Kindle Touch Custom Screensavers

[yifanlu]

Well, in short, the old "simple screensaver" hack I wrote a while ago sucks. This is a REAL screensaver hack.


This Kindle Touch modification will allow you to use custom images as screensavers. This is not for Special Offer Kindles, nor does it remove the advertisements. By design, this mod will only work with non-ads Kindle Touches. An improvement of this vs the screensaver hacks of previous devices and the simple screensaver hack I released a while ago includes:

• No filename constraint (name the images anything you want)
• Auto update when new files are found
• Scrolls through in alphabetical order (not random order, so you can manage the order of the images)
• If no custom images are found, it will default back to Kindle’s original screensavers
• If an invalid file is found, it will be skipped, after 5 invalid files, it will default back to original screensaver (instead of just crashing and requiring a restart)

In addition, images are auto-scaled and auto-converted, which means you are no longer limited to 600×800 grayscale images. Of course, those are the preferred format, but you can now use any PNG file and it will be sized to fit the screen. The only limitation is the image format must be PNG.

Finally, as an added bonus, I’ve included a custom screensaver, “lockscreen.png”. If you place that image in your screensaver folder (and nothing else), instead of a picture screensaver, the Kindle will keep whatever you are reading as the screensaver with a neat lock icon on the top of the screen. (See end of post for example)

As always, installation and usage directions are found in the readme after download.

All this is made possible by OpenBlanket, my attempt at reversing the APIs for LibBlanket, Amazon’s library for drawing full screen content on the Kindle Touch. You can check out the source for an almost identical re-implementation of the device’s original screensaver module (decompiled by hand and compiles to almost the exact same machine code). The source for the custom screensaver module is a modification of that source (and is included in the download).

Download: http://yifan.lu/p/custom-screensaver/
OpenBlanket: https://github.com/yifanlu/OpenBlanket




My stance on removing ads: I've posted my opinions about this in many threads, but not everybody has read it. First of all, I will never stop anyone from removing ads. It's very easy to do, and there are many ways of doing it. However, I will never aid anyone in doing so, so please don't ask me for help. The reason is that our main defense for jailbreaking the device being legal and ethical is that "we aren't doing anything to hurt amazon." Now I understand Amazon is a big corporation (as with all big corporations, they are amoral, hence, they can be evil). However, when you remove the ads without paying Amazon $40, they lose money, which means that if enough people start removing ads to make an impact they could take action against people like me who bring you the ability to unlock your devices. Since technically, the TOS for the Kindle states that you cannot modify or reverse engineer the device. No, Amazon is not enforcing it. No, I do not agree with it. But Amazon has always been passive in stopping jailbreaks (removing the exploit but not touching the hacks; not worrying about people who jailbreak; allowing people with jailbroken devices to have support even though you technically broke the TOS and can be denied support), but if they start losing money they could start actively blocking jailbreaks.

[Aleyst]

Will this work with the non-touch version as well?

[yifanlu]

Nope.

[jglerner]

Thanks for the excellent job.
Any hopes for a custom font? I'd love to read my books on Georgia 2... (or whatever)
Best regards and take care!

[perconte]

Good work yifanlu!

One question:
We have to uninstall previous hack?

[yifanlu]

Nope. It removes the old files and your screensavers can continue to work, but with the new featurs.

[Aleyst]

Thanks for the answer, it was a curiosity question rather than a oh dear, can't do it the other way one.

Keep up the good work.

[bizoon]

Hi all.
I have Kindle Touch 5.0.3 and I get update error 007. Should it work with this version?

[LittleLui]

Thanks, yifanlu. A little question: would it be feasible to allow changing the current screensaver with the front button?

[yifanlu]

@bizoon. You must jailbreak first.

@littlelui, the device goes to sleep in about 10 minutes after going to screensaver, so after that, I don't think it sees events aside from power button press.

[ll Legion ll]

Thanks Yifanlu, this is pretty awesome!

[Xzwatz]

Thanks Yifanlu, I've installed the custom screensaver a while ago and i love it!!!

Just a question: I'm just a little bit bored about the order the images are displayed. Have you considered to make a version that shows the images randomly?, (just to be surprized every time the screensaver activates)

Thanks again,


Julio (aka Xzwatz).

[varnie]

Howdy, Yifanlu.
Just a suggestion: could you please edit your first thread's post and highlight the following valuable phrase

This is not for Special Offer Kindles

? thank you.
Apart from that, good work! 8-)

[aditya3098]

What book is that?

[Culex]

@yifanlu - when I turn my Kindle off, the screen goes Black? I uninstalled the screensaver mod and now it goes back to clearing like before. Why change it?