Last month I posted about a new bug that causes the home screen to go haywire on Kindles. I thought it was kind of cool and better than the ad-ridden home screen so I tried to activate the bug on purpose, and now I’m encountering all kinds of issues.
If you want to avoid the same problems with your Kindle, do not add an emoji to your Kindle’s name. All Kindles have the option to name them in settings, and you can also change the name on Amazon’s website, but as it turns out, once you add an emoji you won’t be able to edit it out later.
At first it was just the home screen and Send-to-Kindle email that didn’t work after adding an emoji to my Kindle Paperwhite’s name, but then I noticed that Wikipedia no longer worked either. The Wiki box says the Kindle has to be registered to use that feature.
When you add an emoji to your Kindle’s name it gets confused about being registered. I was still able to download and read books fine, but some aspects of the Kindle acted like it was not signed it.
I figured I could easily fix the problem by going to Amazon and removing the emoji from the name on the Devices page, but now that page refuses to load. It just shows a rotating circle that never goes anywhere. All the other account pages seem to work fine at Amazon; it’s just the Devices page that won’t load.
I tried editing the name on my Kindle, but it doesn’t seem to take. It doesn’t show a name at all anymore, and changing it does nothing.
As a last resort, I tried factory resetting my Kindle, but somehow that didn’t work either. The home page now loads properly after signing in, but other parts of the Kindle still act like it’s not registered, the same as before. Wikipedia still doesn’t work, and trying to sign in again does nothing. The Devices page still won’t load at Amazon, and the Kindle’s name field still shows nothing, and editing it does nothing.
Whatever you do, don’t add an emoji to your Kindle’s name. It not only breaks your Kindle, it apparently breaks the Devices page on Amazon’s website too. Now I can’t change anything, and my Kindle Paperwhite is only partially functional.
I know contacting Amazon support about this will be an act of futility and a big waste of time since they don’t know anything, so I’m hoping the problem will fix itself eventually.
Kindle? Really? I could see if you were an average user lured into the Amazon jungle but an influencer? With abundant devices from which to choose?
And you choose Kindle??
Take the hint, dude: This is a sign from the gods that it is time to switch to a device who’s manufacturer doesn’t hate its users.
As a well-known e-reader reviewer on YouTube (@Kitbetts-masters) wittily put it, if you belong to the 2.5% of people who need more than what Kindle offers (which is why you are reading this blog), then you have other alternatives and other articles that you will identify with more.
To each their own