20 things to do with an old Kindle
An e-ink screen, wifi, and a battery that lasts for weeks — there are far more creative uses for this hardware than reading alone. Four ideas are written up in full for free on this site; the remaining sixteen are in the Survival Guide.
All 20 projects below have been checked against a real community post, article, or GitHub repository — nothing is invented. Difficulty ratings reflect the skill level needed once you have a jailbroken device to work with; the guide covers jailbreaking separately.
Free on this site: the four green-badged projects below are full-length how-tos with sources, ready to read now.
In the Survival Guide: the other sixteen are in the PDF, which also contains the exact pre-cutoff checklist, jailbreak walkthrough, and troubleshooting appendix. £3.99 inc VAT →
Free to read
Weather station
Mount it on the wall and have it display live weather forecasts, updating every few hours while the battery lasts for weeks.
Read the full guide →
Free to read
Literary clock
A different book quote every minute of the day — 1,440 quotes that contain a time that matches the clock.
Read the full guide →
Free to read
Smart home dashboard
Connect to Home Assistant and show live sensor readings, heating, door locks, and energy use on an always-on e-ink panel.
Read the full guide →
Free to read
Free 70,000-book library
Fill it with Project Gutenberg classics and Standard Ebooks editions. Never touch Amazon again.
Read the full guide →
Easy
Wall calendar
Show today’s schedule from a shared calendar on a screen that never times out.
Full how-to in the Survival Guide
Medium
Rotating photo frame
Display your own photos from a NAS or cloud album. Works even with a cracked touchscreen.
Full how-to in the Survival Guide
Easy
Spotify remote
A tap-to-skip music controller using the experimental browser — no jailbreak needed.
Full how-to in the Survival Guide
Medium
Code reference monitor
A glare-free secondary display for documentation and static code. Perfect for a developer’s desk.
Full how-to in the Survival Guide
Medium
Anki flashcard device
Install KAnki and use the Kindle as a dedicated spaced-repetition study machine, with easier-on-the-eyes e-ink.
Full how-to in the Survival Guide
Medium
Chess board
KChess runs engines including Stockfish on a jailbroken Kindle. Turn-based games love e-ink.
Full how-to in the Survival Guide
Medium
Puzzle games console
Tetris, Minesweeper, Sudoku, 2048, Sokoban — all ported to run on jailbroken Kindles.
Full how-to in the Survival Guide
Hard
Minecraft server
Yes, really. A jailbroken Kindle can run a Minecraft 1.7–1.8 server on your LAN.
Full how-to in the Survival Guide
Medium
Pocket Linux SSH server
Enable SSH on the Kindle and you’ve got a tiny, always-on Linux box you can shell into.
Full how-to in the Survival Guide
Hard
E-ink dev platform
A cheap way to prototype on a working e-ink screen without buying a £300 development board.
Full how-to in the Survival Guide
Medium
RSS news reader
KOReader has a built-in news downloader. Configure feeds and read a curated morning paper with no algorithms.
Full how-to in the Survival Guide
Easy
Kitchen recipe screen
Mount in the kitchen in a waterproof case. Sideload recipes as PDFs. Never times out.
Full how-to in the Survival Guide
Easy
Fridge message board
Mount on the fridge, display the shopping list and the week’s meal plan. Zero power draw between updates.
Full how-to in the Survival Guide
Easy
Language vocab builder
Read in a foreign language, tap words for lookups, export Vocabulary Builder to Anki flashcards.
Full how-to in the Survival Guide
Hard
Tailscale VPN node
A jailbroken Kindle with Tailscale becomes a tiny always-on VPN endpoint for remote access home.
Full how-to in the Survival Guide
Easy
Art print gallery
Rotate through curated artwork, maps, and line drawings on the e-ink screen. Maps look exceptional.
Full how-to in the Survival Guide
Get all 20 in one place
Full step-by-step instructions for every project in the list above, with screenshots, source links, and honest “it works on these models, skip it on those” notes — plus the full pre-cutoff checklist, jailbreak walkthrough, and troubleshooting.
£3.99 Inc. VAT · Instant PDF download Get the guide →Sources for the free guides on this page: TerminalBytes and Adafruit (weather dashboard); BGR (literary clock); Seeed Studio (Home Assistant dashboard); Project Gutenberg and Standard Ebooks (free bookshelf). Sources for the other 16 projects are included in the Survival Guide. All 20 ideas were verified from real community projects in April 2026.