If you missed the news back in April, Amazon has decided to discontinue their Windows for PC app in favor of a new Kindle Reading app that’s available exclusively through the Microsoft Store.
When the news first hit, many thought Windows 11 would be required to use the new Kindle app, but it turns out it works with Windows 10 as well. The system requirements say the app requires Windows 10 version 17763.0 or higher to run, so that’s a plus.
So far the reviews aren’t very positive, with a lot of complaints about missing features compared to the old version, but there are some positive reviews saying the new app is faster and the interface is cleaner.
Microsoft is already making the experience less pleasant than it used to be with their age verification requirements (you can’t even view the screenshots for the new Kindle app without signing in and verifying your age, but you can install the app without doing so), and there’s an annoying nag screen to use a Passkey during the sign-in process.
The app is pretty large for a reading app at around 750 MB, not counting data. It requires 2GB of RAM at a minimum and 4GB is recommended.
If you try out the new Kindle Reading App leave a comment saying what you think about it. Is it an improvement over the old app or is it worse? I didn’t use the old app often enough to have an opinion on the matter.
The old “legacy” Kindle for PC app will likely stop working on June 30th. Amazon says it will no longer be available after that date, so that probably means it’ll stop downloading books as well, but time will tell. It’ll be interesting to see how long it takes for someone to figure out how to liberate Kindle ebooks from the new app, if that’s still possible.
Don’t forget, you can also use the Kindle Cloud reader from a web browser as an alternative to the Windows app if you don’t want to deal with installing the new app and Microsoft’s nag screens.
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