I turned my Kindle into my own personal newspaper

https://manualdousuario.net/en/how-to-kindle-personal-newspaper/

by rpgbr • 4 months ago

199 66 4 months ago

manualdousuario.net

Foskya• 4 months ago

I would suggest to just jailbreak the kindle and automate the workflow with koreader or other "apps"

DavideNL2• 4 months ago

What i did is, jailbreak [1] my Kindle Oasis, and install KOreader [2].

This gives you full access to upload whatever ebook you want (SSH, WebDav, Syncthing, ...) and it can fetch RSS feeds (i use it with FreshRSS.)

PS. The (very old) Kindle Oasis is still the best device there is to read on in my opion. Which is crazy, since it was released from 2016-2019...

It has 2 phyisical buttons to turn the page, and an ambient light sensor to auto adjust the brightness, and a 300 PPI display.

I'm still "waiting" for a better / equal device to be released.

[1] https://kindlemodding.org/kindle-models.html

[2] https://github.com/koreader/koreader

cyberpunk• 4 months ago

I missed my oasis dearly but I couldn’t wait anymore and got a Kobo Libre (not sure the exact model, th color one); it’s pretty much as good, only thing i miss is the dual battery system.

Koreader is well supported and has all the features you mention.

a10c• 4 months ago

Not only that but KOReader has native support for OPDS feeds, which the OPs read-it-later service Readeck also natively supports.

I have been using it like this for a while and it is absolutely bliss to be able to view a catalogue of my inboxed articles on my kindle, with annotation (exports of which are also supported in KOReader).

yoz-y• 4 months ago

TIL that oasis was discontinued. Now I’m sad I did not upgrade to the version with usb-c. I’ll hold onto mine for a while.

That said, I do most of my reading on a Books Palma 2 now. Smaller, so it fits better in a smaller bag or a pocket. And does have physical buttons.

DavideNL2• 4 months ago

fyi: https://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/2026/02/20/amazon-selling-...

michaelmcdonald• 4 months ago

No need to be sad: the Oasis never had a USB-C version.

deng2• 4 months ago

Or, even better, don't buy a Kindle in the first place but get something that doesn't need a jailbreak, like for instance literally any Kobo reader.

not_that_d• 4 months ago

But why? You can get a Kindle with ads, jailbreak it and having Bezos pay the halb of your Device

jcul2• 4 months ago

+1 for Kobo.

I've had my Kobo Clara HD for almost 8 years and I still use it daily with KOReader. It's so easy to install KOReader and it's really repairable. I replaced the SD card at one point, and another time I thought it was broken or needed a new battery but came back to life after reseating cables.

Before that I had a kindle and you had to jump through a lot of hoops to install KOreader, and I remember you had to be careful not to upgrade the firmware so it could be jailbroken.

Like I said I've had the Kobo for 8 years, so I hope this is still the case.

scrollop• 4 months ago

Had a few kobos, very good readers, then bought a Box color go 7 ii, mainly because it runs android, so you can used it for so many things. Shame the company is based in china.

rpgbr3• 4 months ago

I (author) live in Brazil. Kindle is the only E-Ink device on sale here by its official manufacturer. We can import a Kobo or Boox or Bigme, but importing taxes are very steep.

johnhamlin2• 4 months ago

It’s infuriating that Amazon abandoned the Oasis form factor. I love having a safe area on the side to, ya know, hold the damn thing. And physical buttons are so much more reliable for page turns. Every once in a while, tapping the screen to turn the page does something unexpected, and suddenly I’m futzing with my kindle instead of being immersed in my book.

I was a happy Oasis user until last year when I used a new Kindle and saw how much faster they’ve gotten. That started a very frustrating search for a kindle replacement. I ordered and returned many units before settling on the Kobo Libra Color. I didn’t want color, but I don’t notice the lower resolution now unless I’m using it side-by-side with a B&W screen. I do miss whisper sync, which I’d occasionally use to read a few pages on my phone. The Instapaper integration is awesome— I used to pay for KTool to accomplish something similar.

bstar77• 4 months ago

I have a Kindle Scribe Colorsoft. I’ve been able to upload pretty much any relevant media, primarily epub, pdf and images. I just use send to kindle via web or email. It’s not censoring or rejecting content. Not sure what benefit jailbreaking would have.

nonninz3• 4 months ago

It would be really interesting to join what you and the OG article talks about:

1. Self host readdeck, add articles to it

2. Have an ebook generated automatically each article saved/day/week/etc

3. Have the ebook be automatically pushed to your jailbroken kindle with KOReader

New side project unlocked, thanks!

avazhi2• 4 months ago

Uh, pretty sure the kindle paperwhites can import epubs natively now.

