Hack Kindle for PC and Mac to enable copy-from-text feature

johnnyb · 11-30-2013, 06:46 AM

Dear community!

One thing that has been annoying me forever and is the one thing that Amazon stubbornly refuses: the impossibility to copy text from their PC/Mac reading apps. I actually think that this is precisely the reason why I haven’t been using Kindle books more for research, having to type-copy everything just made me get the books, not from Amazon though because I get a huge discount from another retailer. And everytime I resort to a Kindle book, it gets tricky. I have to restrain myself to “only use the Paperwhite” because then I could use Clippings Converter or use the Kindle cloud service. But that is not exactly the way it should work. Often, highlights are just pointers and you need the surrounding paragraph to know the context of a quote, which then entails “manually synchronizing” the the clippings file and text, which is even more awkward than typing from one window to another, on the same computer. Everything could be so perfect: you read anywhere, go back to your computer to find everything highlighted there ready to copy to your paper/article/website etc, but it isn’t...
At least not for non-US users. Customers from the US are free to copy from their computer app to their heart’s desire, which gave me the idea: “hey, there must be something in the settings somewhere that can be changed”... Only, I couldn’t find it...

The reasoning is this: the app must somehow determine where it is (since it is the same app no matter where you download it) and accordingly enable or disable the “copy” feature. And since it cannot do that at any time (e.g. when the internet is off), I hope that there is a line in some settings file that stores this information. And I hope that this could lead to a permanent modification that would finally enable the copy feature for everyone.
I’m not tech-savy enough to find that setting, let alone determine its dependence on external factors, but I would hope that someone here is and come up with a step-by-step solution to getting a Kindle for PC/Mac (I’m actually on the Mac myself) app that *allows* copying of text.

(Disclaimer: I am not asking for a way to circumvent DRM, I am only asking for the location of a line of code that controls a certain feature in a computer application, something that is undeniably there.)

HarryT · 11-30-2013, 07:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by johnnyb

At least not for non-US users. Customers from the US are free to copy from their computer app to their heart’s desire

"Copy" from the Kindle for PC app works absolutely fine for me in the UK, so it's not a US-only feature.

Here's some text copied from Kindle for PC:

Quote:

Widower and local worthy Sir Benjamin Hayner died and left the management of his vast estates and all his fortune to an impoverished gentlewoman, Harriet Metcalf. Miss Metcalf was to hold control of said estates and fortune until Sir Benjamin’s twin daughters, Sarah and Annabelle, should reach the age of twenty-one. The twins were only eighteen years old. Harriet Metcalf, their godmother, was a mere twenty-five years old.

Beaton, M.C. (2013-02-07). The Wicked Godmother (A House for the Season) (Kindle Locations 151-154). Constable Robinson. Kindle Edition.

johnnyb · 11-30-2013, 07:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HarryT

"Copy" from the Kindle for PC app works absolutely fine for me in the UK, so it's not a US-only feature.

Here's some text copied from Kindle for PC:

Wonderful, now how do I get my Kindle for Mac to do the same..? Because when I download the app from Amazon US, install on my Mac and run it, I don’t get to copy anything...despite my Kindle being on a US account...

HarryT · 11-30-2013, 07:47 AM

No idea, I'm afraid. On Kindle for PC, when I highlight text an options bar appears under the highlighted text, with the options "Highlight", "Add Note", "Copy", and "More", where "More" is a drop-down menu with more options (Dictionary, Google, Wikipedia, etc).

johnnyb · 11-30-2013, 07:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HarryT

No idea, I'm afraid. On Kindle for PC, when I highlight text an options bar appears under the highlighted text, with the options "Highlight", "Add Note", "Copy", and "More", where "More" is a drop-down menu with more options (Dictionary, Google, Wikipedia, etc).

Yup, I saw that as a screenshot for Kindle for Mac as well (reported to be from a US user)...unfortunately mine doesn’t do it...

HarryT · 11-30-2013, 07:51 AM

Here a screen-shot, for the sceptics

HarryT · 11-30-2013, 07:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by johnnyb

Yup, I saw that as a screenshot for Kindle for Mac as well (reported to be from a US user)...unfortunately mine doesn’t do it...

