Amazon has just released a firmware update for the most of the Kindles made in the past seven years. The company has added a bunch of new features for sorting and viewing your library and collections. They are also providing a clearer message when the Kindles battery is low and performance improvements, bug fixes, and other general enhancements.
Here is the complete changelog found in the 5.14.3 firmware update.
New Grid and List Views: We’ve refreshed your Library views and added more details into List view. You can now see cover art, more of your book title, and updated reading progress.
Filter and Sort menus: Filter and sort menus provide more control. In the sort menu, you can now sort by publication date as well as toggle each sort field between ascending and descending. You will also find view modes here to access your Collections.
Scroll Bar Navigation: With a new scroll bar in Library, you can drag to scan, tap anywhere to jump around, or hold for a continuous scroll.
Collections View: You can now see all the cloud collections in your library and add them to favorites to show in Grid and List views. Change the view settings under advanced options for Home and Library in the settings menu.
Discover books card: Find your next read by filtering books by genre and category using the Discover Books card.
Recently Read Books Access: On Home you can now access up to 20 of your recently read books.
Quick View: You can now read details about a book in a quick view without leaving the page you are on. Additional actions are available from the three-dot menu on the top right corner of the quick view.
This update is being pushed out to Kindles when they are in standby mode, if you simply cannot wait, there is an option to manually install it. You can find the files for your particular Kindle model HERE.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.