cvcount• 4 months ago

The devices themselves can't read epubs (last time I checked anyway), but the "Send to Kindle" service will convert epubs to Kindle-formatted files.

zerreh50• 4 months ago

And that means you give your epub to Amazon to convert, and whatever else they feel like doing with it.

magpi3• 4 months ago

He mentioned in the article that his Kindle is not connected to the internet (didn't explain why), so this is a no-go for him.

butokai• 4 months ago

This setup feels cumbersome, since you also have to manually track which items you have read. Kobo seems to offer better features in this sense (better than a jail broken kindle), however I like the build of my Kindle Oasis 2 too much.

adhamsalama6• 4 months ago

I faced the same issue, but I wanted to use my Kindle to read RSS feeds without relying on my PC, phone or Amazon, so I built a FOSS web-based RSS reader compatible with the Kindle browser. It may make your life a lot simpler.

Link: https://inkfeed.xyz Repo: https://github.com/adhamsalama/inkfeed-reader

adhamsalama6• 4 months ago

I discovered this post while reading Hacker News on my Kindle BTW.

floch• 4 months ago

Interesting project! I’d love to self-host but can’t find the backend server code - could you share a link to its repo?

adhamsalama6• 4 months ago

I haven't open sourced the Backend yet, but the reader frontend repo is fully working without the Backend. The Backend is used for emailing yourself and doing file conversion on the Backend instead of the Kindle to save battery.

So without the Backend you're only missing the email feature. All you need is a proxy to bypass CORS.

To be honest I was thinking of keeping the Backend closed source to add subscriptions ($1 per month) to cover the hosting (4$), which means I only need 4 users to break even haha.

Will think about open sourcing the Backend and get back to you.

pentanide2• 4 months ago

Hello Adham! Great solution, but I'm having an issue using my Paperwhite 7 Generation in the Kindle web browser. When I try to click on any of the already saved feed, a pop up appears showing the following: loadFeed error: 'undefined' is not an object. Maybe you have already encountered an issue like this. Thanks in advance!

adhamsalama6• 4 months ago

Sorry for the delay. Will check it out.

adhamsalama6• 4 months ago

It's hard for me to debug this because I don't have a Paperwhite 7. I assume it's a JS compatibility issue but not where the exact root cause.

Since the reader is Open Source, can you run it on your machine and view it on your local network to debug and tell me what's the issue so that I can fix it?

longnguyen3• 4 months ago

Nice. I quit my job to build a product[0] to solve this exact problem.

I’m not interested in news but I love reading blog posts, newsletters and interesting technical discussions on HN or reddit.

So I built KTool as a “read it later on Kindle” solution. It supports web links, newsletters (via email forwarding) and RSS. I also added the ability to compile multiple articles into one magazine/ebook and deliver them at a specific time.

Give it a try if you’re a Kindle owner.

[0] https://ktool.io

zoidb• 4 months ago

FYI there are some styling issues on your landing page on Firefox mobile (dont see it on chrome)

longnguyen3• 4 months ago

Thank you. Working on the fix rn

johnhamlin2• 4 months ago

I discovered KTool here when you launched and I love it! I hope you’re doing well

longnguyen3• 4 months ago

Thank you for your early support

mparnisari• 4 months ago

I have a kobo and I use Instapaper. Is this similar?

LeoDaVibeci• 4 months ago

That's so cool, I would love to have a less distracting experience while reading the news.

It could even be paired with an AI summary service that could summarize Reddit/HN activity, like Huxe does in it's generated podcasts.

0x53• 4 months ago

I also just did this! My solution was to automate creation of a set of static html pages that I view in the “experimental” kindle browser. It’s set to scrape a paper and build the site at 6am every morning. That was I don’t have to mess with the file transfers, and it’s there waiting for me when I wake up. Also I can mess with the layout a bit easier. Only downside is that I have to have next/back buttons rather than tapping on the screen.

tpaschalis• 4 months ago

Nice write up!

After a couple of attempts I settled on a a different approach for my old Kobo.

It can connect to Dropbox so I deployed a small app in Fly.io which takes a link, bundles it as an epub and uploads to the right folder. Day-to-day all I use is a bookmarklet

nguyendinhdoan• 4 months ago

Love this approach — using existing hardware creatively instead of buying new gear. The Readeck + Calibre pipeline is clever, especially since Readeck can export directly to ePub.

