The Amazon Kindle kicked off the e-book revolution, bringing millions of books to your fingertips on a single handheld device. While Amazon Kindle still offers the best e-reading experiences, you’re not limited by them — you can access your Amazon e-book collection on PCs and mobile devices using the Kindle app .
The Kindle desktop app is free for you to use and is available for Windows and macOS devices. To help you decide if the Kindle app is as good as a physical device, we’ll tell you some of the pros and cons behind the Kindle Desktop and answer one simple question — is it as good as the real Kindle? are not?
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Benefits of Using the Kindle Desktop App
If you want the best e-reading experience, you need an e-reader — there’s no question about that. If that’s out of the question, though, then the Kindle desktop app is probably the next best thing. It gives you instant access to your Kindle e-book collection as soon as you sign in with your Amazon account.
To save space, the Kindle desktop reader will automatically download any book you choose to open, instead of downloading hundreds of books at once. The eBook isn’t very big, so this is usually just a few seconds extra delay.
The Kindle interface is easy to understand and navigate, with your library prominent and most accessible from the menu on the left, but with a quick access link to the Kindle store on the top right. Any book you buy on your Amazon account will appear right here for you to download and read.
It has many of the features you would expect from an e-book reader, including many of those found on Kindle devices, providing the ability to change the font and font size, changing the page width to Better reading, as well as switching to color view easy to use manner.
You can also use the built-in text-to-speech mode to create automatically generated audiobooks that you can listen to while you work, as well as directly annotate your books — perfect for students. member or scholar.
Kindle Desktop vs Kindle Mobile and Kindle Devices
While the Kindle desktop app isn’t designed to be mobile, it does have one distinct advantage over the Kindle mobile apps – size. Larger screens on desktops and laptops allow you to view more text at once, which can be useful for people who are researching books and those who want to read from their PC.
Amazon wants you to buy their books through their own store, and while it’s not possible to read non-Amazon ebooks on a Kindle device, it’s not the easiest process — unless you’re using the app. Kindle desktop application.
This leads to another direct advantage that the desktop Kindle app has over other Kindle products. By using it, you can open .mobi e-book files with the Kindle app without any extra fuss.
Otherwise, there really isn’t too much of a difference between the Kindle desktop app, the mobile Kindle app, or the Kindle device itself. For example, many of the accessibility features are common across all Kindle products, although Kindle devices lack some of the more advanced features like text-to-speech.
You can also share the same collection, keep your saved location and sync it across your devices, and do the same with any book annotations you make across all products. Kindle.
Alternatives to Kindle Desktop Reader
If you want to get out of the Amazon ecosystem, there are alternatives available for desktop users. The most popular among them are caliberdesktop e-reader available for Windows, Linux, and macOS devices.
Like the desktop Kindle app, it lets you read your e-books, share your collection with others, sync it across multiple devices, and more. It’s free, open source software that you can further extend (if you have the skills) by helping develop it directly or by creating additional plugins for others to use.
While it’s not as polished as Amazon’s own desktop app, Caliber is still a great alternative e-reader that’s more than likely to power your Amazon e-book collection (also such as accessing and using other non-Amazon e-books).
If Caliber isn’t for you, paid alternatives still exist, like Adobe Digital Editions. It supports desktop and mobile users, as well as Caliber and Amazon, and it allows you to share and read your e-book collection on multiple devices.
How to Download and Use the Kindle Desktop App
The Kindle desktop app is available for free to anyone with an Amazon account, even those who don’t have any existing Amazon Kindle e-books. Downloading and setting it up on your PC or Mac is a pretty straightforward process.
- To begin, download Kindle desktop app for your operating system and install it. After opening the Kindle app, you’ll need to sign in with your Amazon account details — enter your details, then tap Log in to begin.
- Your Amazon Kindle e-book collection will automatically start syncing with the Kindle desktop app once you’ve signed in. To access any of the books in your collection, simply double-click them — the book will download and open as soon as the download is complete.
- By default, the Kindle desktop app will only display a single page. You can change this by opening the e-book and clicking on one of the page width options in the top menu bar.
- To view your eBooks in full screen without distractions, tap full screen icon in the menu bar.
- To access the accessibility features of the Kindle desktop app to change the font, font size, color scheme, and more, tap Button Aa in the menu bar. This brings up an options menu, allowing you to change various font and style settings as you wish.
- If you’d like to purchase any Kindle e-books through the Kindle desktop app, tap Kindle Store icon in the top left. This will take you straight to the Kindle store, where any book you purchase will automatically sync with the app for you to download.
Read eBooks on desktop & mobile
While the Kindle desktop app is a great option for your Amazon e-book collection, there are other ways you can read your favorite books for free, with Sites like BookBub work well with third-party Kindle alternatives like Caliber for building e-book collections without Amazon’s involvement.
That said, Amazon Kindle remains one of the best offerings for e-books, with millions of books, a great suite of e-readers, and easy-to-use and feature-packed apps. for desktop and mobile users. If you’re an interested writer, you can even write your own e-book and publish it on the Amazon Kindle store for others to enjoy.