What happens when you select text? Nothing at all?

knc1 · 11-30-2013, 09:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by johnnyb

Wonderful, now how do I get my Kindle for Mac to do the same..? Because when I download the app from Amazon US, install on my Mac and run it, I don’t get to copy anything...despite my Kindle being on a US account...

You are presuming that "Kindle for PC" and "Kindle for Mac" are the same program.
Both built with the same build-time options from the same revision of the source.

latepaul · 11-30-2013, 10:17 AM

I just tried this on two PCs and one had the copy item when you highlight, the other had 'search' in its place. Initially they were different versions so I upgraded the one that was further behind. No difference. Went through the user settings, went through the registry settings and made them the same - no difference.

Now there is one BIG difference in that the "non-copy" version was running through Wine on Linux. I suppose they could be somehow detecting that but I think that if that were the case they'd do more than disable copy. IMHO there's either some hidden setting that's different, or it's a bug that causes the copy button to disappear, or some secondary effect of being on Wine. Since it also happens on Mac apparently I veer toward one of the first two.

For me personally this is not an issue as the reason I have it running on Wine is so I can import into Calibre via Alf's tools and so I can always copy from there if need be. To be fair though I'm reading fiction for pleasure, so whilst I highlight, I rarely copy.

HarryT · 11-30-2013, 10:39 AM

How very curious indeed! Thanks for reporting this. Are both registered to the same Amazon account?

Like you, the only reason I have K4PC installed is to provide an import route into Calibre.

latepaul · 11-30-2013, 10:57 AM

Yes, same account, same book.

If I get the time later I may fire up the netbook and put K4PC on there and see what I get. That's my other real Windows machine.

latepaul · 11-30-2013, 11:23 AM

Just tried what I should've tried earlier - running the wine version from the command line. It shows the usual amount of wine "fixme" messages which could of course be responsible, however there are several lines like this:

Code:

[E-0]createDocumentInfoInternal(C:\users\paul\My Documents\My Kindle Content\B002RI9XOW_EBOK.azw) - DRM issue

A quick strings on the kindle exe shows this is a K4PC message not a wine one. Which tells me there's code in there that's looking for what it thinks of as suspicious behaviour w.r.t DRM. Now these are books I've legitimately bought from Amazon but maybe the fact that the file is being read through an emulation layer, or one of the missing/wonky win32 function calls is causing it to trigger a piece of code which is detecting "DRM issues" and disabling the copy function. Now that's all speculation/educated guesswork but if it's true it leads to a couple of interesting thoughts:

it's ironic that it's disabling copy but unable to stop the defeat of DRM as a whole and so I'm able to copy the entire text but not select snippets i.e. once again DRM measures prevent legitimate use whilst not stopping (potential) infringement.
I can still read the book as intended via K4PC. So if you want to look at it that way it means Amazon is taking a customer-friendly/cautious view by *only* disabling the copy function.

Who knows? Doesn't really help the OP I'm afraid. Probably the best route is to raise it with Kindle customer service and see what answer you get.

johnnyb · 11-30-2013, 03:07 PM

Thank you for all your responses!
Indeed I did raise the question with Kindle customer service, but as so often, when something is not solvable by protocol, they weren’t very helpful. They took my question/complaint as a suggestion and „forwarded it to the development team“ where I am pretty sure nobody really cares or cared(since that was some time ago)...
So it is possible that my Mac is causing this, but in all seriousness, I wouldn’t know where to look (and CS wouldn’t tell me

)...
So, stuck again...

robinson · 07-12-2014, 10:32 AM

Update… I realized it's been many months, but on my Kindle for the Mac, version 1.10.6,
if you select text, it does indeed pop up with choices, including copy!

It shows a mini dictionary pop up window (even if a sentence is selected), and a tabbed menu choices of

Highlight, Copy, Add Note, More

Copy works just as expected, albeit without the handy iBooks feature of showing the citation of where the quote came from (of course, it also is without the link/ad for where to buy the book).

