I’ve been railing against the screensaver ads that come on the new plastic-backed Kindles for 2026 ever since I got the Kindle Ube, so I was surprised when the advertisements suddenly disappeared.
For some reason my ad-supported Kindle Ube is no longer showing ads on the lockscreen; it’s now showing one of the new screensavers instead. Every time I turn it on and back off again, it shows that same screensaver, but no ads, and it’s been that way for several days now.
I’ve owned many ad-supported Kindles over the years, and this kind of behavior is not normal. It must be a bug with the latest software (5.20.1.0.1), unless they’ve changed how things work. But I doubt they intended to incentive people to keep Kindles in airplane mode.
I’m not even sure turning on airplane mode is what caused it, but that’s the only thing that makes sense. This didn’t happen until airplane mode was turned on overnight, and now I’m afraid to turn it back off again because that’ll likely make the ads come back.
In the past, Kindles would show the same generic ad for the Kindle store over and over again if you kept them in airplane mode all the time, but it was still an ad. Unless this screensaver is an ad for paper airplanes (an ironic twist on using airplane mode), then that’s not the case here.
So how common is this ad disappearing bug? Does your 2026 Kindle stop showing ads if you keep it in airplane mode overnight?
As good as this bug sounds, it’s not without one drawback. I still have to swipe the screen to get past the screensaver after pressing the power button. That’s something you don’t have to do on ad-free Kindles. Those will take you right back to the book, or whatever screen was showing when the Kindle was turned off.
You probably turned on airplane mode when Todo was downloading new ads… finally one of the bugs Amazon introduced have been useful!