# Kindle hacks for mac



## moriahb (Sep 17, 2009)

I have a K2 that I just purchased an want to put the screen savers and font hack.  Is is different?  Also, can you download copies of the ebooks to Calibre to back up or should you be finished with the book before you put it on your computer?  I'll be reading the Lost Symbol tonight and I definitely don't want to lose that as I love Dan Brown and almost bought the hard back but then decided on a Kindle but still almost bought to always have.  Sentimental but am running out of room.


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## pidgeon92 (Oct 27, 2008)

The hack instructions are essentially the same. I've installed both hacks using my iMac. It's just a matter of using the USB cord so the Mac sees the Kindle as a drive, then dragging and dropping files onto the Kindle.

You can download all of your Amazon books for backup. You can use Calibre to store them, or simply put them in a folder somewhere on your hard drive. You will not be able to open the files with Calibre, but you will be able to see the title, author, and other info associated with the file.


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## suicidepact (May 17, 2009)

I've had an issue when I use OSX to add to my custom screen savers folder. It tends to add blank images that I think end up being ***._jpg files. I'm sure there might be a simple workaround, but I've just quickly booted to XP to install them instead. 
Other than that the file structure and everything else should be the same.


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## moriahb (Sep 17, 2009)

So, where are the hacks for the screen saver.  I haven't found that one yet.


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## moriahb (Sep 17, 2009)

Ok, so where does the Kindle show up in a mac.  I couldn't find it in my finder.


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## suicidepact (May 17, 2009)

If you connect your Kindle to your mac, you should see the Kindle mount on your desktop just like all other hard drives, .dmg, or dvd's.


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## pidgeon92 (Oct 27, 2008)

Kindle 2: New version K2 Screensaver hack

Original Kindle: How do I put custom screensavers on my Kindle?


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## moriahb (Sep 17, 2009)

My Kindle does not show up in my computer (mac).  It doesn't show that it's charging the whole time plugged in either except the yellow light is on.  Why is this?


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## moriahb (Sep 17, 2009)

I have rebooted both computer and Kindle with no luck with it showing up on mac that is 1 year old.


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## suicidepact (May 17, 2009)

Maybe you don't have proper USB drivers installed? Do you have any other usb peripherals that you plug into that mac in order to confirm that the usb ports are working?


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## pidgeon92 (Oct 27, 2008)

It's hard to say what the problem is.... Sometimes things get lost on my desktop, and when I double-click my hard drive icon I can see the drive under the left column under devices. Please check there.

Have you upgraded to Snow Leopard? I haven't done so yet, so I'm not sure if everything will work properly with it....

When you plug in the usb cord, are you plugging it into the Mac, or into the keyboard? You may not be getting enough power through the keyboard.


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## moriahb (Sep 17, 2009)

I called Amazon and tried a desktop and my Kindle showed up.  Amazon said that my USB didn't have enough power on my laptop so I'd need a ycord or a powered USB hub to make it work.  That sucks!!!  I used a family members desktop.


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## pidgeon92 (Oct 27, 2008)

Not sure if it would make a difference, but was the laptop plugged in at the time, or working off the battery?


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## Addie (Jun 10, 2009)

moriahb said:


> I called Amazon and tried a desktop and my Kindle showed up. Amazon said that my USB didn't have enough power on my laptop so I'd need a ycord or a powered USB hub to make it work. That sucks!!! I used a family members desktop.


That's so weird! My Mac laptop is a year old as well, and I have no problems with plugging in my Kindle.
If you use a Mac for SS, make sure to pay attention to this:

"Mac users, beware: When writing to a FAT32 filesystem, which the Kindle is, Mac OS X will write an extra hidden file along side each file you can see. The Kindle is trying to use those files as images and, since they are not images, it displays a blank screen.
To clear these files, open the Terminal app (it's in your Applications, inside Utilities) copy and paste this command and press return:
rm -v /Volumes/Kindle/system/screen_saver/._*
If anybody knows a better way to keep those files from being written in the first place, please add a comment here."

It worked for me, and I was very thankful not to have a blank screen pop up every once in a while as a screensaver. I got it from http://blogkindle.com/2009/03/kindle-2-screensaver-hack/ in the comments section.


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## Wheezie (Oct 28, 2008)

Some people have reported a problem with it not showing up on a Mac if you are trying to connect it via a usb hub, not directly to the Mac. Does it show up as a disk on your desktop (if you have it set to show disks on desktop). Sometimes my Mac will get a bit strange and quit showing disks on the desktop until I reboot. Just a thought.



moriahb said:


> Ok, so where does the Kindle show up in a mac. I couldn't find it in my finder.


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## suicidepact (May 17, 2009)

AddieLove said:


> That's so weird! My Mac laptop is a year old as well, and I have no problems with plugging in my Kindle.
> If you use a Mac for SS, make sure to pay attention to this:
> 
> "Mac users, beware: When writing to a FAT32 filesystem, which the Kindle is, Mac OS X will write an extra hidden file along side each file you can see. The Kindle is trying to use those files as images and, since they are not images, it displays a blank screen.
> ...


Ah, that solves the problem I mentioned in post #3 of this thread. Thanks for the tip, Wheezie!


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## moriahb (Sep 17, 2009)

My mac was plugged in and I guess they're saying it didn't have enough power to power the Kindle.  It's weird.


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## suicidepact (May 17, 2009)

Really weird, I haven't connected my K2 to my MacBook Pro since I've installed Snow Leopard, and now that I have, it's not mounting as an HDD. It's charging, but no disk. I'll have look into this...


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## Maelstrom (Nov 26, 2008)

moriahb said:


> My mac was plugged in and I guess they're saying it didn't have enough power to power the Kindle. It's weird.


Did you try all of the usb ports or just one? All usb ports on a machine are not necessarily powered the same.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

moriahb said:


> My mac was plugged in and I guess they're saying it didn't have enough power to power the Kindle. It's weird.


Not really all that weird. There are quite a few things that the USB port won't furnish enough power to charge. It's not a Mac-specific thing. I believe the USB hardware spec wasn't originally designed to do such things, it was an information transfer design, and some chipsets are a bit on the marginal side.

Mike


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## suicidepact (May 17, 2009)

It was working fine prior to installing Snow Leopard, so yes it is weird. It's the same Mac I've used with my Kindle for 6 months with no problems. That's why I said "since I installed Snow Leopard."


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## chiffchaff (Dec 19, 2008)

suicidepact, did you get this resolved yet?  I just installed the font hack on a Mac with Snow Leopoard, and no problems. I'm curious to know if the problem you ran into was related to the OS or not.


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## suicidepact (May 17, 2009)

Yes I did, thanks! It was one of two things: either I'd only halfway plugged in the USB cable, OR it was the beta of USB overdrive that I had installed hours before.  Regardless the cause, I've un-installed USB Overdrive and all is well. 
To be thorough and fair, I will be re-installing USB Overdrive to ascertain whether or not that was the cause, which seems unlikely, as it is mainly a driver-based software, and shouldn't modify power settings.
In all likelihood the cable wasn't plugged correctly, and it was my error, but either way I'll let you know the outcome.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

suicidepact said:


> It was working fine prior to installing Snow Leopard, so yes it is weird.


Nah, weird would be the Kindle exploding. This is merely interesting.  

Mike


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## chiffchaff (Dec 19, 2008)

glad to hear everything's working now!


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## suicidepact (May 17, 2009)

jmiked said:


> Nah, weird would be the Kindle exploding. This is merely interesting.
> 
> Mike


 Or, even weirder would be if Amazon suddenly released firmware that gave us the option of organizing via folders. Now that would be weird!


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