One thing worth noting: if the "requires a computer" limitation bothers you, KOReader (an open-source reader that runs on Kindle) can fetch RSS feeds and even Wallabag/Readeck content natively over wifi. Might close that last gap without needing a new device.

lnenad• 4 months ago

A while ago I made this to get content from websites for reading in pdf. With what I use (Supernote) you can have an automated script to pull articles in the morning and put them in a dropbox folder that automatically syncs with the device.

https://github.com/lnenad/newser

rbanffy• 4 months ago

That’s wonderful. And I can do that to my 1st gen Nook as well.

naftalibeder• 4 months ago

Hopefully condoned plug for a service I built, Polyreader (https://polyreader.app), which lets you quickly send articles to your Kindle.

It supports (multiple simultaneous) collections, send via email, saving new articles from links while reading on your Kindle, and little niceties like sending yourself a reminder note at the end of an article ("tell mom this was interesting").

It's also cheap (free tier or $1/month).

rcarmo• 4 months ago

I've had Calibre running someplace and mailing me news every weekend for around... 15 years?

I keep waiting for Amazon to break mail-to-kindle, but fortunately that hasn't happened yet. Gmail, though... breaks every three months or so.

spidermonkey23• 4 months ago

made something with vibe assistance, for generating ebooks from the guardian.com.

the approach here is to self host a web service and download the books from the experimental browser as .mobi for kindle use. These are then fully local and easy to delete after. https://github.com/tomesparon/guardian-rss-mobi-maker

general_reveal• 4 months ago

iPad with paper-like is a much more versatile device. Just turn the brightness now.

saadn92• 4 months ago

There's something really satisfying about these kinds of personal pipelines. You stitch together a few tools that weren't designed to work together, automate the glue, and end up with something that fits your workflow better than any single product could. I love it.

I've built a few of these for myself -- a bridge that exposes Apple Notes over HTTP so I can access them from a Linux VM, a sync tool that pulls Notion pages down as local markdown. None of them are "products" but they're some of the most useful things I've built. The common thread is always the same: take something locked into one device or ecosystem and make it accessible where you actually want it.

The author's point about not needing a new device is the right instinct. The best version of this stuff is almost always "what can I do with what I already have" before reaching for new hardware.

Btw, I have my own Kindle Oasis, so want to give this a shot!

bobek• 4 months ago

I went the complete opposite and print one A4 every morning [0], so I don't have to touch any device.

[0] https://github.com/bobek/rannich-5minut-denikn

MinimalAction• 4 months ago

This is great! Love this project. Do you know of anything like this in English as well?

rpgbr3• 4 months ago

Ohh, that's good! I have an underutilized printer on my desk. Maybe I'll try that tomorrow.

clickety_clack• 4 months ago

This should be a normal thing you can do on a kindle. I miss kindle magazines.

almogo• 4 months ago

I did something similar. My computer crawls lite.cnn.com each Saturday. I feed it all into Gemini who composes a "front page" with links in HTML. Then the whole thing is converted to a PDF and uploaded to my Google drive with the day's date as the title. My Boox reader (some Chinese company) is synced to my Google Drive and I just open it from there. I didn't even code any of this, Gemini did.

It's a nice thing to read on Saturday morning with a coffee.

theptip• 4 months ago

I tried to put together something similar… I guess it is reassuring that others are struggling to find a nice e2e setup as well.

I was intending to vibe code the whole pipeline then stumbled onto Readwise, $10/mo is currently cheap enough to prevent me from building my own.

(I splurged on the Boox so I could easily use/build Android apps on the reader/collection side.)

It does feel like there is a big OSS gap here, and I wish Readwise luck on commercializing too.

From my side the remaining piece is building my own recommendation / crawling pipeline to expand my set of RSS feeds, feels like a good project to add on and Readwise seems quite extensible so it’s a good base to build on.

nonninz3• 4 months ago

Quite ironically, readeck is not able to parse this article

EDIT: used the firefox extension to save it, pasting the link directly into readeck works :)

rpgbr3• 4 months ago

Any idea why the extension failed? I go to great lengths to make my blog a good web citizen (semantical, working without JS etc.), and that it isn't parseable would be a thing I need to fix.

nonninz3• 4 months ago

Sorry I really have no idea :(

But I just tried again and now it saved it correctly.

On my first try it only showed a line of two of the main content, truncated by an ellipsis.

nunez• 4 months ago

Nice. I consumed Hacker News like this for a few weeks.

natios• 4 months ago

i created my own rss reader + bookmark list website that i just access through the kindle browser (i dont have it logged into any amazon account though). yours is a cool internet-less idea though!

mangoparrot• 4 months ago

Might be personal plug but I just wanted to read substack on my kindle.

I built readry to solve this issue. It's completely free for forwarding your emails to kindle along with qr codes for images and links so i can open up on my phone if needed

I turned my Kindle into my own personal newspaper

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