ZDNETFebruary 26 is this coming Wednesday. That's how long you have to download your Kindle books as files to your computer. We discussed the deadline at length in my previous article.If you have a lot of Kindle books that you want to download and backup, it will take you about five clicks per book. If you're like my wife, Denise, who has a few thousand books, you're looking at something on the order of 10,000 clicks and a very sore wrist between now and Wednesday. Also: Download your Kindle books right now - Amazon is killing this option in a few daysBut I found a hack that can let you bulk download 25 books at a time. In her case, that reduces the clicks from about 10,000 to a few more than 50. This makes it practical to save your library to your personal storage. Since time is of the essence, let's get to it. Warnings and disclaimers To do this, you're going to need to install a Chrome plugin that lets you run any JavaScript script you want on web pages. It's very powerful, and it's equally very dangerous. The plugin, Tampermonkey, has been around in one form or another for years, but it's still a third-party plugin that can modify everything in your browser. We'll be downloading some JavaScript source code from GitHub. I looked over the code before we installed it on my wife's machine and it seems benign. But who knows if it will change between when I checked it over and when you install and use it? It's probably fine, but my point is you need to know you're walking on a cliff's edge, and you need to take care. Also: If COBOL is so problematic, why does the US government still use it?You're going to change a bunch of browser settings that could also open your browser to mischief. I'll recommend you return it to normal when you're done, but this is your warning. When the script runs, your screen will flash. If you're sensitive to flashes, you'll want to consider giving this process a pass, or at least avoid staring at the screen while it runs. Now, the disclaimer. This works on my wife's machine. I have no idea if it will work on yours. I have no idea, even though it worked on Friday, whether or not it will break on Tuesday. If it doesn't work, don't come crying to me. I can't help you. If you can't download all your books, don't come crying to me. If this stuff causes your computer to become corrupted, and you lose everything, and the Earth crashes into the sun, don't come crying to me. Also: The best AI for coding in 2025 (and what not to use)I'll tell you exactly what I told my wife. I'm telling you this thing is here. I'm advising against it. But if you want to go ahead and run the risks, good luck. But don't come crying to me or ZDNET or your local deity if something doesn't work out. Got it? Good. Now, let's do this thing. Caveat: Make sure you have a pre-registered device My wife has a whole stable of Kindle devices of various ages, all registered to her account. I'm not a big fan of the Kindle devices. I prefer reading my books on my iPhone. As such, I didn't have any Kindle devices registered to my Amazon account. So, when I tried running the procedure below in my account, I got this message. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETSo we tried deregistering two of her older devices (a Kindle 3 with WiFi and a Kindle Fire HD) from her account. Then we tried registering them to my account. Even with two-factor authentication turned off, they simply would not register. Some Googling implied you can't register many older Kindle devices. Also: The best Kindles of 2025: Expert tested and reviewedShe is rather peeved that she now can't seem to re-register those devices. I turned my 2FA back on, as did she. But we are nothing if not persistent. This was Friday night and we still had until Wednesday to backup my books. So I bought a new Kindle, a little hundred dollar one. It arrived Saturday morning, I registered it to my account, and I got the same error message even though I have an actual, physical, current-day Kindle now registered to my account. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETWe contacted tech support back for one more try. After the usual frustration, we finally landed on this truth: you can't get there from here. Apparently, new Kindles are already barred from downloading Kindle files to a local computer. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETI asked, "So are all new Kindle devices (again, prior to Wednesday's deadline) prohibited from downloading books via USB?" and I was told, "Yes." Thwarted. Damn you, Bezos!! So, don't think that if you don't have a Kindle registered, you can overnight yourself a Kindle to save your library. On the other hand, if you already have a Kindle registered to your account, follow the remaining steps before it's too late. Step 1: Install Tampermonkey This works in Chrome. It might work in other browsers, but we're doing it in Chrome. Under the 3-dot menu at the upper right of Chrome, scroll down that menu to Extensions, then choose Visit Chrome Web Store. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETPay attention to the Manage Extensions submenu as well. We'll be back for that in a little while. Now that you're in the Chrome Web Store, choose Extensions and search for "Tampermonkey." Once you find it, click Add to Chrome. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETGo up to the little puzzle piece icon on your browser bar, click it, and turn on the pin (making it blue). That will put the Tampermonkey icon on your browser bar. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNET Step 2: Turn on Chrome's developer mode Go back to Chrome's 3-dot menu, scroll down again to Extensions, and this time select Manage Extensions. You'll be taken to a screen with all your Chrome extensions. Some of these screenshots are a little hard to see. You can click the squares at the upper right of the images to enlarge them. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETTurn on developer mode. According to the Tampermonkey extension, this allows them to do some actions that Chrome would otherwise prohibit. Step 3: Disable ask where to save The magical little script we're going to run automatically downloads 25 books at a time. To reduce the number of button clicks, we don't want to have to specify a download location for each book. So, go back to the 3-dot menu, and scroll down to Settings. Click downloads from the menu on the left. