Kindle Jailbreak

Let's check today how to jailbreak your Kindle, install KOReader and get your epub books via email.

Disclaimer: This guide could potentially break your Kindle, carry on on your own risk. Always read the whole manual before proceeding.

After you finish this setup you will:

• have KOReader installed
• be able to load epub books into the Kindle via email
• create ebooks from browser tabs (even merge multiple tabs into one single book!) and deliver them via email automatically

You may have multiple reasons why to jailbreak your Kindle, from Amazon announcing they will discontinue old Kindles to just not wanting to touch Amazon Infrastructure and use open-source solutions.

Steps

Jailbreak your Kindle

There are many guides how to jailbreak your Kindle, this guide cannot describe them all - it all depends on the type of your Kindle and the software version you are currently running. I recommend you to read kindlemodding.org which will describe in more depth what jailbreak is and how to do it.

Please read the whole instructions for your model & version BEFORE you start. It will save you a lot of troubles.

You don't need anything fancy to do a jailbreak - pc/mac, kindle and a cable to connect them will be enough. You will be moving some files into the kindle storage space and following instruction on kindle itself.

In my case I had Kindle Paperwhite 3 with software version 5.16.2.1.1 and I used LanguageBreak guide. Per the creator of the guide it should work for any kindle running 5.16.2.1.1 version.

If you have another Kindle type or software version (which is probable) checkout this Kindle Jailbreak wiki to find out how to jailbreak yours.

Another guide I found is here on mobileread forums for many kindles spanning from Kindle 2/DX/DXG/3/4 to Kindle 5 (Touch/PW1/PW2/KT2/KV/PW3/KOA/KT3/KOA2/PW4/KT4/KOA3/PW5).

Once you are done with the jailbreak you should have mkk folder in the root directory.

Install KUAL

Next step you will need to do is install KUAL (Kindle Unified Application Launcher) via mrpi (MR Package Installer).

There are many guides all over the internet how to do this, you don't need to follow this installation step by step. Important part is that you have KUAL before you go to the next step.

First you need to fetch mrpi files from KUAL & KUAL extensions called MR Package Installer. More in-depth docs on mobileread forum.

In short just download MRPI, unzip it and move extensions and mrinstaller directories to the root directory of your Kindle over USB.

You should end up with extensions/MRInstaller folder and mrpackages folder at the root of your device.

Now to finish with KUAL installation you need to download it from KUAL & KUAL extensions (package is called KUAL). More in-depth docs on mobileread forum.

Download KUAL, unzip it and move the Update_KUALBooklet_v*_install.bin file in the mrpackages folder (you just installed it in previous step), which you'll find at the root of your Kindle over USB, then eject & unplug the Kindle.

Finally, enter ;log mrpi in the Homescreen's searchbar (similarly as what you had to do during the Jailbreak), and wait for MRPI to do its thing.

When the UI finishes restarting, you should end up with a KUAL entry in your Library (showing as a personal document).

Install extensions

Now you will install KOReader itself, along with OTA updates blocker (without it Amazon's update could remove your jailbreak & all files).

You will start with OTA updates blocker, but the order doesn't matter, feel free to install KOReader first.

For versions <=5.10.x it is sufficient to just create a folder update.bin.tmp.partial in the root of your Kindle. That should be enough to block updates.

I used BinaryRenamer which you can download here on mobileread forum. It is specifically for versions 5.16.2.1.1, 5.13.6 and 5.17.1.0.3. If you need it for a different version please check out this guide.

Installation itself is pretty simple, unzip the folder and move BinaryRenamer folder (or any other folder if you use different package) to extensions directory in your Kindle.

Then boot KUAL, click on BinaryRenamer and Block OTA updates.

Once you enable blocking OTA updates you are done. You should be safe from new Amazon updates and your jailbreak will stay intact.

Now to KOReader, fetch correct version from their github page, in my case it was koreader-kindlepw2-*.zip and unpack it into the root directory of your Kindle. You will end up with koreader folder in the root of your kindle and with extensions/koreader folder. Whole in-depth docs on KOReader github page.

If you are interested in custom setup, fiddling with the settings, etc. checkout KOReader official page. They have user guides, wiki, forums and many more things to read.

After installation you are able to launch KOReader via KUAL menu.

Setup email logic

And now to the interesting part. In this chapter you will

• Install MailPush extension to fetch epub books from your email
• Prepare your email infrastructure to handle this

You should think about security at this point. If you set this up for your general email address you will give your kindle access to all of your emails which is something you don't want to do! My recommandation is to create another email address just for this purpose.

You will follow this MailPush guide which runs on Python 3.

So let's install Python 3 first, check Packages -> Python 3.9 extension page and download kindle-python-*.tar.gz package. More in-depth docs here

You will install it via MRPI (similar to KUAL above). In short unzip the archive, find correct python package, for me it was Update_python3_0.15.N_install_pw2_and_up.bin, move it into mrpackages folder in your Kindle.

Now enter ;log mrpi in the Homescreen's searchbar (in a similar fashion as what you had to do during the Jailbreak and KUAL installation), and wait for MRPI to do its thing.

Python3 is now installed on your Kindle

At this point you can create your own extensions and scripts since you are running python on your Kindle.

Once you have python3 let's jump on MailPush installation. In the repository there is an installation & configuration guide so follow that.

In a nutshell you configure the files in config.json and after you are done move the whole MailPush folder into extensions in your Kindle.

My tweaks since I wanted to do some changes:

1. In config.json don't put INBOX as mailbox but create a separate folder for your books (let's say Books)
2. Set up a rule in your mailbox to move emails to Books folder (with some conditions, logic, etc.)
3. I removed almost all the items from menu.json since some of them had hardcoded values (like to fetch from INBOX and not from your Books folder). My only option remained Fetch mails with config.json

After you are done with the changes, make sure you are connected to WiFi. Go to KUAL and in MailPush extension click Fetch with config button to download all unread emails.

You are now able to fetch ebooks from your email's folder.

Install epub press

You won't install this into the Kindle! This is a browser extension which creates epub books.

As the last thing which you can do to read latest news, tech articles and many more is to install EpubPress. Their github page and website have all instructions you need.

Once you install the extension to your browser EpubPress transforms any html page into epub file and merges multiple browser pages into one single epub book.

You can download epub books and send them to your email by hand OR even better you can configure your new email address from step above in the extension's settings to deliver created ebook directly to your email. Be aware that you need to allow their email address noreply@epub.press depending on your mailbox rules.

Now you have the possibility to deliver browser pages as ebooks into your Kindle.

Conclusion

I hope you liked this guide and learned something during the setup. You are now able to use your Kindle without Amazon, download ebooks from your email and even create epub books from browser tabs.

To recap - my flow looks like this:

1. Open multiple browser tabs with tech articles, world news, etc.
2. Click EpubPress extension in the browser, select which tabs it should convert
3. Book is sent to specified email address
4. On Kindle launch MailPush extension via KUAL and fetch new books from email address
5. Open KOReader on Kindle (also via KUAL), go to ebooks directory and open any book

If you have any comments or questions feel free to ping me at blog@sivak.eu.