by I love reading on the Kindle. It’s convenient, the novels sync across my various devices, and most importantly, I can read at night without disturbing my partner.
However, there is one deeply frustrating element to Amazon’s e-reader: Popular Highlights.
I’m sure you already know them, but in case you’re not, they are sections of text in a book that are underlined.
The idea is to crowdsource the most impactful and interesting sentences and paragraphs. And when enough people highlight that piece of text in a book, your Kindle decides it’s time to let you to know.
The problem is that it’s horrible.
Many of the Popular Highlights shown are hackneyed, the literary version of Live laugh Love. For example, when you are reading game of Thrones and your Kindle lets you know that you really need to pay more attention to the line that says, “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die.”
I’m sorry, I just threw up a little in my mouth.
That’s not all that’s wrong with Kindle’s Popular Highlights feature: It’s also extremely distracting. One of the reasons why I love reading is because it transports, it can take you to other worlds, at the same time that it is a personal and intimate experience.
And Popular Highlights fucks this up.
Little drag me out vivid hallucinations More than just remembering some jabroni who took time out of their sad little lives to highlight some text they think I should review.
I’m better than that. You are better than that. Friends, we are everyone better than that.
So now that I’m coming to the end of this slimy tirade, I’m also going to include in a short guide on how to turn off Popular Highlights on Kindle.
Yes you are very Welcome.
Here’s how to turn off Popular Highlights on your Kindle
One of the reasons I’m writing this now is because the folks at Amazon, cunning sleuths that they are, actually changed the location of this setting in the last year.
In the past, you used to go to Settingswhere I could turn off Popular Highlights in the reading options section.
Unfortunately, no more. We’ll get back to why I said “ouch,” but first let’s see how you do it on today’s Kindles and the like:
- Click on your device screen or Kindle app to open the menu.
- From here, select the “Aa” symbol.
- tap on the Plus tab.
- Turn off the Popular Featured feature. As it should be.
Easy, right? Even better, this works on any Amazon Kindle device, whether it’s your iPhone, iPad, Android, or Fire device, or the physical e-reader itself.
However, there is a problem: now you have to disable it to every book.
Remember when I said “ouch” earlier? Well, that’s because previously, when Popular Highlights was disabled in normal settings, the feature remained missing. Now, you have to damn him to hell every time you start a new novel.
I sacrifice a married man to the ghost of Jane Austen every day in the hope that this will be reversed.
And until that pays dividends? Hope this piece helps. So go ahead, man, prosper: live your best life without jabroni and without Popular Highlights.
