Kindle 3 Keyboard Shortcuts and Tips (Ver 1.12)

Latest Version of these tips

In .mobi format – with Table of Contents and chapter marks

In .azw format – no TOC or chapter marks

Searching

- To copy text from a book to the search box (eg to search for a character's name):

- Use the 5-way to cursor down to the beginning of the text you want to copy

- Click the 5-way to mark the beginning

- Use the 5-way to move right, selecting the word(s) you want to search for

- Instead of clicking again as you would to save a highlight, press SPACEBAR

- The selected words are now in the search box. Move the cursor down or right, delete any extraneous characters, then move down and right to highlight 'Find'. Click to search.

- Clear text from search/edit box: ALT+DEL

- Default search action: when the action on the right of the search box is the one you want, you do not have to use the 5-way to move to highlight it first; you can just press ENTER (or click)

- Similarly, if the cursor is in the URL field of the web browser, the action shown to the right is the default and you can just press ENTER

- The SYM key is only active when a search/edit box is active

- To start a search from the Home screen with a symbol, press DEL or ENTER to open up a search box, then press SYM

- In other screens, DEL or ENTER will not work; to open a search/edit box so you can use SYM, type a space and then delete it

- For when you don't even know what day of the week it is:

- Search for DATE or TIME from the home screen

- The current date and time is the first item in results; select it to see the day and time zone information

- To just see the time without searching, press MENU

- @help - list all functions available for searching from the Home screen:

- @dict <keyword>

- @help

- @print [no idea what this does]

- @store <keyword>

- @url <url> (goes to browser if no URL)

- @web <google search term >

- @wiki <keyword>

- @wikipedia <keyword>

Text-to-Speech (TTS)

- Start/Stop: SHIFT+SYM

- To start at a specific spot, use the 5-way to position the cursor first

- When TTS is on, BACK turns it off

- Pause/Restart: SPACEBAR

- When TTS is turned on, most of the keyboard is locked; if you press SPACEBAR or use Aa to pause TTS, you cannot manually navigate through the book because TTS is still active, and it may appear that the Kindle has frozen. Press SPACEBAR to resume TTS, or press SHIFT+SYM, BACK or HOME to turn off TTS entirely. The Aa key also still works.

- TTS only works when you have a book open

- TTS won't work if the publisher has disabled TTS for the book; TTS status can be found under the book pricing in the Kindle bookstore

- When TTS is on, use the Aa key to: v1.12

- Change between male and female voice

- Change the reading speed

- Stop or pause TTS

- Pages are turned automatically when TTS is turned on. By turning the volume right down and adjusting the reading speed, this feature can be used as an automatic page turner.

- TTS continues playing even if you put your Kindle to sleep by sliding and releasing the power button. Sleeping your Kindle while TTS is playing allows you to continue listening but locks all of the keys and buttons so you don't inadvertently press one.

Voice Guide

- Turn on/off: HOME->MENU->Settings->Page 2->click 'turn on'/'turn off'

- If you only have one page of settings, the Kindle is not yet registered or has not yet 'talked' to the Amazon servers; you need to turn on wireless (if you don't have wi-fi (or 3G) yourself, you may need to find a wi-fi hotspot)

- I don't know of any keyboard shortcut for turning the voice guide on/off; it seems the most obvious candidate for a shortcut

- The voice guide, which lets you navigate your Kindle with spoken menus, selectable items, and descriptions, is separate from TTS, which reads the text of a book/document (unless the publisher has disabled that ability)

Background Music

- Play/Stop: ALT+SPACEBAR

- Next track: ALT+F

- Music files must be MP3s in the Kindle's 'music' folder

Games

- Minesweeper: ALT+SHIFT+M from Home screen

- MENU for game options

- GoMoku: G from Minesweeper

Home Screen

- Rescan for files: ALT+Z

- Jump to page: <number> then click or ENTER

- To type numbers, use ALT+Q to P for 1 to 0

- Jump to Author or Title: <first letter> then click or press ENTER when in Author or Title sort order respectively. For example, to go to titles beginning with 'M':

