K5 FW 5.x ScreenSavers Hack

[Mediabrk]

Just upgraded my Daughters Kindle 3 to the Paperwhite. Fw5.31 she wanted her custom screensavers back. This worked first time no problems. Thank you.

[AllenH]

Holy cow- finally- the cover image for my current book as screen-saver. You rock!! I'm completely new to Kindle hacking and the new paperwhite 5.3.1 went smoothly with the jailbreak method and now the screensaver hack. Super thankful!

Major Kudos!

[TheSacredSoul]

I cant get the cover to show up. Installed the python bin file first, updated and rebooted. Followed by the linkss bin file. Rebooted and threw in a blank cover file in the linkss folder and rebooted again.

But the cover of the book still doesnt shop up on my screen in standby. it's the default wallpapers like pencils. PW Wifi without SO.

I figured it might be because the book isn't indexed yet but also tried it with indexed books. Still not working.

EDIT : Got it to work. The trick, it seems, is to restart your Kindle WITHOUT it being plugged on to your PC. Rebooted it without being connected to the PC and it worked straight away

[AllenH]

One of the things that is not very clear is that it takes about 15 seconds of reading a book for the cover to be generated. I too was worried right at the beginning when I saw the stock screensaver and had opened, closed, opened, closed, rebooted etc.

The trick was simply starting to read the book for a while (allowing the background tasks to convert the cover images and install them properly)- and bam, worked like a charm.

So patience seemed to help me there, even though I was worried as well initially.

[DuckieTigger]

AllenH, just think of it as a feature. It only shows covers of books that you are actually reading. Less than a quickie ain't reading.

[GoSharks]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Less than a quickie ain't reading.

Less than a quickie ain't ANYTHING!!!

[TheSacredSoul]

How do I 'refresh' the covers? I uploaded different cover to an ebook using Calbre. Deleted the book first from the PW and re-uploaded the ebook with the different cover. Rebooted but the screensaver still uses the old cover. Even tried clearing the cover cache in the linkss folder and rebooting but it didn't help.

[knc1]

You did the above without the USB cable connected to anything?

[TheSacredSoul]

Originally Posted by knc1

You did the above without the USB cable connected to anything?

Disconnected. Figured it out though. There were still leftovers of the old cover in other subfolders in the linkss folders. Got rid of them and rebooted and the new covers show up fine

[trtek]

Does this hack works with the newest Kindle Touch firmware (5.3.2.) ???
If not, I don´t see any reason to upgrade, because simple way to get cover of the book as a screenasaver is the priority for me !

[PeterBr]

First: Thanks for the screen saver hack. I usually don't have much use for jailbreaking, but I could never understand why Amazon wouldn't allow this simple customization.

That said, the hack works like a charm, once I understand that one has to spend 30 seconds in a book to have its image getting generated and placed in the screensavers/ folder.

However, not all covers do show up. All Kindle-bought books worked fine, but I've got a couple of self-rolled epubs converted to mobi via calibre and some other 3rd party epubs converted to mobi which do not get shown.

Apparently they are mostly the same which do not show their covers in Cover View mode on the Paperwhite. The ones that show their cover - even when marked as "Personal" (or whatever its in English) in the bar at the bottom of the cover - work fine.

There are a view that don't show their cover in Cover in Cover View, but nontheless produce a working cover for the screensaver.


What confuses me is that some of come from the same basic epub template. They have the same structure, naming convention, css - just the text and the bitmap data in the cover.png are different.

I guess it's how I converted them, but I can't find out what to look for.

Any ideas?

Also, is there a way to get rid of the "personal" bottom bar of my own documents? I can understand that Amazon wants to push their own books, but it's quite ungainly.

[Akirainblack]

PeterBr do the "self rolled" have a cover? If not it obviously can't display them. Try using calibre to copy them to a PC and have a look, if they don't have a cover there then you can add one from within Calibre and transfer it back to the Kindle with the cover.

[PeterBr]

Originally Posted by Akirainblack

PeterBr do the "self rolled" have a cover? If not it obviously can't display them. Try using calibre to copy them to a PC and have a look, if they don't have a cover there then you can add one from within Calibre and transfer it back to the Kindle with the cover.

Yes, they have a cover. The epubs display on iPad just fine, calibre shows the cover in its own box, the covers are named cover.png and declared as type cover.


I have a better grasp of epub than of calibe and mobi, though so I either simply convert to mobi and have it copy them via USA to the device using the GUI calibre or do use the shell:

#!/bin/bash
epub=$1;
mobi=`basename "$epub" '.epub'`".mobi"; /Applications/calibre.app/Contents/MacOS/ebook-convert "$epub" "$mobi"

/Applications/calibre.app/Contents/MacOS/calibre-smtp -u XXXX -p XXXXX -r XXXXX -s "'$epub'" -a "'$mobi'" SENDER PAPERWHITEEMAIL

[ixtab]

You may want to try the Resize cover plugin for calibre. It seems like Kindles are sometimes rather picky about the cover dimensions.

I haven't tried this myself, but I read that this helped multiple people who had similar issues with the covers not showing up for unknown reasons. So just give it a try.

[PeterBr]

Originally Posted by ixtab

You may want to try the Resize cover plugin for calibre. It seems like Kindles are sometimes rather picky about the cover dimensions..

Ahhhh... That's a good tip, thanks ks not only was mailed to the kindle, it has a cover from a different source.

I'll check this out and report back.