4 Unusual Accessories You Can Plug Into Your Kindle’s USB Port
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A computer mouse (of sorts)
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You can connect your Kindle to an Android phone and use it as a USB drive
Kindles are great at their primary function, but other than reading books, there’s not much else you can do with them. That USB port at the bottom only supports charging and file transfers, but you can plug a few niche accessories into your Kindle, especially if you own an older model.
1
USB dust caps
A USB dust plug may seem like the most useless accessory ever, but it can come in handy if you take your Kindle with you to the beach or are just looking for a cool charm to spruce up your Kindle e-reader.
You can get dust caps with super cute cat designs, but these only work with newer Kindles that have USB-C ports. Luckily, there are also dust plugs designed for micro USB ports in case you own an old Kindle that has a micro USB port.
2
Kindle Audio Adapter
In 2016, Amazon released an audio adapter for Kindle e-readers that allowed owners to connect a pair of wired headphones to their Kindle and use VoiceView. This accessibility feature reads eBooks aloud and provides text-to-speech menu navigation.
The need for a physical adapter disappeared with the release of the eighth generation of Kindle devices, which featured Bluetooth. Amazon has therefore not made these devices compatible with the adapter.
So, if you have a Kindle 8, Kindle Paperwhite 4, second-generation Kindle Oasis, or newer Kindle, you can try plugging the Kindle Audio Adapter into your e-reader, but it won’t work. The adapter also doesn’t work with sixth generation Kindles and older because they don’t have enough RAM. VoiceView requires 512 MB of memory, but older Kindles only have 256 MB.
On the other hand, if you own a Kindle Paperwhite 3 or the original Oasis, all you have to do is get a Kindle audio adapter, plug it into your Kindle, and then connect a pair of headphones to the adapter. As soon as you connect the headphones, your Kindle should start reading the menus out loud and telling you how to use the VoiceView feature.
The adapter also works with Kindle Voyage, but you must find and download the voice file needed for the VoiceView feature to work. Not sure which Kindle device you have? There is an easy way to identify it.
3
A USB sound card
The Kindle Audio Adapter is, in fact, a generic, Amazon-branded USB audio converter. In other words, you don’t need the official adapter made by Amazon to use the VoiceView feature on your Kindle Paperwhite 3, first generation Kindle Oasis, or Kindle Voyage with a pair of wired headphones.
You can plug any generic USB sound card into the device, connect a pair of headphones to the adapter, and use VoiceView that way. You’ll also need a USB-A to micro-USB adapter, as virtually all USB audio adapters come with a USB-A or USB-C connector.
The whole setup can cost you less than $10, as you can find a cheap USB audio adapter on Amazon for around $5, the same price you’ll have to pay for a micro USB to USB-A adapter. That’s if you already own a pair of wired headphones.
4
A computer mouse (of sorts)
If you have a jailbroken Kindle e-reader that supports Amazon’s physical audio adapter (Paperwhite 3, first-generation Oasis, or Voyage) or are ready to jailbreak it, you can plug a USB mouse into it and turn it into a remote page turner.
A resourceful user on the MobileRead forums compiled USB mouse modules and created an application that recognizes mouse clicks and turns them into page-turning actions on the connected Kindle e-reader.
They’ve also included a tutorial explaining where to extract the necessary files for this to work, with reports showing the app working on jailbroken first-generation Kindle Paperwhite 3, Kindle Voyage, and Kindle Oasis devices.
Mouse functionality is quite limited. Pressing the left mouse button or rotating the scroll wheel down takes you to the next page, and pressing the right mouse button or turning the scroll wheel up takes you back to the previous page. But hey, it works!
Other forum users have tried to get USB keyboards to work, but unfortunately haven’t made much progress.
The good news is that you don’t need an old jailbroken Kindle and a wired mouse to turn pages remotely. There are a number of remote page turners that work with virtually all Kindle models, as well as other e-readers, and you can get one for just $10.
These page turners do not plug into your Kindle’s USB port. Instead, they consist of two parts: the first clips onto the Kindle and emulates finger touches, while the second serves as a remote that controls the part that clips onto the Kindle.
5
You can connect your Kindle to an Android phone and use it as a USB drive
Finally, you can connect your Kindle to your Android phone with a USB cable and use Kindle as the biggest USB drive ever. In this setup, the Kindle serves as an accessory, but I wanted to include it because, honestly, it’s pretty cool.
The problem is that not all Android phones support this feature. For example, my Galaxy S21 FE running Android 15 didn’t recognize my Kindle Paperwhite 4 as a USB drive, but my old Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 running Android 9 did. I managed to transfer a few files from the Mi Mix 2 to the Kindle without any problems.
In both cases, however, the phone charged the Kindle. So even if you’re unable to transfer files from your phone, you’ll probably be able to charge it, which can come in handy when needed.
Kindle e-readers are great devices, but quite confined, with restricted software. However, their USB ports can open them up a bit. You can use the text-to-speech feature with wired headphones instead of Bluetooth with specific models by plugging a USB sound card into the Kindle’s USB port.
You can even use a wired mouse as a page turner if you have the right Kindle model and are willing to jailbreak it. Still, Kindle e-readers, as well as other e-readers such as Kobo, come with fairly restricted operating systems, so if you want to do more with your e-reader, you should get an Android e-reader instead.
