Can't get rid of readers' highlights & notes

[tomsem]

Popular highlights have a much different appearance than highlights made by the account holder. The former are dotted underlines with a label showing how many highlights were made. The latter change the background color of the highlighted text. When viewing the Notebook, Popular Highlights are clearly labeled as such. I'm going to assume the OP knows the difference.

The OP does not say which Fire is involved. Assuming it is running the latest Fire OS (5.4.x, and up to date with 'component updates'), the setting to turn off display of Popular Highlights is in 'Reader Settings'. One can navigate to the Settings app and it is found in Apps & Games, Amazon Application Settings, Reader Settings. 'Popular Higlights' is the first option. You can also navigate to this when reading a book by selecting 'Additional Settings' from the 'three vertical dot' menu in upper right corner when reading options display.

I tried it out and it works as expected. I did not have to remove and re-download the book, restart the Fire, or anything of the sort. It takes effect immediately.

If the option is not working, my guess is that the Fire does not have the latest software updates. With my Fire HD6, I went through a period where it was not performing 'component updates' (I had updated Fire OS via the .bin file from the support page, and even done factory reset, to no avail). Certain of the newer reading features were not present (page flip etc.).

At some point, I visited the System Updates panel and found there was a message there about having a dozen or so 'component updates', with a button labeled 'Apply Update' or something like this. Each press applied a component update, and eventually it reported that it was up to date, and the expected features appeared. The Fire OS version did not change through this.

So perhaps the OP's Fire is in some state like this where components are not getting updated for some reason, and the Reader app is out of sync with the Settings such that toggling the Popular Highlights option does not work. I do not know how to coerce a Fire in such a state to get 'unstuck', all I can say is that 'eventually' my Fire HD6 got unstuck without me doing anything in particular other than checking System Updates every once in awhile and applying the component updates as they appeared there (I assume they would have applied themselves even without my participation, but who knows).

If the Fire is more than a couple of years old, I would recommend getting a new one, even the $50 Fire 7. The processors on the 2016/2017 tablets are 64 bit, have more RAM, expandable storage, and perform much better (at least comparing my HD6 with the 2017 HD8). There's a sale this week for Prime members, I think it is $15 off either the Fire 7 or Fire HD8.