Firmware Update New Kindle software update: 5.18.5

[Smoit]

There's a new firmware update. These are the release notes:

Version 5.18.5 – August 2025

Here's what's new:

Lock screen rotation: Keep your screen in portrait or landscape mode when moving your Kindle.

Larger Interface Text: You can now change the size of the font for your Kindle’s user interface to make it easier to read. Go to the “Screen and brightness” menu in settings to try it out.

New text spacing options: You can now adjust the spacing between paragraphs, words, and characters (in addition to lines) from the Font tab in the Reading Settings ("Aa") menu.

Assistive Reader: With the Assistive Reader, you can listen to your books with Text-to-Speech and read along with synchronized real-time underlining. The Assistive Reader supports books in English, Spanish, French, German, and Italian languages.

Performance improvements, bug fixes, and other general enhancements.

We finally have lock screen rotation! I love it!

[tomsem]

Except for Lock screen rotation (Scribe only), all of these features are present for me on 5.18.4.0.1.

However, the paragraph spacing options seem pretty odd to me: '1' means 'one blank line, '5' means 'five blank lines'. Who would want more than 2? I hope they recalibrate the range, I'd probably prefer 1/2 line increments. So I hope they change that at some point.

[rantanplan]

Does the assistive reader work for sideloaded books?

[JSWolf]

Can someone please gets some screenshots of these new spacing options? Thanks.

[nathanwj]

When I saw the update included lock screen rotation, I was really hoping for system-wide screen rotation.

I wonder if that might be in the works now that they have lock rotation in the pull-down menu everywhere? Seems like a good feature for a newer scribe that might be more of a Remakable/Boox/Supernote competitor.

[Ebookus]

it's wild you still can't have different orientations for different books, I want to have normal books in landscape and PDF in portrait, but as far as Amazon is concerned, that is impossible

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by rantanplan

Does the assistive reader work for sideloaded books?

Assistive Reader does not work with personal documents.

If it is marked as EBOK (I think it also needs to be KFX), and it has valid ASIN, it keeps trying to go to Kindle Store listing for it. Without valid ASIN, you can get 'Invalid ASIN' error and it won't open. This is something that I gather happens with recent updates.

I got it to work somehow maybe by turning off WiFi and maybe after changing some metadata but would need to do more untangling of steps to see what it takes. I couldn't reproduce it with a second book, it just won't open.

[mergen3107]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Can someone please gets some screenshots of these new spacing options? Thanks.

https://www.reddit.com/r/kindle/comm...sts=t3_1nie3cr

[JSWolf]

Does anyone know if the line spacing can be reduced instead of just increased?

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Does anyone know if the line spacing can be reduced instead of just increased?

The default Line spacing is 1. So yes, you can reduce it to 0 (which I've started doing). Anything less than that would probably result in underlined text (especially popular highlights which include text with number of highlighters) overlapping the line below.

But it is not different than what you could do before, when there were 3 Spacing options in the Layout options (0 is same as the minimum option of the three). So what's been added are options 3 and 4, which are wider than the maximum offered before.

Word and Letter spacing are not something I would choose to increase from default 0, but I can imagine it might be helpful for some other people.

[Quoth]

What about margins? I've always hated that the ability to reduce the L & R was removed after Gen 2 Kindle. Stupidly big on PW3 and Oasis 2.
So zero line spacing is like 1.2 em or a bit more? Not actually 0.
Why no finer settings? An ereader not like submitting paper with space for writing in between. The Kindle line spacing seems like the line spacing on a basic mechanical typewriter!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

What about margins? I've always hated that the ability to reduce the L & R was removed after Gen 2 Kindle. Stupidly big on PW3 and Oasis 2.
So zero line spacing is like 1.2 em or a bit more? Not actually 0.
Why no finer settings? An ereader not like submitting paper with space for writing in between. The Kindle line spacing seems like the line spacing on a basic mechanical typewriter!

What I do is set a -45px L/R margins in html in CSS and it works. It even works on the PW5. The page break is to fix a bug from back when. No idea if it's still needed. But as it causes no problem, it's staying.

html {
  margin-right: -47px;
  margin-left: -47px;
  break-inside: avoid !important;
}

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What I do is set a -45px L/R margins in html in CSS and it works. It even works on the PW5. The page break is to fix a bug from back when. No idea if it's still needed. But as it causes no problem, it's staying.

html {
  margin-right: -47px;
  margin-left: -47px;
  break-inside: avoid !important;
}

Yes, I've done that on occasion. A % rather than -47px works not badly for all Kindles (I forget how much). But that is broken!

I am not going to edit every ebook for Kindle and put essentially stupid CSS to fix Amazon's stubborn stupidity in wasting the width of the expensive eink screen.

What on earth are they thinking of to make Kindles so "broken"?

[cellaris]

The "right" margin size is a matter of personal preference. What seems absurdly large to you seems just right to me. What seems like a waste of screen space to you seems like a pleasant aesthetic separation to me, much better than text crammed up against the bezel. It's a matter of personal preference. On e-readers where I have the option of narrower margins, I don't use it. I may even use wider margins on my Kobo e-readers to achieve symmetry with the header and footer. It's an aesthetic issue that I don't expect you to agree with, but I don't like your personal preferences regarding margins either.

A different matter is that, beyond our personal preferences, there is an option on the e-reader so that each person can choose the margin they like best. And when we say margin, we also mean font size and line spacing. In this regard, Kindle is one of the worst e-readers out there. It's not that the others have much better original software, but they do allow you to modify them by means of patches or by editing files.

But, as I always say, in the end you always end up using only one option out of the many or few you have. And if that option is available on a Kindle, you don't need anything else. I have no problems with the Kindle's margin, line spacing and font size options. And therefore I have no problem with its reading programme. I don't know if other users like or dislike the customisation options on the Kindle. All I can say is that it remains the first choice, by far, among e-reader users. And there must be a reason for that, beyond stupidity and masochism.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by cellaris

The "right" margin size is a matter of personal preference. What seems absurdly large to you seems just right to me. What seems like a waste of screen space to you seems like a pleasant aesthetic separation to me, much better than text crammed up against the bezel. It's a matter of personal preference. On e-readers where I have the option of narrower margins, I don't use it. I may even use wider margins on my Kobo e-readers to achieve symmetry with the header and footer. It's an aesthetic issue that I don't expect you to agree with, but I don't like your personal preferences regarding margins either.

A different matter is that, beyond our personal preferences, there is an option on the e-reader so that each person can choose the margin they like best. And when we say margin, we also mean font size and line spacing. In this regard, Kindle is one of the worst e-readers out there. It's not that the others have much better original software, but they do allow you to modify them by means of patches or by editing files.

But, as I always say, in the end you always end up using only one option out of the many or few you have. And if that option is available on a Kindle, you don't need anything else. I have no problems with the Kindle's margin, line spacing and font size options. And therefore I have no problem with its reading programme. I don't know if other users like or dislike the customisation options on the Kindle. All I can say is that it remains the first choice, by far, among e-reader users. And there must be a reason for that, beyond stupidity and masochism.

On a Kindle, -47px margins i not right up against the bezel. I do think the default margins are too large. I also think the line height is too large as well. I've not tried the new firmware to see if that makes a difference.