- First make sure it says 'By Title' on the right near the top of the Home screen; if it doesn't:

- Use the 5-way to move up to that line

- Move right with the 5-way to display the sort options

- Use the 5-way to underline 'Title' and click the 5-way

- Back on the Home screen, press the letter 'm'

- The search box will appear with the letter 'm' showing, along with the wording 'click to got to M titles'

- Click the 5-way

General

- Capital letters when typing: Hit SHIFT first, then the letter; no need to hold them down together

- Numbers: ALT+Q to P = 1 to 0 or press SYM when search/edit box is active

- Like SHIFT for capital letters, ALT is sticky, so you can type ALT followed by a letter on the top row (ALT, Q, ALT, W, ALT, E types 123)

- Redraw screen: ALT+G (removes ghosting)

- Screenshot: ALT+SHIFT+G or ALT+SHIFT+H (saves a .GIF in the Kindle document directory)

- The screen flashes for both ALT+G and ALT+SHIFT+G. As it is easy to do an ALT+G by mistake, ALT+SHIFT+H may be a safer way to do a screenshot.

- Display the time: MENU displays the time at the top of the screen

- Display amount of space left on the Kindle: MENU from the Home, Settings, or Experimental screen

- To see if you still have books indexing, from the home screen type a nonsense search like 'xzwwx' [or even just a period, which is quicker] and press ENTER. If the search result says 'No items', indexing has finished; if one or more items are listed, indexing is still in progress. If a book gets 'stuck' on indexing, delete it, let other items finish indexing, then re-download the book to see if it will index.

- Shop in the Kindle store: ALT+HOME

- The search window can be used as a simple calculator. Simple expressions like "5+6", "2*8/3" and "sin(8)" work. See Kindle Calculations below for details. v1.11

- Display Serial No and Barcode: ALT+SHIFT+. (period)

- To restart your Kindle 3 (solves a myriad of problems):

- If it is charging, disconnect from the power/computer

- Soft restart (when the buttons are working): HOME->MENU->Settings->MENU->Restart

- Hard restart (when everything seems frozen): Slide and hold the power switch for 30 seconds, then wait a minute or two

- When you restart, you will see the boy reading under the tree and a progress bar

- If you wait a couple of minutes and still only see a blank screen, you have not held the power switch for long enough and have turned the Kindle off

- To turn the Kindle off completely (blank screen), slide and hold the power switch for around 7 seconds.

- It is recommended to only turn the Kindle off if it is not going to be used for a long time (weeks).

- If you are in the habit of turning the Kindle off rather than letting it go to sleep, always go to the Home screen first so it has a chance to save your current book location. v1.9

- From Settings screen:

- Change 3G provider: type 311 (ALT+EQQ)

- Kindle Serial No et al: type 411 (ALT+RQQ)

- 3G Modem information: type 611 (ALT+YQQ)

- Wi-fi Modem information: type 711 (ALT+UQQ)

Reading

- Add/remove a bookmark for the current page: ALT+B

- Bookmark a specific location: use the 5-way to position the cursor at the location, then double-click the 5-way's centre button. This is useful when viewing bookmarks because the first few lines are displayed. v1.9

- Zoom in on an illustration: use the 5-way to position the cursor over the picture; the cursor will change to a magnifying glass with a + sign; click to zoom; the K3 will display the illustration in landscape if that is a better fit than portrait

- Chapter marks: some, but not all, books have dots along the reading progress bar when you first open them

- You can use the 5-way to move left and right between chapters

- Your bookmarks, notes and highlights also add dots to the progress bar; you cannot use the 5-way to move between these marks

- Nudge the selection frame when a PDF document is zoomed, or when panning a zoomed document: SHIFT+5-way direction

- Delete multiple bookmarks, highlights, notes:

- Select 'View My Notes & Marks' from the Menu

- Use the 5-way to move to the note/mark to be deleted

- Press DEL

- Repeat for each note/mark to be deleted

- When reading an Amazon format book, use the Aa key to:

