I’ve been using this new-to-me Kindle 4 Non Touchscreen for about a week or so now. The page advance button on the right side is a little sensitive, causing the book to sometimes advance two pages about 25% of the time. However, the battery life is still fantastic – and I discovered that I can use Calibre on my desktop as a “book server” and pull books off of it whenever I want. That’s pretty damn neat.
I’ve gotten over the lack of organization caused by the Calibre DRM adjustments to books. I’m generally only reading one book at a time and so the only “pain” I have is when switching between books.
The custom screensavers are still a source of great joy. I’ll probably add a few more. I’m still willing to give Duokan a try, but the incentive to do so is quickly fading when the Kindle is working so well as is.
Now that I’ve gotten the Kindle looking and working just how I like it, I suppose it’s time to get ready to mess it all up. As before, I’m going to mention where I got started on this process, but then link to the specific post/page/file where I ended up.
USB Network Hack
The last time I tried to implement this hack, I started at the MobileRead wiki on this page. Not only did it not work for me, but I ended up preventing the Kindle from connecting to my PC over USB. Let’s see if we can avoid that this time.
Following the instructions in the “README_FIRST.txt” file, drop the “Update_usbnetwork_0.57.N_k4_install.bin” into the root, then as with most of the steps thus far, safely eject the Kindle, Menu Button -> Settings -> Menu Button -> Update Your Kindle, confirm, and wait patiently.
I just can’t seem to get this to work. I’ll update it later if I can. In the meantime, I’m going to forge ahead with a series of suggestions from Redditor /user/SpartanHeavy/ on the /r/Kindle subreddit. They suggest continuing the toolchain after the jailbreak to the Mobile Kindlet Kit, the KUAL, the DevCerts update, and then the KOReader. If this works, I think it will enable me to add functionality that will do an end run around the Calibre UI causing all books to appear on the main screen. Let’s find out!
MobileRead Kindlet Kit
Download “kindle-mkk-20141129-r18833.tar.xz” from the same mega-post from NiLuJe, extract “Update_mkk-20141129-k4-ALL_install.bin”, save to the root of the Kindle, safely eject the Kindle, Menu Button -> Settings -> Menu Button -> Update Your Kindle, confirm, and wait patiently.
KUAL
Download “KUAL-v2.7.37-gfcb45b5-20250419.tar.xz” from the mega-post, extract “KUAL-KDK-1.0.azw2”, save to the “/documents/” folder on the Kindle. (Note: This is not KUAL (coplate) or KUAL+)
Install DevCerts Update
Download “DevCerts-20250419-KeyStore.zip” from this post by NiLuJe, extract “Update_mkk-20250419-k4-ALL_keystore-install.bin”, save to the root of the Kindle, safely eject the Kindle, Menu Button -> Settings -> Menu Button -> Update Your Kindle, confirm, and wait patiently.
Note: I noticed before I restarted the Kindle there’s something called “dev KUAL and it lists the author as “ixtab NiLuJe twobob stepk”. 1
So, after all that, I don’t see that the “USBnetwork” or “USBnet” are in any way working on this device. That’s okay. I haven’t killed it, I can still ready my books updated via Kindle/Amazon/Libby and I can read the books I’ve archived via Calibre, and I have the cool new screensavers. The KOReader should theoretically permit me to view Wikipedia, but when everyone pretty much has a phone that can access the web easier, who would want to read a wikipedia entry on a much slower device?
As it turns out, I’m just not going to be able to use USBnetwork, even if I could get it working, to have the Kindle OS treat Calibre books in the same hide-when-in-a-collection as native Amazon formatted books. There are some super hacky work arounds involving scripts and such that would permit me to do this, but then hiding a book from the main screen would make it unavailable elsewhere, which kinda defeats the purpose.
I may give Duokan a try later. The major relevant benefits of Duokan appear to be easy organization of books into folders and possibly longer battery life. Any amount of battery life in excess of a day’s worth of reading is likely to be more than sufficient for me. However, I kinda dislike the clutter and disorganization of the native Kindle OS treatment of Calibre books. One drawback to Duokan is that it can’t download books through the Amazon ecosystem, so I’d need to re-boot into Kindle OS any time I wanted to check out a new library book. This may be enough to get me to add this dual-booting operating system to the Kindle.