Just wish that the Kindle app for the iOS devices provided the copy feature. It does NOT! Sadly…

johnnyb · 02-22-2018, 06:58 AM

For completeness’ sake:

I have found out that the “copy” feature is tied to the region set on the Mac. It works in the US (and UK among a few other markets I think) but is definitely disabled in Germany (and other markets).
Solution: change the region of your Mac and set date, time and other metrical settings back to your actual region's standard. You will also have to change the language. If you use the Mac OS application “Language Switcher”, you can change the language setting permanently for Kindle for Mac only. This will not however change the actual language of the app, because that is tied to your region (which is tied to the system language).

Fortunately, the “copy” feature has since arrived on iOS and probably because they couldn't tether just that single feature to a region setting, it is available in all regions without restrictions.

Happy copying!

11-30-2013, 06:46 AM	#1
johnnyb Cloud Reader Posts: 1,110 Karma: 4000066 Join Date: Aug 2010 Device: Kindle Oasis, Kindle Scribe, iPad Pro 11	Hack Kindle for PC and Mac to enable copy-from-text feature Dear community! One thing that has been annoying me forever and is the one thing that Amazon stubbornly refuses: the impossibility to copy text from their PC/Mac reading apps. I actually think that this is precisely the reason why I haven’t been using Kindle books more for research, having to type-copy everything just made me get the books, not from Amazon though because I get a huge discount from another retailer. And everytime I resort to a Kindle book, it gets tricky. I have to restrain myself to “only use the Paperwhite” because then I could use Clippings Converter or use the Kindle cloud service. But that is not exactly the way it should work. Often, highlights are just pointers and you need the surrounding paragraph to know the context of a quote, which then entails “manually synchronizing” the the clippings file and text, which is even more awkward than typing from one window to another, on the same computer. Everything could be so perfect: you read anywhere, go back to your computer to find everything highlighted there ready to copy to your paper/article/website etc, but it isn’t... At least not for non-US users. Customers from the US are free to copy from their computer app to their heart’s desire, which gave me the idea: “hey, there must be something in the settings somewhere that can be changed”... Only, I couldn’t find it... The reasoning is this: the app must somehow determine where it is (since it is the same app no matter where you download it) and accordingly enable or disable the “copy” feature. And since it cannot do that at any time (e.g. when the internet is off), I hope that there is a line in some settings file that stores this information. And I hope that this could lead to a permanent modification that would finally enable the copy feature for everyone. I’m not tech-savy enough to find that setting, let alone determine its dependence on external factors, but I would hope that someone here is and come up with a step-by-step solution to getting a Kindle for PC/Mac (I’m actually on the Mac myself) app that allows copying of text. (Disclaimer: I am not asking for a way to circumvent DRM, I am only asking for the location of a line of code that controls a certain feature in a computer application, something that is undeniably there.)

11-30-2013, 07:51 AM	#6
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383043 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	Here a screen-shot, for the sceptics Attached Thumbnails

11-30-2013, 11:23 AM	#12
latepaul Wizard Posts: 1,264 Karma: 10203040 Join Date: Dec 2011 Device: a variety (mostly kindles and kobos)	Just tried what I should've tried earlier - running the wine version from the command line. It shows the usual amount of wine "fixme" messages which could of course be responsible, however there are several lines like this: Code: [E-0]createDocumentInfoInternal(C:\users\paul\My Documents\My Kindle Content\B002RI9XOW_EBOK.azw) - DRM issue A quick strings on the kindle exe shows this is a K4PC message not a wine one. Which tells me there's code in there that's looking for what it thinks of as suspicious behaviour w.r.t DRM. Now these are books I've legitimately bought from Amazon but maybe the fact that the file is being read through an emulation layer, or one of the missing/wonky win32 function calls is causing it to trigger a piece of code which is detecting "DRM issues" and disabling the copy function. Now that's all speculation/educated guesswork but if it's true it leads to a couple of interesting thoughts: it's ironic that it's disabling copy but unable to stop the defeat of DRM as a whole and so I'm able to copy the entire text but not select snippets i.e. once again DRM measures prevent legitimate use whilst not stopping (potential) infringement. I can still read the book as intended via K4PC. So if you want to look at it that way it means Amazon is taking a customer-friendly/cautious view by only disabling the copy function. Who knows? Doesn't really help the OP I'm afraid. Probably the best route is to raise it with Kindle customer service and see what answer you get.