- Change font size and typeface

- Change line spacing and words per line

- Turn on Text to Speech if enabled for your current book

- Change screen orientation

- When reading a PDF, use the Aa key to:

- Change zoom level

- Change contrast

- Change screen orientation

Sorting Collections

- When in Collections sort order, the collections will display in sequence of most recently accessed, followed by subscriptions and books not in any collection

- When in Title sort order, the collections display along with all your individual books, in Title sequence

- You can control the Title sort order by using collection names that start with a symbol that sorts before the alpha characters in book titles. My collections are:

- (Reading: current)

- (Reading: fiction)

- (Reading: non-fiction)

- [Genre 1]

- [Genre 2]

- [Genre 3] etc

- {Author 1}

- {Author 2} etc

- On the Home screen, use the 5-way to move to the top line, move right, and change sort order to 'Title'

- When in Title sort order, my collections display first in the order shown, followed by all the individual books

- Other naming options include using different or multiple starting symbols, starting collection names with AAA or numbers etc. It has been reported that starting collection names with a period causes problems and that if you start with an asterisk, you should put a space after the asterisk.

- To see just your collections (plus subscriptions and books not yet in a collection), on the Home screen, use the 5-way to move to the top line, move right, and change sort order to 'Collections'

Adding Books to Collections

- To add multiple books to a collection:

- On the Home screen use the 5-way to move to the collection

- Move the 5-way to the right to display the collection's detail page and click on 'Add/remove items'

- Use the 5-way to move up and down the list of all your books, clicking on each book you want in the collection

- A check-mark appears next to books in the current collection; click again to remove a book from the collection

- Use Next Page and Previous Page if you have multiple pages of books

- When you are in the list of books, pressing MENU gives the option of adding all items on the current page of the list v1.12

- To add a book to one or multiple collections:

- On the Home screen use the 5-way to move to the book title

- Move the 5-way to the right to display the book's detail page and click on 'Add to collection ...'

- Use the 5-way to move up and down the list of collections, clicking on each collection you want the book to be in

- A check-mark appears next to each collection in which the book will be listed; click again to remove it from that collection

- Use Next Page and Previous Page if you have multiple pages of collections

- Books added to collections will still be listed on the Home screen unless you change your sort order to 'By Collections'

- Your Kindle must be registered and must connect to Amazon's servers at least once in order for Collections to become available. v1.10 If your device is registered but you have not yet connected to Amazon's servers, then:

- When you press MENU from the Home screen, the option to 'Create New Collection' will be greyed out

- When you go to the Settings screen, you will have only 1 page of settings

- If you do not have wi-fi or 3G at home, you can go to somewhere that provides free wi-fi (eg Starbucks, McDonalds), connect to their wi-fi, and do a 'Sync & Check for Items'

Photo Albums

- Make sure your pictures are not too big - 600 x 800 is recommended

- Connect your Kindle via USB

- Method 1

- Create a folder called 'pictures' in the root directory of the Kindle; it should be on the same level as the 'documents' folder and you must use the name 'pictures'

- Open the 'pictures' folder and, inside it, create a new folder with the name you want your album to have (eg 'Family')

- You can create multiple albums by creating multiple folders inside the 'pictures' folder

- Copy your JPG, GIF and/or PNG pictures to the album folder

- Method 2 v1.9

- Package your pictures into a zip file, naming the file with the name you want to give your album (eg 'Family.zip')

- Copy the zip file into your Kindle's 'documents' directory

- This method has the advantage that, when you use the Kindle to the delete the album, the zip file is actually deleted. If you use Method 1, deleting the album will not actually delete anything from the Kindle.

