Beta Yourself Amazon Kindle

They may be pretty basic devices, but that doesn’t mean Kindles don’t have a few tricks up their slender sleeves – Rob Leedham reveals how to squeeze more from your e-reader

Rob Leedham

THE BASICS

Take your best shot

Whether you want to boast about your affinity for late-era Dostoevsky or poke fun at a celeb biography, it’s easy to get a screenshot from your Kindle. Simply press down on two opposite corners of the screen. To share your screenshot, you’ll need to connect it to a laptop and transfer the png file.

Hold your highlights

We love Kindle’s touchscreen highlight feature for saving a book’s funny bits or most thought-provoking quotes. Trouble is, these selections can easily get forgotten about once you’ve moved onto your next page-turner. Hook your Kindle up to your laptop and you’ll be able to export all your highlights as a text file. Smart.

Nerd up… later

Fancy reading a long form essay on crypto currency and the dark web, only not right now? You can stash it on your Kindle for when you’re stuck on a long flight: just use ‘Send to Kindle’ in Safari or Chrome.

Lock ’em out

To stop the kids breaking into your Kindle and learning some new four-letter words, head to Menu > Settings > Device Options > Device Passcode, and enter a string of numbers that isn’t your birthday. Even a toddler can guess that one.

Work smart