Two weeks ago Amazon released a software update for the Kindle Scribe that added a new side panel writing feature within ebooks, and it’s a great feature if you like adding handwritten notes inside of your books, but a lot of people are annoyed by the fact there’s now a new icon on the screen that’s always visible and can’t be hidden.
I find the side panel icon visually distracting, as it’s always catching my eye while trying to read. I’ve seen a lot of people complaining about this online so I’m not alone, and I fully expect Amazon’s software developers to add a way to hide the icon with a future update, but who knows how long that will take (if you don’t like seeing the icon you can complain to Amazon about it directly from your Kindle Scribe by going to Settings > Help > Contact Us > Give Feedback).
In the meantime, I discovered a way to read ebooks without seeing the icon, but there are some limitations to the workaround and it’s only a temporary solution that’s going to be outdated soon.
The workaround is an easy fix on the 2022 Kindle Scribe, at least for the next week. It’s possible to accomplish the same thing on the 2024 Kindle Scribe, but it requires several extra steps.
Download Your eBooks From Amazon
One quick and easy way to avoid seeing the new notetaking icon on the Kindle Scribe is to use Amazon’s older ebook format.
You can download your purchased ebooks from the Digital Content page at Amazon, and they will download in the older AZW3 format. Just select “More actions”, then “download and transfer via USB”, and then select the Kindle Scribe from the list.
Now you can sideload your ebooks onto the Kindle Scribe using a USB cable and they won’t have the notes icon. In fact they won’t support any handwritten notes features at all so you have to be willing to sacrifice that in order to get rid of the icon.
Note: The biggest problem with this workaround is the fact that Amazon is removing the download and transfer option on February 26th so this is only going to work for a short time.
Additionally, downloading ebooks via USB isn’t available on the 2024 Kindle Scribe. However, if you have an older Kindle registered to your account you’ll be able to download the AZW3 files with it, but they won’t be compatible with the Scribe so you’ll have to remove the DRM first before loading them onto the Scribe.
It’s also possible to remove the DRM from KFX-formatted books downloaded directly to the Kindle Scribe, and then you could use Calibre to import them and convert them to AZW3, but that’s going to require some extra steps and is probably more work than most people are willing to go through just to get rid of an icon.
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