- Safely eject the Kindle when the copying has finished

- Go to the Kindle Home screen and press ALT+Z to refresh the listing

- Your album will appear as a new 'book' which has one page for each picture

- When in an album, the MENU and Aa buttons have picture-specific options v1.9

- If you are viewing pictures larger than the screen, the menu option to anchor at the Top Right is useful for manga, which usually follows the Japanese right-to-left convention

- If you 'Enable Pan to Next Page', the 5-way up and down will also go to the next picture

- The Kindle remembers you Menu options, but ignores them next time you open an album; you have to turn the option off and then on again for it to be active

- I have found the following shortcuts tend to be rather intermittent. They may function better after a restart of the Kindle. I get the feeling that using ALT+Q to nudge disables using Q to zoom. v1.9

- q : zoom in

- w : zoom out

- e : reset zoom

- r : rotate

- f : toggle full screen mode

- c : toggle Actual Size setting

- Panning when the picture is larger than the screen:

- 5-way directional buttons

- Numbers nudge right - the picture moves left (eg ALT+Q to nudge, ALT+W to nudge a little more)

- When in full screen mode, you have to repeat the number (ALT+QQ), as the first press brings up a scale

- Repeating numbers eventually takes you to the next picture

Web Browsing

- If you know the address, you can get to a web page directly from the Home screen: v1.9

- Press HOME to make sure you are on the home screen

- Type in the address - the search box will open when you start typing

- use Sym to select a "/" and numbers

- there is no need to type 'http://' in front - eg just type bit.ly/k3shortcuts

- Use the 5-way to move to the right until 'Go To' is highlighted

- Press the 5-way; if wireless is not on, it will ask if you want to turn it on now

- You can get to Google or Wikipedia from any search box by typing in your search term and then using the 5-way to move to the right until 'Google' or 'Wikipedia' is highlighted, and then pressing the 5-way.

- I don't know of any shortcut for opening the web browser. One option is to create a 'book' which contains link(s) to one or more favourite sites. The book can then be opened and you can click on a link without having to go to the Experimental screen to open the browser: v1.10

- Create and save an html file containing link(s) to your favourite sites (Word can be used to save a file as html)

- To make the html file readable on the Kindle you can do one of the following:

- Use Amazon's document conversion service: send an email to yourname@kindle.com or yourname@free.kindle.com with the html file as an attachment

- Use a program such as calibre to convert the html file to mobi

- Rename the file to have a .txt extension (eg rename Bookmarks.html to Bookmarks.txt), connect your Kindle to your computer via USB, and copy the .txt file to the Kindle's 'documents' directory

- When in the web browser, MENU and Aa have browser-specific options. v1.9

- MENU->Article Mode is great for pages that have columns to the left and right, though it's not so great for home pages

- MENU->Zoom In is also useful for improving readability; use the 5-way to pan

- Readability can also be improved by using Aa to change to landscape mode

- When you are zoomed in (the entire web page does not fit on the screen and there is a progress bar along the bottom) you can:

- Use ALT+H and ALT+J to nudge left and right

- Use the Next Page and Previous Page buttons to move up or down within the web page

- Use the 5-way arrows to move left, right, up and down within the web page

- SHIFT+the 5-way arrows to pan without waiting for the cursor v1.12

- When the cursor is in the browser's address field, ALT+DEL will delete the field

- When in Google Reader, you can use full screen mode and some other keyboard commands [Wired's Gadget Lab article}

- In the Kindle browser, log into your Google Reader account

- Navigate to your feed list and select a feed

- Once in the articles, use the Google reader keyboard command 'f' to turn on full screen mode

- Use the Aa button to increase the text size if desired

- Use the Kindle's next and previous page buttons to scroll through the articles, or use keyboard commands such a 'n' and 'p (or 'j' and 'k')' to go to the next/previous item, and 'shift+u' to toggle the navigation menu and the list of feeds [Google Reader's keyboard shortcuts]

- Works best for feeds which show complete articles, as the Kindle browser will not open articles in a separate window

Archives and Deleting Books Forever

- Background:

- When you look at 'Archives' on your Kindle, you will see a list of books purchased from Amazon that are not on your Kindle.

- Amazon books on your Kindle + Books listed in archives = all books purchased from Amazon.

- If you remove an Amazon book from your Kindle, the number of books on your Kindle decreases by one, and the number of books listed in your archives increases by one.

