Kindle Paperwhite Update v5.6.5 Adds Support for Bookerly, New Typography

10.08.2015 Nate Hoffelder 4 Comments

Amazon has rolled out a new update for the Kindle Paperwhite, but not everyone will be celebrating.

The update adds support for the typography features Amazon announced in May as well as the Bookerly font that we first saw in February, but it’s not coming to all the Kindle Paperwhite models.

The original Kindle Paperwhite (the one released in 2012) did not get an update today. But if you have the second-gen Paperwhite or the model Amazon released a few months back then I have some good news for you.

The update adds better Goodreads integration with author profile pages and personalized recommendations, and Amazon also improved the Lookup feature to make it "easier to get to the actions you want to take while reading – highlight, create a note, share a quote, and more, while keeping your favorite Smart Lookup features like Dictionary, Wikipedia, and X-Ray easily accessible".

There’s also the new typography and layout improvements with the hyphenation, justification, ligatures, and kerning that Amazon promised back in May but is still working to deliver. There’s also a mention of pop-up footnotes, endnotes, and chapter notes.

Or at least that is what the change notes say; my Paperwhite has just finished the process of updating, so I can’t say what has been added.

Yu can find the updates here:

image by GillyBerlin

Comments

dave August 10, 2015 um 11:33 pm

Thanks for the heads up, Nate. I updated both my Paperwhite 2 and Kindle touch and like the Bookerly font. Perhaps it’s just my imagination, but it seems a bit crisper to me.

DavidW August 11, 2015 um 8:04 am

I was very much looking forward to this update. Now I’m disappointed. Only a few of my ebooks that have enhanced typesetting are actually hyphenating. And this is after redownloading. Heck I even reset my PW 2015 and redownloaded my library.