Lastly, the number of additional resources and sites that I went through to even get as far as I have above has been dizzying. There was a CNet2article about screensaver hacks, but none of the images work and it’s not a lot easier to follow. I also stumbled across the blog of someone named “Yifan Lu” who I suspect was a contributor to many of the various NiLuJe updates. If I ever get far enough with the SSH nonsense I was chasing, I also found a site with a Javascript tool to figure out the Kindle’s default root password. The secret appears to be the password is the word “fiona” plus the MD5 hash of the all caps serial number for the Kindle.
When last we saw our intrepid hero, he was running a factory reset on his new-ish Kindle 4 Non Touch (Black) circa 2012. 1 He’d managed to jailbreak it and then install some new screensavers, before going for broke to install SSH and turning off the Kindle’s ability to appear as a drive on Windows, preventing all future side-loaded content.
It’s taken me a bit of fiddling, but I’ve now gotten the the Kindle to where it is working “as intended.” After the factory reset and arduously reentering my ridiculously long WiFi and Amazon passwords, I couldn’t deliver the books that had been registered with this account to this device. The books that I still had checked out simply wouldn’t deliver. I figured maybe they were stuck in the intertubes and I should send a few more after it. When I tried to deliver the books through the Libby App, my Amazon page pulled up in the mobile browser as expected, but when I clicked the button in Amazon to deliver the book, the page simply said, “Sorry, we couldn’t find that page.” I was stuck with books I had previously checked out through Libby in my Amazon account which I couldn’t deliver to this device – and was unable to check out additional books to appear in my Amazon account.2 Ah, I found another way in which this error can occur – when you try to download a graphic novel to your ancient Kindle 4, get the “Sorry, we couldn’t find that page” error making you think your Libby app is borked, only to copy/paste the link into a PC browser and discovery it’s really because “We could find a registered device to read this title” and you realize the problem is you don’t own any Kindle devices that can read comics.
I took the browser back to the page with the button to send the delivery, copied the URL, and entered it into my desktop browser – which provided a much more informative error message. The desktop Amazon page said there were no devices registered to my account! I went and changed the name of my device in the Amazon “Digital Content” page and then made sure to make it my “default” device was this same one. Having the Kindle check for new updated content wasn’t working, so I restarted it and checked again. This time the books started to appear. Yay! I now have a basic as-intended Amazon experience!
But that’s not good enough. I want …
Skeletor would never steer us wrong
Let’s try jailbreaking it again. What could possibly go wrong this time?!
Confirm Firmware
I’m already running the latest 4.1.4 firmware, so I should be ready to proceed. You can see the firmware version at the bottom of the screen under Menu Button -> Settings.
Identify The Kindle
I didn’t need to do this, since I had previously identified my Kindle. The easiest way to ID your Kindle3
Wait for the Kindle to boot into diagnostics mode. (I saw the screen take on a broken / static appearance for just a second. Don’t freak out.)
Select “D) Exit, Reboot or Disable Diags” and then “R) Reboot System”. In order to “Q) To continue”, you’ll need to click to the left on the directional pad.
Be patient while the jailbreak does it’s thing.
Jailbroken
After going through all of this, Kindle eventually reappeared as a drive on Windows. I safely ejected it once more. I saw the screen go blank, then the main page come up showing all content missing. After a moment, even though I’m still disconnected from WiFi, the content returned with “You are Jailbroken” appearing as the topmost “book.” The entire contents of this document is the statement “It is safe to delete this document.”
The wiki suggests jailbreaking allows minor things like getting custom screensavers and fonts, but that the “more fun stuff” requires gaining SSH access to the device.
This is where your intrepid hero ran afoul last time… let’s see what happens next!
I’m trying to keep this guide-of-guides as organized as possible.
Upload the “Update_ss_0.47.N_k4_install.bin” file to the root directory of the Kindle.
Menu Button -> Settings -> Menu Button -> Update Your Kindle. Confirm. Wait for it to restart.
Once it’s booted up again, navigate to “/linkss/screensavers/” and upload additional images. To make my own screensavers, I downloaded artwork I like, rotated them 90 degrees, scaled them down to 600 px wide x 800 px tall, reduced the DPI to 72, and saved as a PNG file. Easy, right!?
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I chose to add blank files named “random” and “shuffle” in the /linkss” directory so that the screensavers I uploaded will cycle through. A blank “reboot” file, followed by a reboot, is apparently necessary in order to change and update screensavers. So, safely eject, Menu Button -> Settings -> Menu Button -> Restart.
