Ultimate Tutorial: How to Upgrade Your Reading Experience with New Fonts on a Kindle Paperwhite

How to add fonts to Kindle Paperwhite

Posted by Jonny Greenwood on 11/22/2018 4:24:04 PM.

Note: The trick only works with Kindle Paperwhite 1. Read install custom fonts to Kindle for Kindle Paperwhite 2/3, Kindle Voyage or other Kindle eReaders.

Comparing with paper book, e-book gives us an easy and various reading experience. We can adjust the text display style when reading with an e-book reader. Let’s take the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite for example, it allows you to change the font effect such as type, font size, line spacing, margins just with simple settings. You may have find that every e-book has the same font-size, spacing and margins settings, but as for font type, different e-books have different font types. This is because the font types are provided by the publishers. Just like this:

The publisher only offers 5 font types for this book. We have no more choice. So what if you just don’t like the font types they provide? Does it possible to add some extra font types to the Kindle Paper white?

The answer is yes. Some people may think of hacking Kindle Paperwhite. Indeed we can add font types in an easy way, without any hacking or technical work. Just some copy and post jobs. You even don’t need to install any programs or type some boring and complicated commands. Ok, just follow the tutorial below and custom your font type on Kindle Paperwhite.

PS: If the publisher has locked the font that we can’t choose any font type in the font settings, then this trick won’t work.

1 Get the fonts you like

We can get many fonts on the Internet. I recommend two font websites: DaFont.com and FontSquirrel . They all have plenty of free fonts. There are two kinds of fonts: otf and ttf. It’s better to choose the ttf font as the Kindle Paperwhite may not recognize the otf fonts. Here I choose the “Elephant“ font.

2 Transfer fonts to Kindle Paperwhite

Connect your Kindle Paperwhite to PC with USB cable. At the root directory, create a new folder called “fonts“. Open the new folder and put the fonts you’ve got in step 1 here.

They navigate to the root directory again. Right click on the blank and choose “New” – “Text Document” to create a new text file. Rename it as “USE_ALT_FONTS“ (Evert letter should be uppercase) and delete its suffix “.txt”. You may meet a warning like this:

Click “Yes” to confirm and you’ll find the file has no suffix.

Someone may find that all the files on their computer have no suffix. This is because the Windows has hiden the file extension by default. We can let it show again. Click “Organize“ at the folder window and choose “Properties“ – “View“ – “Files and Folder“, deselect the option “Hide extension for known file types“. Then you can see the file extension again.

3 Test the new font

Eject your Kindle Paperwhite from PC. Tap “Menu” – “Settings” – “Menu” – “Restart” to reboot device. Open an e-book, tap the top area of the screen and choose “Aa“. You’ll find there are more fonts which you haven’t seen before and the new font “Elephant“ I added just before is in the font list too. Tap the new font and you can find it works.