So Many People are Jailbreaking Their Kindles—and Maybe You Should Too

Amazon recently announced they are ending support for older Kindle devices. Beginning on May 20th, any Kindle device from 2012 or earlier will no longer receive updates. What this means is that people who use the early Kindle models—like Kindle Touch, and Kindle Fire—will no longer be able to download new eBooks. Amazon has also warned that doing a factory reset on those early Kindles will make them unusable.

The BBC reports that this change could make up to 2 million devices obsolete, and potentially generate over 624 tons of e-waste.

In response to the announcement, users have taken to social media in anger. Many people feel they’re being forced to upgrade to a new device, when their old one is still working just fine. With paper books, no future purchases are required, and they argue the same should be true for eBooks.

This announcement from Amazon is coming after a yearlong trend of jailbreaking Kindles. The practice is becoming more and more popular, with new jailbreaking-tutorials being published regularly, and new features being created for the now-Amazon-free devices.

The Kindle-jailbreaking trend seemed to gain steam in February of 2025, when Amazon announced Kindle users would no longer be allowed to download the files of the eBooks they’d purchased directly onto their computers. Apparently Amazon did this to stop people from storing copies of the books locally. This change was a big red flag for Kindle users—it was a reminder that Amazon can change the rules at any time; the company can remove options, features, privileges, and support.

The announcement also came at a time when consumers were calling for boycotts of Amazon and encouraging people to drop their Amazon Prime subscriptions. As the boycotts grew, and people were actively trying to make purchase choices outside of Amazon, a recurring issue was Kindle and eBooks. Users wanted to leave Amazon, but what were they supposed to do with their library of dozens, or hundreds, of Kindle books?