- All books purchased from Amazon are stored on the Amazon servers and can be downloaded to the Kindle at any time by selecting it from the archive list (as long as you have a Whispernet connection).

- Personal documents and books purchased from sources other than Amazon are not stored on the Amazon servers and you must keep your own backup copy.

- Removing books from the Kindle

- To remove a book from your Kindle, use the 5-way to move to the book title and then move the 5-way to the right to display the book's detail page.

- You can also move the 5-way to the left, but it's very easy to accidentally delete a collection when you do that

- Select the option "Remove from Device".

- If the option is "Delete This Document" rather than "Remove from Device", the book was not purchased from Amazon; if you delete it, there will not be a backup copy on Amazon's servers.

- Occasionally, a book gets "stuck" and cannot be removed; instead, it remains greyed out on the Kindle even after you remove it. If this happens, connect the Kindle to you computer via USB and manually delete the book's .azw (or .azw1 or .tpz) file and its matching .mbp (or .tan) file.

- Deleting books forever

- To permanently delete a book from the Amazon archive, you need to go to your Manage Your Kindle page on the Amazon web site

- Locate the book in 'Your Orders'

- Click on the + to the left of the book title to show additional options

- Click on the 'Delete this title' button

- Warning: this is a permanent delete. If you want to read the book again, you will have to re-purchase it from Amazon.

- If a book has been removed from your Kindle and does not appear in 'Your Orders', but still appears in your archive list on the Kindle, you have probably moved the book to trash in Your Media Library. To check:

- Go to Your Account on the Amazon web site

- In 'Digital Content', click on the link to 'Your Collection'

- Once in Your Collection, click on the drop-down box and select 'Trash'

- Take the book out of Trash

- Go back to Manage Your Kindle; the book should now appear in Your Orders and can be deleted.

Kindle Calculations

- The search window can be used as a simple calculator. Steven Ehrbar has kindly provided most of these details:v1.11

- Standard operators are + (addition), – (subtraction), * (multiplication), / (division), % (modulus), and ^ (exponentiation).

- Parentheses () work for grouping, {} and [] do not.

- Functions, which work on a value or expression in the parentheses, are:

- Trig functions: acos(), asin(), atan(), cos(), cosh(), sin(), sinh(), tan(), tanh()

- Other functions: abs() [absolute value], exp() [e to the power of], ln() [natural logarithm], log() [base 10 logarithm], sqrt() [square root].

- You can assign values to variables with =; for example, test=9.

- The results of the last operation are stored in the variable _ (underscore).

- Assign _ to a variable before using it in further calculations. I have found that using _ directly results in the calculation being done twice. For example, if you enter 5*2, then _ is 10. Entering _*2 results in 40, not 20. However, if you enter y=_, you get a result of y = _ = 10. y*2 then correctly results in 20.

- The values of pi and e are stored in pi and e, respectively.

Book File Formats

- AZW: This is the format of most books purchased from Amazon; it is a modified version of the .mobi format and can be read only by the Kindle and Kindle apps.

- Most, but not all, books purchased from Amazon have Digital Rights Management (DRM) which prevents copying from one device to another. DRM'd books must be downloaded separately for each device.

- Samples are usually DRM-free.

- Bookmarks, notes etc are saved in an .mbp file.

- TPZ/AZW1: "The dreaded Topaz format" is an Amazon format which can contain embedded fonts and other rendering control.

- Files in this format have an .azw1 extension when they are delivered via Whispernet or a .tpz extension when they are delivered via file download.

- It is likely all books in this format have DRM.

- If the product details for a book show the number of pages but no file size, it is likely it is in Topaz format.

- Bookmarks, notes etc are saved in a .tan file.

- Fortunately, relatively few books purchased from Amazon come in this format, which often behaves badly. For example, your last-read position may not be remembered when the Kindle goes to sleep.

- It often helps to press HOME when you are finished reading, rather than leaving the book open.

