Restoring Kindle Content to iPhone Kindle App

[hmgreen]

I have a 1tb (!) iPhone 13 Pro Max and am upgrading this week to a new iPhone 15 Pro Max. I do all my backup’s to iCloud.

Every time I have upgraded and restore everything from the backup to the new iPhone, with the exception of credit cards, everything (including most settings) including all software apps and content get restored to the new phone - EXCEPT all the downloaded books and documents in the Kindle iPhone app. The collections get restored to the phone but they are empty.

I now have about 54 Gb (yep, not a typo) of books and documents downloaded to the old phone. It takes literally MONTHS to restore everything using the Kindle app and the Kindle cloud storage. In fact the app slows down as it syncs downloads.

Sure I guess I can leave everything at the Kindle cloud and only download what I need when I access it, but I like having everything on the phone organized into their collections for immediate access.

I have tried sideloading from the iPhone in Finder, but it only sees the purchased books (many still in mobi format) but not the docs.

Amazon help technicians have no recommendations, and since Amazon is very android-centric not many of their techs even have known in the past how to assist.

Has anyone figured out how to restore previously downloaded content to the new device or am I facing a massive downloading effort from the Content and Devices screen on Amazon after I register the new phone there, or from the download all items one collection at a time over months in the Kindle iPhone app?


Thanks for any help and advice anyone can provide!

[haertig]

Just trying to get ONE book onto my wife's iPhone is enough to drive me crazy. It's ridiculous. Android is so much easier and straightforward. I don't have an answer for you, but if you come up with anything, please post it here so others of us can see what you did. iPhones are really into their proprietary lockdown, and I think that is the root cause of issues like this. It's difficult to move files around on an iPhone because Apple doesn't want you to do that. I don't think they even want you to know the concept of what a file is, or what a directory is. They won't let you use external memory cards because that would take things out of their control. Apples iron fisted control is probably good for the total idiots out there, but it's frustrating for people with normal brains.

[Kindleing]

I don't have the Kindle app on my iPhone (the latest SE) but I have used the app iMazing to move other application files between my iPhone/iPad and my desktop Mac. I don't know how they do it, but it gets around a lot of the pain of moving data in and out.

The app runs on the desktop and recognizes an iDevice plugged into the desktop's USB port. I use it on a Mac but they have a Windows version also.

It isn't free but, to me, it has been worth the price.

I can't say for certain it will do what you want because I haven't done it, but it has made life very simple for moving other app data to and from an iDevice. Check out their website; maybe you can ask their tech support if it will work for you.

https://imazing.com/

[tomsem]

In the past I have created a temporary collection of everything downloaded to the Kindle app and used that to restore (using download collection feature of collections). If you have audible books you can enable the 'auto download audible books' setting.

Content & Devices has a Select All thing you could use when viewing device content, which would at least let you add 25 items to a collection at a time.

If you have access to ethernet, you could get a USB-C ethernet adapter and that should speed downloads up considerably vs using WiFi.