Send any text to your Kindle in one easy step

I do most of my news, pleasure, and personal reading on my Kindle, but it used to be a pain in the ass to get documents there. I’d have to copy the text into a text document, save it, attach it to an email, send it, and wait. There were just enough steps that I would never, ever do it.

So I figured out an easier way using Dropbox and Wappwolf (set up accounts on those sites if you don’t have them already). Follow these steps and soon you’ll be able to send any text to your Kindle simply by right-clicking on some highlighted text and selecting Send to Kindle. Here’s how to do it:

We’ll start by setting up Dropbox and Wappwolf. These two websites will handle the transfer of text from computer to Kindle.

1. Go to Wappwolf and follow the directions there to connect it to your Dropbox account. These two websites will handle the transfer of text from computer to Kindle.
2. Go to this page on Wappwolf to set up a new service.
3. Create a new folder named “Kindle” using the button at the bottom of the screen. It’ll be a container for our Wappwolf service.
4. Once you’ve created that folder, select it with the button to its left.
5. Scroll to the top of the screen and click Automate Kindle. This will bring up some new options at the bottom of the page.
6. Fill in the Kindle and personal email fields following the directions on the page.
7. Choose whether documents will be delivered via wifi or 3G.
8. Leave Convert to Kindle format checked and click Add Action.

Now whenever you add a rich text document (extension .rtf) to that folder in Dropbox, it’ll automatically be converted and emailed to your Kindle. In my experience it takes about five minutes for documents to show up.

That’s pretty slick, but let’s take it a step further and create the highlight and Send to Kindle functionality. This part only works in OS X.

1. Open Automator and double-click Service.
2. Leave the options at the top of the window as they are. It should say “Service receives text in any application”
3. Type New Text File into the search bar in the left column.
4. Drag the result (New Text File) into the window on the right.
5. File Format should be Rich text.
6. Leave Save as as Untitled.rtf.
7. Where should be the Kindle folder inside your Dropbox folder. Navigate to it by clicking Desktop and then navigating to it using Other….
8. Leave Replacing existing files unchecked.
9. Leave Encoding as Western.
10. Under Options check Show this action when the workflow runs and Show only the selected items. This will highlight the boxes above. Check the Save as box.
11. Now Save the service and name it Send to Kindle.

That’s it. To use the script, simply highlight any text on a webpage or in a document, right-click, and select Send to Kindle from the dropdown menu. There’s a chance you’ll have to click on Services from the dropdown menu before you can get to Send to Kindle.

Once you click that button, a rich text document will be created and saved to the Kindle folder in your Dropbox. Wappwolf will see that document and email it to your Kindle. It should show up in about five minutes.

Here’s a two minute video showing each step. Like I said, pretty simple:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffnkAldCYOQ]

If you found this helpful or not helpful at all, let me know in the comments.