Easily one of the worst decisions Amazon ever made was removing the tactile buttons that once adorned the edges of the Kindle e-reader. Since then, users have been forced to besmirch their e-ink displays with a touch of their finger to turn the page or flip back. Now, it seems, the Kindle is going back to its roots. Kinda.
As part of a fresh update quietly rolled out targeting Amazon’s newer e-readers, smudgy screens may soon be a thing of the past. Rather than tapping the display to progress, users can now double-tap anywhere on the Kindle’s frame or even on the back of the device to do so. It’s not exactly the buttons of old, but it’s a start.
If you’re happy and you know it…
According to a Good e-Reader blog post, the update arrived today as part of the Amazon Kindle 5.18.1 update, bringing with it a couple of other new features to users who own a Kindle 10th Gen and up (or a Scribe). Leading the charge is the ‘Double Tap to Page Turn’ feature, which likely takes advantage of the Kindle’s accelerometer or orientation sensor, rather than a simple touch sensor to function.
While an excellent workaround, that does lead to one unfortunate hitch. Since the Kindle cannot discern where you are double-tapping on the device, the feature only works to turn pages forward, not backward. For that, you’ll need to make do with tapping the left side of the display. One smudgy side is better than two, we guess?
Read More: Amazon Kindle Scribe review – Mightier than the pen
Another addition is something Amazon calls ‘Recaps for Books in Series’ and it’s exactly what it sounds like. If you need a refresher for what happened five Brandon Sanderson books ago, you can now directly access short recaps for books you have either purchased, or borrowed. The feature seems to be reserved for English-written books (for now). Whether these recaps are AI-generated isn’t known, though considering Amazon’s recent flirtation with the tech, we’re guessing they are.
The 5.18.1 update is out today, and should roll out to the supported devices (remember 10th Gen and up) shortly. If the update hasn’t hit your device just yet but you’d like to play around with double-tapping or recaps, you can sideload it yourself by visiting the manual update page.