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11-30-2013, 07:47 AM	#4
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383043 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	No idea, I'm afraid. On Kindle for PC, when I highlight text an options bar appears under the highlighted text, with the options "Highlight", "Add Note", "Copy", and "More", where "More" is a drop-down menu with more options (Dictionary, Google, Wikipedia, etc).

11-30-2013, 10:17 AM	#9
latepaul Wizard Posts: 1,264 Karma: 10203040 Join Date: Dec 2011 Device: a variety (mostly kindles and kobos)	I just tried this on two PCs and one had the copy item when you highlight, the other had 'search' in its place. Initially they were different versions so I upgraded the one that was further behind. No difference. Went through the user settings, went through the registry settings and made them the same - no difference. Now there is one BIG difference in that the "non-copy" version was running through Wine on Linux. I suppose they could be somehow detecting that but I think that if that were the case they'd do more than disable copy. IMHO there's either some hidden setting that's different, or it's a bug that causes the copy button to disappear, or some secondary effect of being on Wine. Since it also happens on Mac apparently I veer toward one of the first two. For me personally this is not an issue as the reason I have it running on Wine is so I can import into Calibre via Alf's tools and so I can always copy from there if need be. To be fair though I'm reading fiction for pleasure, so whilst I highlight, I rarely copy.

11-30-2013, 10:39 AM	#10
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383043 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	How very curious indeed! Thanks for reporting this. Are both registered to the same Amazon account? Like you, the only reason I have K4PC installed is to provide an import route into Calibre.

11-30-2013, 10:57 AM	#11
latepaul Wizard Posts: 1,264 Karma: 10203040 Join Date: Dec 2011 Device: a variety (mostly kindles and kobos)	Yes, same account, same book. If I get the time later I may fire up the netbook and put K4PC on there and see what I get. That's my other real Windows machine.

11-30-2013, 03:07 PM	#13
johnnyb Cloud Reader Posts: 1,110 Karma: 4000066 Join Date: Aug 2010 Device: Kindle Oasis, Kindle Scribe, iPad Pro 11	Thank you for all your responses! Indeed I did raise the question with Kindle customer service, but as so often, when something is not solvable by protocol, they weren’t very helpful. They took my question/complaint as a suggestion and „forwarded it to the development team“ where I am pretty sure nobody really cares or cared(since that was some time ago)... So it is possible that my Mac is causing this, but in all seriousness, I wouldn’t know where to look (and CS wouldn’t tell me )... So, stuck again...

07-12-2014, 10:32 AM	#14
robinson Zealot Posts: 142 Karma: 997293 Join Date: Jan 2003	Update… I realized it's been many months, but on my Kindle for the Mac, version 1.10.6, if you select text, it does indeed pop up with choices, including copy! It shows a mini dictionary pop up window (even if a sentence is selected), and a tabbed menu choices of Highlight, Copy, Add Note, More Copy works just as expected, albeit without the handy iBooks feature of showing the citation of where the quote came from (of course, it also is without the link/ad for where to buy the book). Just wish that the Kindle app for the iOS devices provided the copy feature. It does NOT! Sadly…

02-22-2018, 06:58 AM	#15
johnnyb Cloud Reader Posts: 1,110 Karma: 4000066 Join Date: Aug 2010 Device: Kindle Oasis, Kindle Scribe, iPad Pro 11	For completeness’ sake: I have found out that the “copy” feature is tied to the region set on the Mac. It works in the US (and UK among a few other markets I think) but is definitely disabled in Germany (and other markets). Solution: change the region of your Mac and set date, time and other metrical settings back to your actual region's standard. You will also have to change the language. If you use the Mac OS application “Language Switcher”, you can change the language setting permanently for Kindle for Mac only. This will not however change the actual language of the app, because that is tied to your region (which is tied to the system language). Fortunately, the “copy” feature has since arrived on iOS and probably because they couldn't tether just that single feature to a region setting, it is available in all regions without restrictions. Happy copying!

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