if you have Own a Kindle for reading e-books—perhaps a brand new model like the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition or the Kindle Colorsoft—then you’ll know that these devices are very simple in terms of interfaces and controls. Focus on the text and whatever you are reading.
However, behind the simple and friendly interface, Kindle has more features and tricks than you might expect. Sure, these e-readers don’t compete with iPads for functionality, but there’s a lot you can do with them—from customizing your reading experience to getting non-e-book content on the screen.
1. Search the words
Don’t worry about unfamiliar words you come across while reading. You can get definitions for anything on the screen just by pressing and holding on the word. When the definition appears, you can swipe left to see if there’s a Wikipedia entry for the word, and swipe left again to translate the word into another language.
2. Send web articles to your Kindle
You can also use Kindle to keep track of your online content by sending web articles to the device. Perhaps the easiest option is the official Kindle extension for Google Chrome — as long as you want to submit articles from a desktop web browser. Once you’re signed in to your Amazon account, article transfers are just a few clicks away.
The Kindle plugin is fast and free, but it doesn’t always get web page formatting right, and it doesn’t work on mobile. Instapaper does a better job with its Kindle-sync service, but you need the $6/month premium plan to access it. Push to Kindle is also good, but requires a $3 monthly subscription to post more than 10 articles per month.
3. Take a screenshot
For example, if you want to show off your library or share part of a book on social media, you can take a screenshot on your Kindle. Just tap on two diagonally opposite corners, right in the corner. The screen will flash, and the screen will be saved. Connect your Kindle to your computer with a USB cable and you’ll save all your screenshots in your own dedicated folder.
4. Organize your e-books into collections
As you add more e-books (and web articles) to your library, it can get a little overwhelming – and it gets harder to sort through to find what’s next. You can mitigate this somewhat by creating collections. These are basically folders for sorting titles, either by genre, by author, or how soon you want to read them.
To get started, from the Kindle home screen, tap the three dots in the upper right, then Create a collection. Give your collection a name and optionally mark it as a favorite (which makes it appear more prominently on different pages). You can then sort the library page by collections—just tap the sort icon, the three horizontal lines in the top right.
