Upgrading my Kindle Voyage to use the Bookerly font

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It is no secret that I absolutely love my Kindle Voyage. Upgrading to the much anticipated Bookerly font was a pain.

In theory, it should be absolutely no issue to upgrade Amazon's top of the line, glass screened Kindle Voyage to use the latest firmware, including the new Bookerly font. Bookerly was created to make e-ink reading surfaces even more pleasant to use, and it works well. A lot of the inconsistencies and odd formatting shifts you'd get in prior typefaces simply disappears with Bookerly. Getting Bookerly on my Voyage, however, was a total pain.

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All you should have to do is download the .bin file, copy it over to your hard mounted-as-a-USB-disk Kindle, disconnect the Kindle from your computer, and tell it to install. I have no idea WTF with the Voyage being so sensitive, but I tried with three different, working with other devices, USB cables and it refused to mount on my Mac Book Pro. One of the cables did work enough to bring up DiskUtil while then claimed it needed to repair my Kindle. I thought "Ok, this'll be hilarious." After DiskUtil bricked the Voyage, I did a hard reset and tried the same three cables on my Mac Book Air. One of them allowed it to mount there, and I was able to update.


Reading with Bookerly is great. The screen on the Voyage is fantastic, and the glass is really, really worth the extra money. If you are going to read a lot, on an Amazon e-reader, this is the one.

Previously on Boing Boing:

Kindle Original vs Kindle Voyage

I prefer this cheap leather case for the Kindle Voyage