Amazon Kindle gets a free feature upgrade borrowed from TV

Amazon Kindle Colorsoft vs Kindle Paperwhite

(Image credit: Future)

published 7 April 2025

Quick summary

Amazon has announced a new Kindle feature that is perfect for those who love a book series.

Called Recaps, it will give you a short summary of a previous book in the series to refresh your memory before you dive into the next one.

If you've ever been hooked on a TV series, only to get to the end of the available season and learn you have to wait another year for the next, then you'll likely be someone who appreciates a recap. They are handy even for those TV series that have a new episode drop weekly and you have to remember what happened, let alone those where you are waiting months.

While fairly common for TV however, recaps aren't something you see on books necessarily. Well, at least they weren't until now.

Amazon has announced a new Recaps feature for Kindle ebooks, allowing you to refresh your memory on thousands of best-selling series available on the platform.

The feature will offer a quick refresher on storylines and character arcs within a series, so that before you dive into reading the next book, you can enjoy a short recap for those you have previously either purchased or borrowed.

How to get the Recaps feature on Kindle

There are a couple of things you should know about the Recaps feature before you get too excited. Firstly, it's only available in the US at the moment, so if you've downloaded the latest Kindle software and you're not seeing it, that might explain why.

Secondly, the Recaps feature does warn you that it contains spoilers. If you plan on re-reading an entire book before you start the next in a series, you may want to avoid the Recap feature entirely.

But, if you are in the US and want to check out Recaps, make sure your Kindle is running the latest software. It might take a couple of weeks for the over-the-air update to appear, so exercise some patience if you don't see it immediately.

After you are on the latest software, look for the "View Recaps" button in the series page in your Kindle library. You can also find "View Recaps" within the series grouping three-dot menu if the feature is available for that run of books.

The Recaps feature is available now on all Kindle devices in the US and Amazon has said it will soon be available on the Kindle app for iOS, too.

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Britta is a freelance technology journalist who has been writing about tech for over a decade. She's covered all consumer tech from phones, tablets and wearables to smart home and beauty tech, with everything in between. She has a fashion journalism degree from London College of Fashion and previously did a long stint as deputy editor of Pocket-lint, but you’ll now find her byline on several titles including GQ, the Express, the Mirror, TechRadar, Stuff and iMore. You'll never find her without her Apple Watch on, aiming to complete her rings so she can justify the extra bar of chocolate and she loves a good iPhone trick.