Ever since Amazon brought audiobook support back to Kindles, people often ask if it’s possible to read a Kindle ebook while listening to the audiobook being read aloud.
Amazon calls this Immersion Reading, and it’s a feature that’s been available on Kindle apps and Fire tablets for a long time.
With Immersion Reading enabled, it will highlight the words in the Kindle ebook in sync with the audiobook as it’s read aloud. This can be a very useful feature for kids learning to read or if you’re trying to learn a new language.
So why don’t Kindles support this feature?
I used to think it was because E Ink screens refresh to slowly to stay in time with the audiobook, but I’ve tried Immersion Reading with Onyx’s ereaders using the Kindle app and it works fine. The highlighting keeps up without a problem, especially when using Onyx’s speed mode refresh setting.
The added darkness of the highlight does make it a bit harder to read the text, but they could just make it use underlines instead of highlighting the whole word and it would work well enough to be useful.
Even if they don’t want to add highlighting or underlines they could at least make it so you can read the Kindle ebook while the audiobook is playing in the background. Instead they force you to look at the audiobook player and make it impossible to read while listening unless you use a separate device. This makes no sense.
The bottom line is Kindles could support Immersion Reading if Amazon wanted them to. E Ink screens have some limitations but they could still make it work.
I would love to be able to read along with audio books on my Kindle Oasis without needing to use a second device. I think I would prefer no highlighting.
As someone that is hard of hearing, and using hearing aids, I would love to read along with also hearing the books. I truly believe this would help me with my word recognition.
I thought they did have this on the Kindle Touch model..back several years ago.
Probably not, since it’ll be a battery hog and they wouldn’t want to encourage such thing on a slow charging kindle.
I guess I can’t really knock it until I try it but I’m old school so I don’t really see the point in immersion reading :
1.) It would be possible on my Onyx Boox poke 3 but my poke 3 already has inferior battery life compared to my Kobo Libra so this seems like a really dumb idea.
2.) I think it makes more sense to read to some cerebral old school Baroque music than to read while having the text pronounced to me via audio at the sametime. Preferably the music would be coming from another device. In fact I disabled or uninstalled the music function on my Onyx via the adb linux command line toolset.
“Immersion reading” sounds like a fad but I again I have not tried it.
I don’t own an Amazon kindle but I have used the Amazon kindle app on my Onyx and it works surprisingly well but adding the audio part to it would just be a no go battery killer IMHO.
Hi Kevin,
“Cerebral” old school baroque music is a nightmare on its own for me, let alone while I’m trying to read. Glad it works for you, and I would never dismiss what works for someone else as pointless or a fad.
I have pretty intense ADHD and immersion reading helps keep two parts of my brain focused on the text I’m trying to absorb. I don’t usually sustain this method for very long. I think of it like kind of a runway, or like Fred Flintstone starting his caveman car by running his feet. It’s a tool, giving myself stretch of time to build momentum. Once this has been established, and I’m deep enough in the setting with the characters (when reading fiction), I can get up and do things when I get fidgety without losing my place. Sometimes I’ll go all day dreading or forgetting about some mindless chores or tasks that, once I’m deep enough in audio, I can take care of in a few painless minutes, and get back to the kindle app and pick right up reading text alongside the narration again without stopping the narrative.
Sure, I can read along on a kindle while the audible app plays separately. But if I look away from text without immersion reading, I have to find the visual spot in the text again when I return to it. It’s not a deal breaker, but it does derail me from narrative just enough to be annoying, and sometimes it’s enough for me to lose the thread altogether.
I also realize I can just read or just listen, but I’ve been having an increasingly hard time getting going with one without the other, and it’s gotten so much worse this past pandemic year. I find myself abandoning books pretty quickly these days, which also really bums me out. My brain just goes all over the place and I can’t sit still. (FYI, I’m 45 and not particularly young, so it’s not something that’ll calm down with age. Like I said, it’s really gotten worse as I get older.)
I just ordered a new kindle paperwhite without realizing immersion reading isn’t a feature I can use. Im pretty disappointed and am considering returning it. I understand it’s a first world problem, but I also consider e-readers first world devices. I have a small stack of physical books I’ve acquired in the past year and just haven’t been able to get past a few pages because I’m so easily distracted these days. I’ve found immersion reading to be a very helpful tool, as anything that helps me maintain focus is not pointless to me. I really don’t mind a shorter battery life if that means I get to enjoy a good book. Because you know what really stretches the battery life of an e-reader? Not having it on for longer than 5mins at a time, or not using at all.
Could it be that the kindles’s OS isn’t multi-tasking so it can’t do both things at the same time?
Maybe it’s just me, but IMO this has to be a purposeful decision on Amazon’s part, and one that goes beyond they just don’t want to. Apart from pointing out the obvious differences of course, IMO this is one way for Amazon to differentiate the Fire, the app and the e-ink Kindles in its advertising and PR.
Of course it could also very well be that Amazon just makes very odd decisions sometimes. In a somewhat related example to the immersion reading issue you point out in this post, I I still don’t understand why a Kindle e-book doesn’t sync with the Audible version unless I purchase the Kindle book first. If I use my monthly Audible credit to get the audio version and then decide I want to purchase the e-book to read on my Kindle, I’ve basically got to finish listening to a chapter on Audible to have much hope of figuring out where I should be in the e-book.