3 Clever Things You Can Do With an Old Amazon Kindle

The best Amazon Kindles are reliably good at their main job: displaying ebooks in a crisp, easy-on-the-eye format. But Kindle e-readers are actually more versatile than you might imagine.

If you’ve just upgraded to a new Kindle and are looking for something to do with your old one, or if you’re simply interested in seeing how hackable these e-readers are, we’ve got three projects for you to attempt.

These projects vary in terms of difficulty and the amoung of time and effort you’re going to have to invest, but full instructions for all of them are available online, so you can follow the steps on your own Kindle.

Turn Your Kindle Into a Spotify Controller

Part of the appeal of Spotify is that it can work across so many different devices and connect to so many other services. There are lots of ways to use Spotify, and that includes through your Kindle. All you need to do is supply your Spotify credentials, and then make sure your Kindle is on the same Wi-Fi network as the other device you’re using to play your music, podcasts, or audiobooks.

This is made possible through Kindlify.co. Open the site in the Kindle’s built-in web browser, then tap Connect Spotify to log in. Once that’s done, you should see details of whatever you’re currently playing in Spotify—though you will need to use another device to choose something from your library. There’s more discussion about this hack on Reddit, which is where I found it.

It all works through the magic of Spotify Connect, which you may already have come across. This feature lets you play something on your laptop and then control playback from your phone, for example, or vice versa. You can also use the feature to manage playback through compatible smart speakers.

Bear in mind that you’re not actually storing any music on your Kindle or running an official Spotify app. This hack is just a way to connect to your Spotify account and control whatever’s being played through it, from your Kindle. You can skip forward and backward, and pause and resume playback, all from the e-reader.

Turn Your Kindle Into a Smart Home Display

Another way to repurpose a Kindle and its E-Ink screen is to turn it into a smart display that pulls in all kinds of data from other services. You can use the e-reader to show a variety of information related to your devices, including weather forecasts, calendar information, and your to-do lists.

This is just about the most involved of the projects featured here, and you need to do everything from setting up a custom website to cutting out a custom-made frame for your Kindle. Developer Matt Healy, who originally put all this together, has diligently provided instructions online.

It’s the sort of project you can try if you want to learn more about hardware hacking, coding, the inner workings of Kindles, and how various apps and services talk to one another. By the time you’ve finished, you may well have some ideas about similar hacks of your own you could attempt.

The information you display is entirely up to you, but it will need to come from platforms that allow third-party connections. You can see from the scripts supplied by Matt Healy that he’s managed to pull in real time information from weather services, calendars, and even status reports for upcoming deliveries.

Turn Your Kindle Into a Literary Clock

Finally, you can also consider turning your Kindle into a literary clock. This hack keeps the e-book theme but repurposes the device into a display you can glance at any time you want to know what time it is, with each minute represented by a different quote from a book that mentions that particular time.

As with the smart home display, this requires a significant amount of work in terms of coding and getting everything set up, but again, there are full instructions online, so you can tackle it yourself. You can fashion a stand or frame for the clock, but it’s not essential if you don’t mind the original look of the e-reader clock.

One of the bigger steps you have to work through here is getting all the images in place. There are 1,440 minutes in each day, and this project will give you a static picture with a literary quote for each one of them. The good news is that all the images and associated scripts have already been prepared, so you don't have to create or source them yourself.

A nice touch is that you don’t get to see the name of the book or the author on the time quote, so the clock doubles as a sort of literary quiz. See if you know—or can remember—where each line comes from when you see it. You can then reveal each answer with a press on the Kindle’s screen.