Amazon has started sending out emails notifying customers about their plan to discontinue the Flashcards feature on Kindles.
Apparently they’ve already started removing the Flashcards feature from Kindle apps, and they plan on doing away with Flashcards entirely in November of 2024.
Users can request the flashcards associated with their account from this page at Amazon and continue using them on their own devices, but all flashcards will be removed from Amazon’s servers later this year so you need to download them soon.
The Flashcards feature lets you review words that you’ve looked up in the dictionary and mark them as mastered. It’s one of those things that most people probably don’t use, but for those that do use flashcards prepare to get disappointed. However, the Vocabulary Builder feature will remain so you can still review looked up words, just not using flashcards.
Refer to the Kindle Flashcards page at Amazon for more details.
The weird thing about that page is they don’t specifically say that Flashcards will be removed from Kindle ereaders. They just say “the Kindle app” (like there’s only one), but it implies that the feature is getting removed entirely so that would mean it’s going away on Kindles too. They could’ve been more clear about this and explained how it’s going to affect Kindle devices and not just “the Kindle app”.
In the grand scheme of things losing flashcards isn’t that big of a deal, but it’s just another step in the enshitification process of the Kindle platform. What features will Amazon remove next? I’m still not over them removing the back button from Kindles back in 2021.
Rip it was my favorite feature of my (now dead) kindle’s built-in firmware. I was using it to improve my French.
Horrible of them. A great feature for language learners. How long before Vocabulary Builder gets the chop too?