iPad Side load Kindle books to iPad using command line

[Terry Brown]

I know how to side load kindle books (kfx format is what I use) to the kindle app on an iPad. Currently, I use iMazing to do this primarily because iMazing connects to devices wirelessly.

But I would like to automate this a bit more. Is there a way to side load kindle books to the iPad kindle app using the macOS command line?

[robarr]

Hi:

Maybe this one ?

Send eBooks to a Kindle from the MacOS command line

https://gist.github.com/nerab/1410840

Or this one

https://github.com/kparal/sendKindle

I have not tried it just googled “send to kindle command line”

Good luck

[kyteflyer]

That sounds really complicated... unless you like using the command line, in which case ignore my next comment..

I use Send to Kindle on my Macs, it works well, and it also lets you sync between devices if you use that, rather than just sideloading.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/mac

[tomsem]

In macOS Catalina, it should mount in Finder and you can drag files over to files/Kindle. I’m not sure if it translates to some command line. Probably some AppleScript automation is possible for that.

You might ask in calibre forum how it connects and moves files over USB connection, supposedly it detects device and can copy stuff over to it, I’ve never used the feature, but I’m guessing it is equivalent of a command line thing. But they recommend calibre companion to do it wirelessly.

The other way is to use cloud storage for your files (ICloud, Dropbox whatever that you have on your Mac), and just open with the vendor’s app or Files (after connecting the cloud services (calibre companion integrates with Files)). To me this is ideal as you don’t need to connect the 2 devices physically.

[Terry Brown]

I'll respond to everyone's comments here.

robarr: These scripts are other ways to use Amazon's Send To Kindle capability. Send To Kindle does not accept KFX format files.

kyteflyer: See above, Send To Kindle does not accept KFX format files.

thomsen: I am aware of the capability of using Finder to transfer the files. However, it requires the iPad be plugged into the Mac using USB. I have not found any means of automating this. You have to drag and drop files. Your second option of using cloud storage doesn't work with KFX files. If I attempt to open a KFX file stored in iCloud, for example, on my iPad, it does not properly load into the Kindle app.

My point with this thread is to see if anyone knows a method of automating the transfer of KFX files from my Mac to my iPad/iPhone.

Imazing is still the best I have found since at least it uses a wireless connection. However, I still can't find a way to script it--it requires using drag and drop. I may try doing this with Keyboard Maestro, which has that capability, although most advise against using it because mouse targets are inconsistent.

Ideally, I would have a command line script in macOS and I could access it via ssh from my iPad to initiate transfer of a file from the mac's file system.

[kyteflyer]

Hrmmm. Is there a reason you want to keep the kfx format? Converting would make life easier. Then again if using the commandline is what you want to do, I dunno, seems like a messy way to do this particular thing, when you could use a combo of a couple of apps and get it done.

In short, never heard of a script to do what you want. It may be out there. Maybe you could post in Apple Discussions, where they are much more highly tech minded than we are.

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by Terry Brown

I know how to side load kindle books (kfx format is what I use) to the kindle app on an iPad. Currently, I use iMazing to do this primarily because iMazing connects to devices wirelessly.



But I would like to automate this a bit more. Is there a way to side load kindle books to the iPad kindle app using the macOS command line?

It's not possible from the command line with a default iPad. Your problem with the iPad is that Apple has isolated the user and root directories from public access. You would need to jailbreak your iPad first, then find the path to the Kindle folder, then copy the files via terminal.



If you had a Kindle device, you would "cp *.kfx /Volumes/Kindle/documents". You'd need to manually mount the device on your desktop first, obviously. If you wanted to automate it, you could create a folder action that monitors /Volumes to execute a script that runs that command for you. You could even unmount the Kindle from the command line in the same script. I'm sure once you jailbreak your iPad, you can do a similar process.



I just jailbroke an old iPad last month and was poking around the root and user directories via terminal before selling it. I didn't have Kindle installed, so I can't tell you the specific paths as I can with a Kindle device, but once you have access to root, that will be an easy matter for you.

[Terry Brown]

Thanks for the response. I am not interested in jailbreaking the iPad since I use it for many things and don't want the potential hassles.

The fact that iMazing is able to do this, even wirelessly, indicates to me that the iPad is not locked down completely since they copy files directly to standard iOS devices that are not jailbroken. However, iMazing does have the limitation that they prompt for the application that you want to receive the file you are copying--they have no way to know, without user interaction, if the ePub, for example is to be sent to iBooks or to Marvin. It is interesting to me that no one seems to know how this works--I have tried a number of forums with no results.

I have played with using Keyboard Maestro to automate the iMazing procedure, but automating the mouse movements required to drag and drop is flakey at best. Part of the reason I want to automate things a bit more is that I have to do the procedure twice, once for my iPad, once for my iPhone since I read on both devices.

I use kfx file format instead of mobi because I can build the kfx file from Calibre and get support for Kindle's page flip, which I love and is the one of the main reasons I choose to use the Kindle app for my reading. I consider page flip to be the only seriously creative feature for book reading apps I have seen in years.

