do so.
Yes.
It's not about support. It's about "you need to buy a new one because Amazon needs to keep growing. Also the new ones are better at spying on you and better to provide upselling to watch movies or something".
It's a shame that most electronic devices now are so user hostile. The goals of the user and the seller are completely different. Same for websites, cars, many other things.
Speaking of cars, I've heard that the garage door opener stops working on the latest Honda models if you don't pay a subscription fee.
Yes, I could understand a device that requires internet access needing support for security updates. That fact is very convinient for manufacturers that want to sell support agreements and new hardware to you over and over forever; but it is unfortunately a fact nonetheless.
There's no reason that an e-reader requires "support" though. It doesn't require internet access to do it's job. It's not a tempting target for attackers. It's just an appliance, so this move is pure, undisguised greed, nothing else.
It's no different than if my oven decided it could no longer bake pies because it's no longer supported, or if my lawnmower stopped running because it lacks critical security updates. Stuff like this should be blatantly illegal, but because it fuels the US economy, it won't be.
I wish we could govern in a way that forced companies to do actual productive work, instead of just finding new creative way to extract people's money by fucking them over.
The US economy should be blatantly illegal: I have no idea how you managed to get to a point where corporations dictate policy through lobbying and have pretty much successfully eliminated antitrust enforcement and regulation in general.
Now more than ever we need to return power to organisations that act in the interest of consumers. That should be the government, but failing that we need to establish proper regulators.
The last nationwide consumer privacy law was enacted in 1989 in record time when congress learned that video rental stores could just hand out lists of all the porn you rented.
(ok I checked and technically there are a few since, but they definitely smell different than the hard ban of the VPPA)
Off topic, but how about a paywalled wheelchair?
It also seems reasonable for them to stop supporting a device after 18 years, although arbitrarily blocking purchase and delivery of books shows that it's not just about endless support.
That's not even the oldest networked device that's still in active usage in my house.
That honor goes to my 22 year old WRT54G, the best 2.4GHz IoT router out there, still getting community firmware updates
They don't want to support their old devices? Fine. Unlock the bootloader and release the source code.
This should be law.
Really can't stress this part enough. It does not have to be this way. We can and should require companies to make open the things they no longer support.
We have the public domain for IP, though I'm not surprised that this hadn't been updated to tech given the poor track record of geriatric legislators.
Wouldn't matter, they have copyright for another 100 years....
If only. I wonder what changes we might have seen in virtualization of the cancelled vmWare products had been open sourced. Other previously open source products were un-open sourced when that company was acquired.
This is essentially what StopKillingGames intends to do. They specifically keep their scope to games but it obviously should apply to other things too, which they're also aware of. I'm hoping for a domino effect should they become successful enough to affect change.
It's likely because supporting older devices is what has held them back from turning off older/weaker DRM and they want to tell publishers that new stuff will be locked down more.
A few months ago I looked up the instructions for putting a new battery in my gen 2 Kindle. Even then they were set up to be disposable, the battery is glued in.
I jailbroke my kindle oasis, which I love (apart from its dire battery life) and it has been amazing. I find the reader way more complicated, WAY more complicated, just so many options and everything, and way uglier than the normal kindle library experience. BUT i no longer have to plug it in to my computer and use calibre to send books to it. Now it just connects to my wifi and I have all my books served up in an OPDS catalogue. it's ugly as sin, I'd never recommend it to my family or people I love (or even just like), but if that's your jam, it's amazing.
Yet another way they're contributing to further amassing of e-waste. Old devices should always be repairable, resettable, etc and they should not be built in such a way that they solely rely on a corporation to keep them working.
I had an old keyboard Kindle that somehow broke itself just sitting in a drawer. Tried replacing the battery and nothing. Tried tons of resets and nothing. Just permanently bricked. Nothing I could do to repair and reuse old hardware.
Turns out it was a great thing to have happen because I switched to a Kobo device and I use it exclusively in offline mode (have to edit a config file to enable this setting- but now I ONLY transfer books via USB) and got away from having an Amazon device. I have also gotten rid of Alexa and that was a great decision too.
I am not saying Kobo is perfect but it was a better option. I do not buy books from Kobo or use their online services. I may have still had to create an account for initial setup though and that's a problem if true. So don't consider this post an endorsement. Would rather have a completely open device.
Bricking on reset is asinine and should not be legal.
I am glad jailbreaking remains an option for those with devices that are still operable. If they don't keep the devices useful we will do so in spite of them
I really don't understand how it would be bricked by a factory reset. Shouldn't it just be factory reset and unable to download updates from the server, but still able to load books manually?
Unfortunately the article doesn't explain exactly why. Maybe to use the device at all after a factory reset requires registering the device to an account which they will now block? I think it might be something like that. Might be a setup step that you can't bypass
Yes, I was really just hoping an incompetent journalist used the wrong term.
At least on my Kindle 3, a factory reset does not downgrade firmware. If they push one last OTA update, a unjailbroken device could theoretically be destroyed.
It's been a long time since I used my old OG paperwhite, but don't all the Kindle devices require you to connect to wifi and log into an Amazon account before you can do anything at all? Maybe the bricked state is you're permanently stuck staring at a login form that will never work.