I’ve reached the point where my Kindle was at the end of the day yesterday. A fully functional Kindle 4, but with custom screensavers. I’m not gonna lie, these magnificent pieces of art look amazing even scaled down and on a black and white screen. Now that I’ve gone through everything a second time, I think I may try pushing my luck and going for the SSH installation again. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen!?
Listed as “NoTouch” sometimes, but that just sounds too weird for me to use except in instances where I want my notes to match what appears on various guides… [↩]
I’m skipping past all the uninstall, restoring Libby nonsense that went on in between these other steps… [↩]
But, really, I’m speaking to my future self when I have to do this a third time… in which case “my Kindle”…) is to read the serial number off the back or from Menu Button -> Settings -> Tab page to “Device Info” and it should be listed as “Serial Number” whatever.
Look up the serial number against this MobileRead wiki list to find the Model Name and Nicknames for the Kindle. In my case, I have a serial number starting with either “B023, 9023”, a Model Name of “Kindle NoTouch Black (2012)” with a Nickname of “K4” or “K4B.”
Jailbreak
This is the part of the process that I found to get extra confusing. There is so much interplay between the MobileRead forums and their wiki and the files you download, that I was frequently get caught in a loop referring from one page to another to a file and back again. For future reference I’ll link where the loop starts – but then link directly or as close to directly to the necessary file as possible.
You may be wondering, “MakerBlock! What the heck?! What happened here?!” The answer is that while stuck in the loop that absolutely lead to that first forum post, looking for further information later on lead me to an updated version of this file. While all you have to do is read what is happening here, I need to uninstall the 2015 jailbreak so I can install the latest r18977 version. I’ll resume in two restarts. I am fairly confident this is where I screwed up last time. I didn’t see this latest version of the jailbreak firmware.
Download the file, open the ZIP, and read the “README” file nestled within.
The README directs:
Connect the Kindle via data USB cable to a PC
Copy the following to the “root” drive of the Kindle
data.tar.gz
ENABLE_DIAGS
diagnostic_logs “folder”
Safely eject the Kindle from the PC
Menu Button -> Settings -> Menu Button -> Restart ((If you don’t see “Restart” something probably went wrong [↩]
The Kindle was an incredible device for 2012. E-ink display, 2-4GB of storage, wifi, ability to download thousands of books, purchase and borrow new books wirelessly, play games, and battery that could last for weeks. We bought one new back then, but it’s tied to my wife’s account and I don’t want to lose access to the books on it or accidentally brick it. $30 and a week later, I have another Kindle 4 Non-Touch shipped to my door courtesy of an eBay seller.
Obviously, DRM’s upside for content owners is protecting themselves from IP theft. The downside for everyone else is being treated like a criminal. I just want to read the books I legitimately have access to on any device I own without a whole bunch of rigamarole, authentications, and nonsense.
Fortunately this Kindle is so old mature that many of the content and firmware problems that might have once existed and somewhat solved. Using Calibre, I can remove the DRM off the books I have on our original Kindle and drop them onto this NTM1 Kindle. If I go so far as to jailbreak this Kindle, I can install new screensavers which would be a super cool upgrade. I followed the various slightly-new-hostile guides through the MobileRead forums and wiki, and even successfully jailbroke the Kindle, installed new cool screensavers, and brought over books through Calibre. The one downside was2 big enough that I kept pushing.
So true…
That one downside was that while books on a stock Kindle appear on the main screen where you can page through them all, you can also add them to custom “Collections” where once they’ve been assigned to one, they’ll disappear from view on the main screen where they are now only visible in the one or more Collections to which they’ve been assigned. It essentially operates much as a “tagging” system. Well, after bringing over the books via Calibre, apparently the process removes something from the metadata for the books that permits the Kindle device to flag them for non-displaying on the main screen. The result is that while books can still be assigned to collections, they’ll also still clutter up the main screen. Obviously, I there’s no way I can deal with this, so I decided to explore other options.
Once you’ve got your Kindle jailbroken, you can start to do things like SSH into it, change some core settings, and otherwise just tinker around changing things and ripping stuff out. While I didn’t brick this device, I did get it to the point where it would neither enter a debug mode nor permit me to access it over USB to sideload books via Calibre. I don’t trust the Amazon email delivery system well enough to want to send de-DRM’ed books to the address Amazon so graciously assigned the Kindle, so that option is out.
This has lead me to a factory reset, fresh Kindle, and the need to enter my ridiculously long WiFi network password and Amazon account password back into the Kindle via the 5 key directional pad.
