kindle-delete-ads

Installation

The recommended installation is to your local bin folder (it should be in your $PATH by default).

wget -P ~/bin https://raw.githubusercontent.com/avindra/kindle-delete-ads/main/kindle-delete-ads.sh
chmod +x ~/bin/kindle-delete-ads.sh

Usage

$ sudo kindle-delete-ads.sh
 Kindle device file is /dev/sde1
 Mounting Kindle to temporary location: /tmp/tmp.jIUXPogGgC
 Ads detected. Cleaning time.
 Deleting all ads... done
 Installing temp ad blocker... done
 Unmounting kindle... done

# Will do nothing if ad blocker is in place

$ sudo kindle-delete-ads.sh
 Kindle device file is /dev/sde1
 Mounting Kindle to temporary location: /tmp/tmp.q1jNYEkwex
 Temp ad blocker is still intact! Nothing to do.
 Unmounting kindle... done

How

Kindle stores the cover ads on the lock screen in a system folder called .assets. This is a script which automates the well known hack.

It works on Linux, and should work on other *nix systems.

It will not work on macOS, because it uses blkid. If you want to create a PR for macOS support, feel free.

Why

Deleting the .assets folder will work, but is only a temporary fix. I would recommend using this script to purge your Kindle when necessary, and keeping your Kindle in airplane mode so that it doesn't try to fetch more ads. Usage of airplane mode should also extend your battery life.

Autorun on plug in

To make life as easy as possible, have your computer wipe the Kindles ads every time you plug it in.

Unfortunately since June 2018, udevd service has been restricted to a limited set of syscalls, notably missing @mount. To work around this, add @mount to SystemCallFilter in /usr/lib/systemd/system/systemd-udevd.service, or simply comment out the entire SystemCallFilter line.

Afterwards, add a file to /etc/udev/rules.d called 99-kindle.rules.

ACTION=="add", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="partition", ATTRS{idVendor}=="1949", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0004", RUN+="/home/avindra/bin/kindle-delete-ads.sh '%E{DEVNAME}'"

NOTE: Your idProduct will probably differ, depending on the Kindle model you have. Additionally, be sure to set the script path in RUN to the location where you have installed this script.