Amazon’s Kindle Scribe now lets you write anywhere on the screen, plus much more

Amazon’s Kindle Scribe is a unicorn in the brand’s e-reader stable. While the Kindle is an age-old brand, the Scribe brings a whole new dimension to the e-reader. You now have the option to take notes and write on the screen, and that feature has been bolstered with the latest up date Amazon just released. Now, there are certain books, journals, or word games that allow for on-page writing instead of limiting you to just taking notes in the dedicated section of the e-reader. Keep reading to find all of the new features being added to the Kindle Scribe in the latest software update as well as how to install it.

Kindle Scribe now lets you take notes anywhere

Amazon has been working hard since releasing the Kindle Scribe back in September of last year to deliver new features to the versatile e-reader. Earlier this year, the Scribe got new brush types for a “more versatile pen experience,” and also gained subfolders to better organize your content. There was also an extension released for Microsoft Word that enabled Send to Kindle so you could push a document to your e-reader just like a book with adjustable font sizes and layouts as well as handwritten sticky note support.

This week, however, we’re taking a look at four brand-new features to Amazon’s most premium e-reader. Starting things off is our favorite update, “write-on content.” While you’ve been able to use sticky notes or notepads on the Kindle Scribe since launch, this new feature opens up a whole new dimension of capabilities. Now, you’ll be able to get guided journals and word games (at the start) which allow you to write anywhere on the screen. This brings the ability to do crosswords or sudokus like never before on the Scribe, and also lets you enjoy a more cohesive journaling experience. Right now, the feature is limited to basically those categories, but new content is going to be popping up on Amazon supporting this. Just look for “Write-on Books” in the store, or “On-page writing” listed as a supported feature to know if a title is compatible.

There have also been improvements to PDF reading and annotating. Through the new Send to Kindle option in Microsoft Word, there’s a “like a printed document” option which allows you to send essentially a fully annotatable PDF to your Kindle Scribe. You’ll be able to switch between portrait and landscape mode, crop margins to increase font size, and select text to make structured highlights with your pen or finger plus much more. Another big feature of the PDF update here is that you’ll be able to look up dictionary definitions of words, translations, and even Wikipedia results.

You’ll also find that there are updates to text in a few ways here. For starters, you can now easily convert handwritten notebooks to text whenever you export, which is great for sharing something with friends or families over email. Inside of the share menu, there’s a new “Convert to text and quick send” as well as “Convert to text and email” for a standalone notebook as a .txt file. You’ll even be able to preview, review, and edit the notebook being converted to text before sending the email.

Then, there’s the new lasso select tool which works anywhere you can write, including notebooks, sticky notes, and PDFs uploaded to the Kindle library. The new lasso select tool makes it easy for you to circle handwritten content or pen strokes and resize or move the selection. Plus, you can cut, copy, and paste the selection across notebooks, sticky notes, and PDFs.

All of these updates are available free for Kindle Scribe owners, and will begin to roll out to devices now. However, if you want to manually update, Amazon has instructions on how to do just that.

9to5Toys’ Take

The Kindle Scribe is already Amazon’s most powerful e-reader thanks to the fact that you can write on it, but with these new features, it’s now even more versatile. While I don’t have a Scribe personally, the thought of having an e-reader that I could take notes on is extremely intriguing. I have friends with the Scribe and they love it, which has put it on my radar as a note taking device that doubles as an e-reader. Then, with today’s updates, the Scribe has been made even more versatile as I can imagine that the journals will eventually be updated to have full calendars, note pads, and more.

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