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETYou need to do a few things here. First, choose where you want your books. My wife set up a special download folder for her incoming book files, which she then later moved to their final home. Second, and this is the most important, make sure "Ask where to save each file before downloading" is turned off. Third, turn off "Show downloads when they're done." Step 4: Copy the download script from GitHub Now, we're starting to get to the magic. Point your browser to this URL on GitHub. This page contains a script by Chris Hollindale. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETNotice on the right hand side the double-square icon. Click it to copy the script to your clipboard. Step 5: Install the script into Tampermonkey Click on the Tampermonkey icon on your browser bar and choose "Create a new script" from the Tampermonkey menu. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETPaste the script that should still be in your clipboard into the provided edit field. Then from under Tampermonkey's File menu, select Save. Don't worry about the New Userscript title at the top of the page. That will change automatically. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNET Step 6: Tweak the script Next, we're going to make one, and possibly a second tweak to the script. On the Amazon Kindle Book Downloader line, click the Edit icon. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETYou're back in the script. Scroll down to line 98 and look for the line that begins with console.log. This tells the script to put a message in the console log of Chrome. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETThe problem is that you have to have to console open to see the message and it's not exactly clear when the script is done running. The script does a lot of simulated screen actions, with pauses between them. Instead, we want to see an alert dialog box. So change the instruction "console.log" (including the dot between console and log) to "alert." Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETIf you're in the US and use the US Amazon store, you're done. Click Save under the File menu like you did in the last step. If you're not in the US, you might -- might -- be able to still use this script. At the top of the script, on line 7, change the Amazon URL (just the part I've highlighted) to the one for your country. There's no guarantee this will work because other Amazons might have different URL structures. But it's worth a shot, right? Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETSelect Save from the File menu. Step 7: Navigate to your Kindle books library Point your browser back to Amazon. From the Account & Lists menu, select Content Library. Then click on Books. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNET Step 8: Show only your purchases The download script will only work on books you've actually purchased. Samples or Kindle Unlimited books, or any other category of content will break the script. This is Denise's library. Notice it has 2055 items. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETNext to the menu for Books is a filter menu. Instead of All, select Purchases. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETDoing this filtered out a lot of items that can't be downloaded, leaving her with 1,282 books to download. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNET Step 9: Download one book To make sure you have a default Kindle selected so the script will run, select Download & transfer via USB for one of your books on the current page. Then, select a Kindle from the list and click Download. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETGo into your download folder and remove that file, so you don't get any duplicate file errors when you download the entire page. Step 10: Download your library Finally, it's time to download your library, 25 books at a time. Before we push the final button, another warning. This script does things with the currently visible web page. Once you click the script, keep your hands off your keyboard and mouse. Do not touch anything. Just let the script run. Okay, with that, look in the upper right corner of your screen. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETYou'll see a green Trigger Download button. That button will only appear on your content library's book pages. Go ahead and click the button and wait until you see the "All dropdowns processed" dialog box. Scroll to the bottom of the page, select the next page from the page numbers, and hit Trigger Download again. Keep it up, all while keeping your hands off the keyboard once you hit the button, until you have downloaded all your books. My wife's technique was to download a page's worth of books and count to see if she had all 25. If not (this happened two or three times), she individually downloaded the missing books. Then she moved all of the files from the download folder into a more permanent location. All told, it probably took a couple of hours to complete the process. In between button presses, she kept busy (and hands off the keyboard) by reading a book on one of her Kindles. After it's over Make sure you reset things back to the way they were: Remove Tampermonkey from your Chrome extensionsTurn off developer modeSet your browser back to asking where to put downloads, if that was your choiceReset your Kindle Books filter to All, if that's what you want Were you able to save your books? Have you backed up your Kindle library yet? Did you find this method useful, or do you have another way to save your books? Are you concerned about Amazon restricting downloads in the future? Do you think digital purchases should always come with an easy backup option? Let us know in the comments below. You can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly update newsletter, and follow me on Twitter/X at @DavidGewirtz, on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, on Bluesky at @DavidGewirtz.com, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.Featured