Read on to learn how to apply a painless jailbreak to your Kindle and create custom screensavers.
The important part of the filename is the found after the 0.4.N portion.
The suffixes for each indicate what kind of Kindle it is within that subset.
Start with your base model and grab the file with the suffix that matches your country and data connection.
In our case we’ll be jailbreaking a Wi-Fi only Kindle 3 so we pickK3W_install.bin.
If you’d like to play it extra safe you could backup your Kindle books at this point.
To backup your Kindle library simply copy the/system/collections.jsonfile to a safe location before proceeding with the jailbreak.
If anything goes wrong just copy the file right back over.
Backups created or ignored, it’s time to jailbreak.
Extract the appropriate file for your Kindle to the root directory of your Kindle.
Once the file has transferred, eject your Kindle and unplug the data cord.
Once the wait is over your Kindle will restart.
A few button clicks and you’re done.
Your Kindle is now jailbroken and ready for some custom screensaver goodness.
Installing the Custom Screensaver Hack
Enabling custom screensavers is as easy-peasy as jailbreaking your Kindle.
The contents of the screensaver hack archive look almost exactly like the contents of the jailbreak hack.
Use the same naming convention we used for the jailbreak to locate the screensaver hack for your equipment.
Again we’ll be selecting the file with the suffixK3W_install.binto go with our Wi-Fi only Kindle 3.
This process will look exactly like it did when you jailbroke the gadget.
First the update screen, then the confirmation of update, then the reboot of the gear.
When the reboot process is completely, again tether your equipment with the sync cable.
The root directory should have a folder labeled/linkss/.
If you don’t see this folder that doesn’t mean the screensaver hack failed to install.
You may need to do a hard reboot.
Tether and check the root directory once the restart is complete.
The inside of the/linkss/folder looks like the above screenshot.
The only areas of relevance to the end user are the/backups/and/screensavers/folders and theautorebootfile.
The/screensavers/folder is the real area of interest.
Here is where you’ll be dumping all your fancy new screensaver images.
If you want to skip manually restarting your Kindle you could copy theautorebootfile and rename the copy toreboot.
After you eject your Kindle from the computer it will automatically reboot 10 seconds later.
Goodbye Jane Austen, hello Wonder Woman.
Kindle screen savers are 600x800 for the regular Kindle and 824x1200 for the DX.
Because we’re discarding the color and downgrading the quality, conversion can have mixed results.
The Kindle has an oddly shaped screen as far as most images online are concerned.
When I surprised my wife with a Kindle I outfitted it first with dozens of Wonder Woman screensaver images.
Thanks for the tips guys!
Whatever files you used to plant the jailbreak and the screensaver hack will have an accompanying uninstall file.
In our case we used theK3W_installfile to drop in the jailbreak on our Wi-Fi only Kindle 3.
To remove the jailbreak we simply repeat the process outlined above in the jailbreaking section but with theK3W_uninstallfile.
To reverse the process just work backwards, first uninstalling the screensaver hack, then the jailbreak.
Restart the Kindle and you’re back to stock.