The older ones did not. Kindle 3 you can just plug in as a USB device and copy mobi files straight to it. You can also not register, connect online, and also use the experimental webkit browser.
I knew this day would eventually come, but I'm still not happy about it.
I have an old Kindle 4 that I use exclusively to de-DRM books that I buy that I can't buy elsewhere. I fully realize that a lot of these I could just get by other means, but I genuinely do like buying books, and I also like that I know I'm getting a good, direct copy (rather than an ebook that has played a telephone game through different formats and is often subpar as a result).
Part of me wants to just buy a newer used Kindle so I can kick the can down the road and keep doing what I'm doing, while part of me wants to finally admit that there's no honor in trying to do things the "right" way -- especially when Amazon has been trying to amp up their DRM lockdown.
Also, I've plugged this before, but it's probably worth a re-mention: I primarily buy my books through Kobo now, but I de-DRM everything and upload it to BookFusion, which is essentially a bring-your-own-files cloud reading platform.
I absolutely adore BookFusion. I cannot recommend it enough. I've got my whole library set up through it, and it's where I now do all of my reading.
If you're looking to exit the Amazon ecosystem and don't mind doing a little bit of legwork to get your library up and running, it's excellent.
If anyone's interested in it and has any questions, I'm happy to answer them. I'm not paid by the company or anything -- I'm just a really happy customer that's delighted that all of my ebooks from all of my different sources now live under one roof (and all get the same first-class treatment).
I got away from kindle the moment I could. I understand that they’re cheaper (or at least they were when I looked) and not everyone can afford alternatives, but if you can I HIGHLY recommend not supporting amazons death grip on the market.
It cannot possibly be that difficult to keep old devices on prem for backwards compatibility testing.
It cannot possibly be that hard to maintain two kindle versions of books, one with new features and one without.
Microsoft has literally been doing this for decades just fine.
I agree with you, but I doubt that has anything to do with their reasoning. They don't have a reason to support old devices other than ethics (lol) or it makes them money. I'm guessing they did the math on how often users of older devices purchased new stuff and decided it wasn't worth supporting it for them.
I'm fairness, there has to be a point at which there aren't enough users of older devices to bother supporting them. Having said that, I won't give Amazon the benefit of the doubt. They could support it at a loss or if good will, but i suspect they are cutting it much earlier than the cost/benefit analysis requires. Especially if "making people happy" is factored into your benefits.
Yeah this is a good example of how most people are not like me, most people don’t think about why their devices aren’t working when they stop working, they just buy another.
If people did actually think about it no one would ever tolerate a company doing this. It would not cost them much. Testing is automated and it has been for many years now. Microsoft Word still works with .doc files and converting a .docx to .doc or vice versa is easy. They’ve been doing it since 2001. The cost would be basically nothing for Amazon to do this, they just don’t because we let them get away with doing this even though we don’t let Microsoft get away with it. MS Word stops working, theres a support team to help you. Theres no support for Amazon and no one ever made them support their products.
Hmm, there is a cost that's a bit hidden with Microsoft's relentless drive for backwards compatibility: program development is kneecapped.
In 2026, Excel still modally blocks and chimes when you enter an incorrect formula, rather than signalling what's incorrect about the formula whilst keeping focus on the formula box. Errors in calculations resolve to #VALUE and are very hard to debug and trace. Array formulas are so janky, with a lot of functions refusing to work with them. There's no way to have an array formula use the calculated value of the previous cell in the current cell's calculation. Indexing ranges is a pain in the arse. The whole $A$1 syntax and cycling through that with F4. Splitting cells with the data wizard. Text manipulation and indexing. Auto interpretation of cell type and hardcoded replacement of values with dates. The list just goes on and on.
I think there's a lot to be gained from backwards compatibility, but I think there are huge costs that should be assessed. Probably 15 or 20 years ago Microsoft should have drawn a line under the particularly hobbled Office suite programs and maintained them with minimal updates alongside releasing ground up rewrites with good, modern UX and proper support for modern functionality. That's my two cents, at least.
Microsoft also has the issue where a good chunk of its user base learned how to use it in the 2000s and doesn’t want to learn new things.
Otherwise, they come out with new ms office every few years, thats plenty of time for a rewrite. But they dont want to do that, the customers want the same product with the same features and if you take away features with a rewrite youll have the Karen rebellion of 2028 on your hands
It isn't just the hardware support. The older devices don't support newer DRM, so it also means keeping weaker DRM books available.
And it's a travesty that we've been conditioned due to rapid improvements of PCs until about 2010 and phones till about 2017 to just accept that electronic devices should be replaced every 3-7 years.
And an even bigger one that we accept DRM as a technology.
Thats kinda what I was getting at, it would be so easy to support old hardware, there must be some monetary incentive to drop support on purpose.
I posted my thoughts on technology and general relationship of people to technology a few times.
This is simply one of the many things that is possible by, among other things, people simply not caring. Not to say it is the cause but it could have been something preventing moves such as this.
This entire thing just makes me miss my old Barnes & Noble Nook tablet. RIP you glorious little e-ink reader; gone too soon, accidentally crushed by my elbow. Maybe I should just go ahead and wipe my 8th Gen Kindle and sell it while I still can… if I ever could.
Does this mean the older devices won't work with overdrive? I bet it does.