- Unprotected MOBI/PRC: The Mobipocket format is based on XHTML.

- Either the .mobi or .prc file extension can be used; the .prc extension arose because PalmOS does not recognise files with a .mobi extension.

- The Kindle does NOT support protected .mobi files. Even though Mobipocket is now owned by Amazon, protected mobi files have DRM which the Kindle does not handle.

- Free books formatted for the Kindle from the catalogues of sites such as Feedbooks, MobileRead, and Gutenberg will come in unprotected mobi or prc format.

- TXT: Plain text files are small and can be read on almost any device, but lack formatting.

- Non-ADE PDF: PDFs are often used where layout is important and may contain embedded fonts, tables, diagrams etc.

- PDFs which require ADE (Adobe Digital Editions) are protected and cannot be read on the Kindle.

- You can read password-protected PDFs on your Kindle.

- PDFs are often formatted for A4 or letter size pages and do not reflow (change their line length and page size to suit the screen size).

- If layout is not critical in a PDF, it is often better to convert it to an AZW via Amazon's conversion service (remembering to put Convert in the subject line of the email) or using a program such as Calibre.

- AZW2: 'Active content' such as games have an AZW2 extension.:

- These files have DRM and cannot just be copied from one Kindle to another (Active content is not yet available to users outside the US, so I can't test this)

- Conversion from other formats: Other book formats require conversion to .mobi format before they can be read on the Kindle.

- Amazon's conversion service: Unprotected DOC, DOCX (experimental), TXT, RTF, JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP, ZIP (converts the enclosed files), PDF (with Convert in the subject line)

- Calibre: Unprotected CHM, EPUB, FB2, HTML, LIT, LRF, ODT, PDB, PDF, RB, RTF, TCR, TXT

- Any file which requires the use of ADE (Adobe Digital Editions) is protected and cannot be converted.

- HTML without conversion: If you have a simple HTML/XHTML file, you can read it on the K3 without conversion:

- Change the file extension to .txt (eg rename Book.html to Book.txt) and then copy it via USB to the Kindle's documents directory.

- The Kindle will display the file complete with HTML formatting. HTTP links to web sites will work, but not links to other files on the Kindle itself.

- Nested tables are not supported, even when converted to mobi format; these may need to be converted to PDF to retain formatting.

- Very large tables, even if they are simple, unnested tables, may not render correctly.

The K3 Keyboard

Just the Keyboard Shortcuts

Text-to-Speech

v1.9

Start/stop

Shift+Sym

Stop

Back

Pause/restart

Spacebar

Background Music

Play/stop

Alt+Spacebar

Next track

Alt+F

General

Numbers 1 to 0

Alt+Q to Alt+P

Minesweeper/Gomoku

Alt+Shift+M from home screen

Rescan files

Alt+Z from home screen

Redraw the screen

Alt+G

Screenshot

Alt+Shift+G or Alt+Shift+H

Kindle store

Alt+Home

Display serial no/barcode

Alt+Shift+.

Reading

Toggle bookmark

Alt+B

Bookmark location

double-click at desired location

Next/previous chapter

5-way right/left

Settings Screen

Change 3G provider

311 (Alt+EQQ)

Kindle information

411 (Alt+RQQ)

3G Modem information

611 (Alt+YQQ)

Wi-fi Modem information

711 (Alt+UQQ)

Web Browser

Nudge

Alt+H, Alt+J

Clear address

Alt+Del

Picture Album Viewer

Zoom in/out/reset

Q/W/E

Rotate

R

Full screen

F

Nudge

Numbers (Alt+Q to P)

Thanks to the numerous people who have shared their knowledge via forums, blogs, web sites and comments.

Table of Contents

Latest Version of these tips

Searching

Text-to-Speech (TTS)

Voice Guide

Background Music

Games

Home Screen

General

Reading

Sorting Collections

Adding Books to Collections

Photo Albums

Web Browsing

Archives and Deleting Books Forever

Kindle Calculations

Book File Formats

The K3 Keyboard

Just the Keyboard Shortcuts