I recently jailbroken/rooted the Kindle PW3 to enable an entire host of capabilities. But for some reason, i decided to register my PW3 to amazon and i found that the Kindle Screensaver hack no longer worked! Putting the device to sleep only resulted in an annoying ad that forced me to the Kindle store. Maybe because i live in a non-ad supported country and have an ad supported kindle.
Searching the web seems to suggest that there was no way to revert this, or maybe, i just couldn’t find any related post.
As i was desperate to keep the “Last” view on screen with the screensaver hack, i started digging into the system. The biggest hint was that this issue arose only AFTER i registered my kindle to amazon. There is a way to fix this! To get into it. I assume that you have the following:-
- A Jailbroken Kindle
- KUAL
- USBNetwork or kterm
- linkss and its related python packages
If you have no idea what the above is, then this process is not for you. But if you do, please proceed.
TLDR; Remove the directory /var/local/adunits to revert to pre-registration state!
More detailed steps
In order to revert, you have to
- Un-register your Kindle from Amazon in Settings
- Use either kterm or USBNetwork from KUAL to get a shell into the Kindle
- make the root filesystem readwrite using
$ mntroot rw - Go to “/var/local” and look for a folder called “adunits”
$ cd /var/local
$ ls -la adunits/ - You should see some files in there like “admgr.json” and “admgr.seenactive”
- I MOVED the entire “adunits” directory into another location, effectively deleting it from /var/local
$ mv /var/local/adunits /mnt/us/adunits-moved - Use KUAL, and go to “Screen Savers” from the screen savers hack and restart the framework.
Done!
Once the framework restarts, you should be able to test the change by quick pressing the power button and the Kindle should have reverted to the original “no ad” state and the Screensaver Hack should be working again!
Happy Hacking!