Minimalist Kindle?

January 15, 2020 5:05 AM

I was gifted a new Kindle for Christmas with "no ads." While my old Kindle really had "no ads," my new Kindle's lock screen is now a giant ad for goodreads, and the home screen has a goodreads banner at the bottom. I've managed to turn off the goodreads functionality (greying out the goodreads icon) using parental controls, but I still feel like my Kindle is constantly shouting at me. Is there anyway to get rid of these "ads" or is this just what a Kindle is nowadays?
posted by whitewall to Technology (6 answers total)

You could try turning off wifi.
posted by Obscure Reference at 5:12 AM on January 15, 2020 [1 favorite]

Best answer: My current generation kindle paperwhite without special offers does not have any image with goodreads content on the lock screen that I've seen, they are all abstract images to do with books or reading/writing; so I'm afraid I don't know what to do about that. (Are you sure that special offers are really off? I guess the images might vary by model too.)

To minimize internal amazon ad-like things (incl goodreads), if it's a recent paperwhite, for the home screen / reading, change the following two settings:

• (all) settings -> device options -> advanced options -> home & library -> home screen view -> off
• (all) settings -> reading options -> next in series -> off

The first of those has the advantage of making the home screen a lot more usable, too. You can disable the goodreads icon in parental controls, but I don't think there's an easy way to remove it. I guess if you do have a goodreads account, you may want to make sure it is not connected.
posted by advil at 5:34 AM on January 15, 2020 [6 favorites]

Best answer: Could you return it and pay a bit more for the nonads version? The price difference is not significant and Amazon has a generous return policy

If the problem is that the OP is mistaken and actually does have a Kindle with "special offers"--they don't need to return anything, they just need to pay a the price difference: instructions here. (That should also give a quick way to confirm whether they do have "special offers" or not.)
posted by bfields at 6:45 AM on January 15, 2020 [5 favorites]

Although I haven’t tried it myself, I’ve heard of people successfully calling Amazon and having the ads removed for free.
posted by elphaba at 6:48 AM on January 15, 2020 [2 favorites]

If no simpler solution arises, you might look into "jailbreaking" your device to get some more control over the thing. It has been several years and hardware versions since I have done it, but I think it remains possible with the newer stuff - see this thread for example.
posted by exogenous at 7:27 AM on January 15, 2020

Response by poster: Hurray! We have a winner! bfields was right. The person who bought me the gift said they paid extra to get the no-ads version. However, when I went to check, they hadn't actually done that... so now I've paid $20, and my Kindle is back to the way I like it.
posted by whitewall at 8:33 AM on January 15, 2020 [13 favorites]