New Windows Kindle app announced; Current Kindle app unavailable after 30/06/2026

[Frogm4n]

Originally Posted by tomsem

Oh, and my Fire HD6 and Fire Phone won't be able to download books, in addition to Kindle Touch. Boo hoo.

Have they actually announced those Fire devices will lose access? I've only seen 2012 and older Fire tablets losing it.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by Frogm4n

Have they actually announced those Fire devices will lose access? I've only seen 2012 and older Fire tablets losing it.

I think so, but don't remember where I saw this. It was not in the email that listed the Kindles being "Affected."

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I figured it was only a matter of time. Amazon doesn't want people to be able to leave the ecosystem.

I don’t use the windows app but I just wanted to say the more they lock down, the more people will leave. We have ten Kindle’s. Two will be locked out in May. Two more I can currently download KFX files, they will be sold when I can no longer do that. I am currently going to sell one. That leaves five Kindle’s. Four are mine, one is my husbands. I currently spend at least £10 a week on e-books, once I can no longer download I will simply spend £10 a month on Kindle Limited and I will never buy another Kindle or ebook on Amazon.

I have Kobo devices and I will look into moving more to Kobo the book purchases. It’s all about greed and control.

[Sirtel]

Yeah. I bought literally thousands of ebooks from Amazon when DRM removal was quick and easy. Since they started to play their DRM games I've bought maybe a tenth of that amount and once it's no longer possible to remove DRM without a jailbroken Kindle, I will buy no more from them. For me it's not a matter of me using a Kobo device - I want to be able to disinfect my purchases no matter which device I read them on, it's absolutely essential for me and the one thing I will never compromise on.

[DiapDealer]

Does anyone one know if the new Windows Store version of the Kindle App is available yet? The notification mentioned a vague "later this month", and April doesn't get much older than today.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Does anyone one know if the new Windows Store version of the Kindle App is available yet? The notification mentioned a vague "later this month", and April doesn't get much older than today.

It seems that "later this month" is no longer the goal. When you open the current (legacy) Kindle for PC app it shows a dialog in the lower left corner saying, "A new and improved Kindle app for Windows 11 will be available in the Microsoft Store soon."

[jonathan2022]

Originally Posted by jhowell

It seems that "later this month" is no longer the goal. When you open the current (legacy) Kindle for PC app it shows a dialog in the lower left corner saying, "A new and improved Kindle app for Windows 11 will be available in the Microsoft Store soon."

I did think it was odd they would be releasing a store version. So soon after kindle for pc 2.9.1 . Came out. Didn't that release on the 22nd.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by jhowell

It seems that "later this month" is no longer the goal. When you open the current (legacy) Kindle for PC app it shows a dialog in the lower left corner saying, "A new and improved Kindle app for Windows 11 will be available in the Microsoft Store soon."

Thanks. I wonder why they're limiting it to Windows 11 only (if that is what is indeed being said)? There's lots of Windows 10 machines that still have access to the Microsoft store. I'm able to install many of the free apps from the store on an old Windows 10 laptop. I don't even have to be logged in with a Microsoft account to do so. I can't imagine that Amazon would be interested in helping Microsoft drive people to Windows 11, so it must be a technical/programming reason they're making Win 11 the minimum for the new app. It's not like they (Amazon) would care about Microsoft/Windows security issues on Win 10, either. Perhaps it's Microsoft that won't let them submit a new app that would work on Win 10.

[slm]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Thanks. I wonder why they're limiting it to Windows 11 only

Somewhere, someone (Satsuoni?) speculated that the Windows 11 Kindle for PC will place the key in a secure location only available to the app developer using a security process that is only available under Windows 11

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by slm

Somewhere, someone (Satsuoni?) speculated that the Windows 11 Kindle for PC will place the key in a secure location only available to the app developer using a security process that is only available under Windows 11

I'm sure that can be accessed if it can be found.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by slm

Somewhere, someone (Satsuoni?) speculated that the Windows 11 Kindle for PC will place the key in a secure location only available to the app developer using a security process that is only available under Windows 11

That doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but I'll wait and see. The "key" to decrypt DRM is never just stored in one place. It's typically built from various pieces. And to my knowledge, there is no location on a Windows 11 PC that can deny access to an Administrator of said PC. I guess it's possible that since it's getting harder to get Windows 11 installed without a Microsoft account, that one of the pieces necessary to build the key might be something gleaned from Microsoft account info itself (possibly from an MS server). But my guess is that Microsoft simply asked Amazon not to support Windows 10 and they agreed.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by tomsem

One Windows app is going away, and replaced with another one. The only people getting cut off will be Windows 10 users, as far as I can tell.

Linux users who used to run Kindle For PC under Wine will probably be cut off too.

Back in the old days, when they used to lock down something under Windows nice and tight, you could often times overcome those restrictions by simply running the application on Linux, under Wine. It would work just fine, without restrictions, under Linux. But they've smartened up over the years. Like now, it appears that this new Kindle program will only be available as a download from the Microsoft Store. And you need to be running Windows to access that AFAIK. Not that anyone running Linux would want to access the Microsoft Store in the first place, other than to maybe hack a download from there to bypass some new restriction. And that would be a lot of work these days, if it's even still possible.

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by haertig

Like now, it appears that this new Kindle program will only be available as a download from the Microsoft Store. And you need to be running Windows to access that AFAIK.

The Microsoft Store uses winget as a transport, and winget is open-source. Any app should be able to be downloaded using something like:

winget install ID -s msstore

The ID is the string of numbers and letters in the store URL.

The problem is that UWP apps are not yet supported by anything but native Windows.

[slm]

However, we don't know whether the new app will use APIs or features unique to Windows 11

[DiapDealer]

I know of no features unique to Windows 11 that would help create a more difficult to break DRM scheme. Someone needs to start bringing up technical data about Windows 11 that could achieve this instead of just vague "but Windows 11 might" statements.

And the new app will most definitely use APIs. Not that that will have any bearing on how apps can be installed. If it's available in the Microsoft Store, it can be installed with winget. Period.