How to Jailbreak Kindle Paperwhite 4 (the 2018 release)

How to Jailbreak Kindle Paperwhite 4 (the 2018 release)

For Kindle Paperwhite 4, please read this guide.

For Kindle Kindle Oasis, Kindle Voyage, Kindle Paperwhite 3, Kindle Touch 2/3, please read this guide

For Kindle Touch, Kindle Paperwhite 1/2, please read this guide.

This guide is originally posted in the famous MobileRead forum, before starting jailbreaking your KPW4, please the following paragraph carefully:

  • Your Kindle Paperwhite 4 must be running firmware 5.10.0.1 and 5.10.0.2
  • The serial number must start with G000T1, G000T2, G000T6 and G000PP

If your Kindle Paperwhite 4 doesn’t meet any demand of those, please don’t try this method. Or you may take the risk for bricking your Kindle.

If you just get your Kindle Paperwhite 4, I highly recommend you skip the Wi-Fi connection step to avoid the auto system update. After jailbreaking the device, it will keep jailbroken even if you update the firmware to a higher version.

If your KPW4 is already connected to Wi-Fi, but doesn’t upgrade the firmware yet, I also recommend you disconnect the Wi-Fi at first.

To jailbreak a Kindle Paperwhite 4 is similar to the previous generations, at first you should install a specific firmware, then run the jailbreak script, finally install a patch to keep your Kindle jailbroken. After that, you can install a bunch of plugins to enhance your Kindle’s capability.

Step 1. Download the specific firmware files

Step 2. Install the downloaded firmware

  1. Connect Kindle to computer with USB
  2. Copy the specific firmware to Kindle’s root path (where you can see the documents folder)
  3. Safely eject Kindle, and make sure your Kindle’s battery is higher than 50%
  4. Now back to Kindle’s screen, press “Menu → Settings → Menu → Update Your Kindle”
  5. Be patient, wait for the specific firmware to install, don’t press any button, just leave it alone. This step may take longer than 30 minutes.
  6. When the firmware is finished installation, the Kindle will restart automatically.

Step 3. Install jailbreak script

  1. Download the file: kindle-jb-factory-1.2-r15011.tar.xz (WinZip and 7-zip are all able to extract the .xz extension file)
  2. Unzip the file, you can get a new file called main-htmlviewer.tar.gz
  3. Connect Kindle to computer with USB, copy the main-htmlviewer.tar.gz file to Kindle’s root path
  4. Safely eject Kindle from computer
  5. Back to Kindle screen, activate the search box, input “;installHtml” (notice, there is a semicolon, and all of them are characters, not numbers), then press Enter
  6. Kindle’s screen will flash and restart, if so, you can go on. If not, please repeat the previous steps.

Step 4. Install the hotfix patch

  1. Download the file: JailBreak-1.15.N-FW-5.x-hotfix.zip
  2. Unzip it, you’ll get a new file called “Update_jailbreak_hotfix_1.15.N_install.bin”
  3. Connect Kindle to computer with USB
  4. Copy the “Update_jailbreak_hotfix_1.15.N_install.bin” file to Kindle’s root path
  5. Safely eject Kindle from computer
  6. Now back to Kindle’s screen, press “Menu → Settings → Menu → Update Your Kindle”
  7. Wait for the Kindle to restart

After the restart, your Kindle will be jailbroken. Your Kindle Paperwhite 4 will keep jailbroken if it updates to newer system version. All installed plugins will be gone if Kindle’s system is updated.

Step 5 (Optional). Suspend auto system update

In theory, system update doesn’t make a jailbroken KPW4 to un-jailbreak.

However, if you are worried about someday Amazon finds a way to block jailbreak by a new firmware version. You can suspend Kindle’s auto system update feature by a small trick.

You can create a folder called “update.bin.tmp.partial” and place it to KPW4’s root path. Just leave the folder empty.

This magic folder can stop KPW4 from auto-updating.

The recommended procedure

Therefore, if you want to jailbreak your Kindle and keep all plugins, here is the recommended procedure:

  1. Jailbreak your Kindle (step 1-4 in this article)
  2. Update Kindle to the latest firmware
  3. Suspend auto system update (step 5, which I will introduce below)
  4. Install plugins, you can refer to this article to check must-have plugins for jailbroken Kindle

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