Amazon has released a new Kindle app for Mac, and renamed the old version ‘Kindle Classic.’ The new app comes with a modern design that’s similar to one on iOS, with new features including infinity scroll, reading ruler, additional fonts, new themes, full screen view, page-turn animations, and X-Ray.
It has the same design as the iOS Kindle app, with the default view being the library, paired with bright, bubbly cover art of the ebooks owned, or samples downloaded. These can be sorted by grid, lists, or collections, and filtered by read/unread, documents, and Newsstand.
It doesn’t have an audiobook functionality or an audiobook player. The bottom of the screen houses shortcuts to library, cover art of book currently being read, and a ‘more’ button. This section allows the reader to view notes created with Kindle Scribe, and sync the Mac app with a Kindle e-reader. It’s not currently possible to purchase books on the Mac app.
Upon opening a book, if the user clicks near the top, some quick settings will launch. The most concerning one is changing the screen brightness via a slider bar and the font button. Font is the same as iOS Kindle, with four sections; font, layout, themes, and more.
Font can be used to select fonts to use when reading. Default is Bookerly created by Amazon, looking great on hi-res displays, with no anti-aliasing. Other options include Ember, Ember Bold, Caecilla and more. Additionally, there is a slider bar on the bottom allowing users to increase the size of the font.
Layout has quite the number of changes including turning the background from white to black, sepia, or green, turning on continuously scrolling, and adjusting line spacing, margins, alignment, and columns.
The adjustments can be saved into a custom theme, perfect for those with multiple people using the same Amazon account. The themes are automatically synced over if they were made on a Fire tablet, or Kindle e-reader.
The More section has a bunch of new options, including Reading Ruler, show reading progress, turn on the clock, show popular highlights, about this book and page-turn animations, which show Apple Books stylus animated page-turns when flipping a page. Pages can be turned with the arrow keys or a mouse to tap.
There are also three dots on the top right corner, where users can turn on X-Ray, appearing on the side bar. It provides an indication of the major people, things, and places within a book, as well as allowing the user to look up how many times they are referenced, and easily flip to the page.
Users can also view flashcards, about the book, and jump to the furthest page read, prompting the reader to rate the book on Amazon/Goodreads, lists the authors Goodreads profile, or follow the author on Amazon.
There is a massive difference between the old and new versions, as the old one hasn’t been updated in years. The Mac app has the same reading experience and settings as a modern Kindle e-reader, or the iOS Kindle app.
