Amazon Kindle app finally gets much- deserved overhaul
The Kindle update is rolling out for Android, iOS, macOS and Windows devices
The app is designed to make your existing smartphone and tablet become an e-book reader, in case you haven’t bought, or for some reason aren’t carrying a dedicated Kindle e-reader with you.
Amazon has, after many years, given the Kindle app a complete overhaul. The app is designed to make your existing smartphone and tablet become an e-book reader, in case you haven’t bought, or for some reason aren’t carrying a dedicated Kindle e-reader with you. The new Kindle app is available for Android phones and tablets, the Apple iPhone and iPad, computing devices running Microsoft’s Windows and the Apple Mac line-up.
For starters, there is a complete design overhaul. Gone is the Kindle logo app icon and the splash screen, replaced with the silhouette of a child reading a book while sitting beneath a tree. This is a much flatter design to look at, and appears more modern. Get to your book library, and the improvements start to make a difference.
Amazon is finally giving us the option to switch between a light and a dark theme. This not only brightens up the overall look, but is also a good option to have in case visibility was a bit of an issue for you on the darker theme thus far.
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The Library tab, as before, is where the books are. However, it looks cleaner now with the search bar more profound on the top and the Discover tab option at the bottom of the page. To the right of the search bar is the sandwich menu, which allows you access to app settings, for instance.
On an iOS device, in particular, the Kindle app finally feels more at home. And none more so than on an iPad, where the larger display real estate makes all the difference.
There are new fonts as well, which also do their bit to make everything look cleaner and better laid out on the display. While you are reading a book, there is now a helpfully placed arrow at the top-left of the display which gives you a one-tap return option to your book library—earlier, it wasn’t as smooth and slick as this.
You can continue to browse the Kindle books store via the app as well. On Apple devices, however, you still cannot buy books through the app or subscribe to Kindle Unlimited—for all that, you need to redirect the page to the Safari web browser. This tiff between Amazon and Apple is becoming a tad annoying for those who like to read a lot.
While Amazon will still want you to buy a Kindle reader, it does realize that it is perhaps more important to let you access the books in your library and the ability to buy more, on perhaps all mobile and computing devices that you may own. The Kindle app, which hadn’t been given an overhaul in a long time now, is significantly better with the latest update.