Kindle also does a good job of supported highlights across columns and even pages, and I like the way I can export my notes and get a reasonably formatted output.

[kyteflyer]

Originally Posted by Terry Brown

I use kfx file format instead of mobi because I can build the kfx file from Calibre and get support for Kindle's page flip, which I love and is the one of the main reasons I choose to use the Kindle app for my reading. I consider page flip to be the only seriously creative feature for book reading apps I have seen in years.

Kindle also does a good job of supported highlights across columns and even pages, and I like the way I can export my notes and get a reasonably formatted output.

Doesn't .azw and .azw3 do all that? I usually convert to that if I want to read on Kindle or one of the apps, because I like being able to sync between devices and I don't think mobi can do that.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by kyteflyer

Doesn't .azw and .azw3 do all that? I usually convert to that if I want to read on Kindle or one of the apps, because I like being able to sync between devices and I don't think mobi can do that.

As far as I know, if you use email to Kindle on Calibre, your ebooks actually get converted to mobi.

I don't think there's a way to send your own azw3 to Kindle without conversion aside from USB transfer.

It's been a while since I played around with formats but I do believe page flip is KFX only.

[Terry Brown]

After my own playing around, I believe that only kfx format supports page flip.

As for azw and azw3, I see no advantage. If I have an azw file accessible through the Files app on my iPad, I cannot select it and open in Kindle, nor can I download from Calibre server to Kindle, so in that sense, azw and kfx are the same.

And nothing but kfx gives me the prime reason for using the Kindle app--page flip.

I did discover that I don't need iMazing to wirelessly transfer kfx to my iPad using my Mac. When connected to the Mac via USB, the iPad shows in Finder. there is a checkbox option under General that allows the iPad to show up in Finder when only connected via wifi. This works just as well as iMazing for kfx file transfers.

[sergio0p]

Originally Posted by Terry Brown

I know how to side load kindle books (kfx format is what I use) to the kindle app on an iPad. Currently, I use iMazing to do this primarily because iMazing connects to devices wirelessly.

But I would like to automate this a bit more. Is there a way to side load kindle books to the iPad kindle app using the macOS command line?

Are you really able to transfer .kfx books to the Ipad kindle using iMazing? I used iTunes to transfer a .AZW and a .MOBI file (both files are de-DRM) to the Ipad kindle. But when I open the kindle, it does not show these files. iTunes is storing the files as Documents in the Ipad kindle. Thanks for any help.

[Terry Brown]

Originally Posted by sergio0p

Are you really able to transfer .kfx books to the Ipad kindle using iMazing? I used iTunes to transfer a .AZW and a .MOBI file (both files are de-DRM) to the Ipad kindle. But when I open the kindle, it does not show these files. iTunes is storing the files as Documents in the Ipad kindle. Thanks for any help.

Yes, I routinely copy kfx books (I convert them from epub using Calibre) to my 2018 12.9 iPad Pro and read them in the Kindle app. I also copy them to the iPad using Finder. In Finder, I have the iPad set to connect wirelessly (although it often doesn't connect and I have to futz with it a bit, or connect using the USB cable). The iPad shows up in the locations tab in Finder. Select the 'Files' tab, then click on Kindle. You should see a list of books already in the Kindle app. Drag the kfx files here and drop them. I use the same procedure to copy files to my iPhone.

Since I use Calibre to manage by ebooks on my Mac, it is simple to drag and drop multiple files using the Finder procedure. In Calibre, I select the books I want to transfer and use "Save only KFX format to disk in a single directory" to export the kfx files to a scratch folder where I can get them all at once. I also have Calibre set up to automatically convert all books added to it to KFX.

The Mac is a 2018 Mac mini and it is running Catalina 10.15.7. Catalina did away with iTunes and now Finder is used for file transfers and syncing that iTunes used to handle. The iPhone is an iPhone 7 and it and the iPad are both running iOS/iPadOS 14.1.

The kfx files appear in the regular library on the Kindle. (If you are using Calibre to convert files to .mobi, look into the details of .mobi conversion and whether the conversions are treated as personal documents as opposed to books.) Locations and things like bookmarks and/or notes do not sync between the devices when using kfx. I wrote my own bookmarking script in python (Pythonista on iOS) including a server that runs on my Mac and use shortcuts to run the python scripts to set and retrieve bookmarks to do this.

All of this works pretty well for me and it's been fun figuring out how to do it. But I hate having to manually drag and drop the KFX files, and the intermittent connectivity problems I see between the iPhone/iPad and the Mac. This is the kind of thing that should "just work", but doesn't. My Mac is a lot better than the PC's I used for decades before making the switch in 2012, but none of this stuff is completely reliable, just like my Apple Watch won't unlock my Mac, but will be recognized (sometimes!) when the Mac asks for my password for some operations.

Anyway, the final piece of all of this is to automate the file transfer. I have played with Keyboard Maestro to do this, but it's too unreliable to try to use drag and drop, which is why I really want command line capability.

So now you know a crapload more than you ever wanted to know about what really old, retired hardware engineers do with their time!