Amazon Kindle: Reading App: What Users Actually Complain About
Overview
The Kindle app suffers from multiple critical issues including performance problems, library organization challenges, and sync failures. Users are particularly frustrated with outdated interfaces, complex highlighting processes, and limited note-taking functionality that detracts from their reading experience.
Top complaints
1. App Performance and Stability Issues
cluster 1/7Users experience frequent crashes, slow loading times, and unexpected restarts that disrupt their reading experience.
“keeps becoming buggy after a while: crashing, not opening books, or becoming incredibly slow”
“it takes forever to load if it even does load”
“it will randomly restart the app or just crash and go back to my Home Screen”
2. Library Organization and Navigation Problems
cluster 2/7Users struggle to browse, organize, and navigate their digital book collections effectively.
“no "browsing" option that you can just scan what you have by author, by title”
“hard to scroll down through the books in my library and find the ones I've bought but haven't read”
“instead of showing me my books it puts me on their new Home screen. It is nothing more than a way to try to sell me more”
3. Highlighting Functionality Issues
cluster 3/7Users find the highlighting process unnecessarily complex with limited color accessibility options.
“have to move the color bar to access Green instead of making all colors accessible with a tap”
“require 3 clicks to apply yellow highlighting, and It should be possible to set a default highlighting color”
“cannot find any way to highlight a section using less than 1 click, 1 drag, 1 click somewhere else, and a 4th click”
4. Sync and Tracking Issues
cluster 4/7Users encounter problems with device synchronization, reading streak tracking, and time zone inconsistencies.
“it has stopped doing that. If I'm reading a book on one device... then pick up where I left off on another”
“I lose my reading streak. It's super annoying, and disheartening”
“app keeps not giving me my daily steak credit! I have a goal to read a minimum of 1 chapter a day”
5. Interface Design and Navigation Complexity
cluster 5/7Users find the app interface outdated, with frequent design changes that add unnecessary complexity to basic tasks.
“problems I keep having trying to get the menu to come up”
“functionality and user interface remain in 2010”
“recommendations are lacking. It seems to suggest the books that it wants and not ones related or in theme”
6. Note-taking and Copy Functionality Issues
cluster 6/7Users lack robust note-taking features and encounter problems with copying text from the app.
“NEED TO BE ABLE TO TAKE NOTES ON THE PAGE. Copying and pasting... does not work for my brain”
“I select a section that I want to copy but instead of being able to copy it highlights”
“abysmally prepped for crucial note-taking features that my Notability app has”
7. Reading Experience Limitations
cluster 7/7Users face various limitations that affect their reading experience, including text-to-speech issues and lack of page numbers.
“The reader will sometimes stop speaking in the middle of a page for no clear reason”
“there are no page numbers on some books, my professor sends out an email 'read page 145 to 158'”
“disability features are so unwieldy that it is a punishment to attempt to get TTS help”
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This page is rendered from the App Pain API — the same clusters, evidence quotes, and severity scores are available as JSON (or via MCP for AI agents) for any app on both stores.
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