Kindle 4 NT Custom Screensavers

This post describes, how you get custom screen savers on your Kindle 4 NT (Non Touch). This requires root access via USBnet or via WiFi – these two are described in their own posts.

Connect to your Kindle, either via USBnet or WiFi.

After you have a writeable filesystem, we make the system think, that the screen saver pictures are in your Kindle root folder. This will be good for you, because then you can just add pictures to a folder on your Kindle in ‘normal’ mode.

If you are connected via USBnet:

1. Make file system writeable

mntroot rw

2. Create a screen saver folder in your base directory

mkdir /mnt/us/screensaver

3. Mount the main file system

mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt/base-mmc

4. 1. You can now either move all the amazon screen savers to your new folder, so that you can replace them and/or add custom ones. mv /mnt/base-mmc/opt/amazon/screen_saver/600x800/* /mnt/us/screensaver/
rm -r /mnt/base-mmc/opt/amazon/screen_saver/600x800With the second command, you remove the empty old folder.
   2. Or you can move the folder to a ‘backup’ location, so that you can restore the default screen savers at a later time.mv /mnt/base-mmc/opt/amazon/screen_saver/600x800 /mnt/base-mmc/opt/amazon/screen_saver/600x800.old
5. Now create a link, so that your Kindle thinks your screen savers are still at the same location:
   ln -sfn /mnt/us/screensaver /mnt/base-mmc/opt/amazon/screen_saver/600x800

If you are connected via SSH over WiFi:

1. Make file system writeable

mntroot rw

2. Create a screen saver folder in your base directory

mkdir /mnt/us/screensaver

3. 1. You can now either move all the amazon screen savers to your new folder, so that you can replace them and/or add custom ones. mv /opt/amazon/screen_saver/600x800/* /mnt/us/screensaver/
rm -r /opt/amazon/screen_saver/600x800With the second command, you remove the empty old folder.
   2. Or you can move the folder to a ‘backup’ location, so that you can restore the default screen savers at a later time.mv /opt/amazon/screen_saver/600x800 /opt/amazon/screen_saver/600x800.old
4. Now create a link, so that your Kindle thinks your screen savers are still at the same location:
   ln -sfn /mnt/us/screensaver /mnt/base-mmc/opt/amazon/screen_saver/600x800

Last step:
If you now restart your Kindle, either by disabling diagnostics mode or through settings (for both see root access), your kindle will load your custom folder. Connect your Kindle via USB to your computer and – oh wonder – there is a folder called ‘screensaver’ on your Kindle. Add your custom screen savers into this folder. For best results, use 600×800 pixels, png-format and name them like the original files (01N.png, 02N.png, … 99N.png).
If you name it like the original files, it’s also easy to define the sequence of screen savers.