Use The Send To Kindle Desktop App To Copy PDFs To Your Device

Use The Send To Kindle Desktop App To Copy PDFs To Your Device

Send To KindleI have written before about how a Kindle can be a good device for going paperless. After all, if you are a reader, you might already have a Kindle with you, and it is a small and lightweight PDF viewer for those documents that you want to have on-the-go.

You have always been able to e-mail documents in to the device, but in the past few months Amazon has released a helper application for Mac and Windows to make the process a little easier.

Adding Documents To The Kindle

The Send To Kindle application application adds three new ways to get PDFs on to your device. The screenshots in this section are for the Mac, but Windows works the same.

Drag To Dock (Mac Only)

When you install Send To Kindle, it adds the application to your Dock. To add a PDF, drag the file on to the dock icon.

Drag to Dock
Drag to Dock

Print To Kindle

The application adds a new printer called Send To Kindle. This lets you send a document to your Kindle from any application that can print.

On the Mac, I wish they had integrated it into the PDF menu like most other OS X applications instead of adding another Printer, but what’re you going to do?

Kindle New Printer
Kindle New Printer

Right-Click

You can now right-click (or Command-Click on the Mac), and there will be a new menu option for Send To Kindle. Where it is depends on your version of your operating system. On Mac OS X Lion it is buried under Services.

Send To Kindle in the Finder
Send To Kindle in the Finder

Sending To Kindle

However you do it, once you select a document to send to your Kindle, this pop-up will appear:

Send To Kindle Window
Send To Kindle Window

You can give the document a title and then are given the following options:

  • Deliver via: Do you want to use Wi-Fi or 3G? I recommend going for Wi-Fi in most cases, which is the default.
  • Deliver to: Which device to you want the document to appear on? You can choose your Kindle or any Kindle apps (for example, on iOS) that you have registered.
  • Archive Document: If you check Archive document in your Kindle Library, the document will be stored on Amazon’s servers. You can then remove it from your device and re-download it later on any device. If you don’t check this option, the document will be downloaded just to the selected device once and will not be stored by Amazon.

Buried under the Options menu is an option to convert the document to Kindle format. It is up to you if you want to do this. Some of the formatting will probably get messed up, but one benefit is that it will save your reading position between devices.

Viewing Documents On Your Kindle

Once the upload is complete, the document should appear on your Kindle when it is connected to Wi-Fi. It usually happens within a few minutes.

As you can see[1], it will appear with your selected Title and Author, and will say new pdf.

Kindle Screenshot
Kindle Screenshot

If you regularly put documents on to your Kindle, the Send To Kindle application can be a time-saver. Do you keep PDFs on your eReader? How do you do it?


  1. I feel it is necessary to point out that the Fifty Shades of Grey is there for my wife’s book club. Don’t get the wrong idea.  ↩

About the Author

Brooks Duncan helps individuals and small businesses go paperless. He's been an accountant, a software developer, a manager in a very large corporation, and has run DocumentSnap since 2008. You can find Brooks on Twitter at @documentsnap or @brooksduncan. Thanks for stopping by.

Leave a Reply 4 comments

Guest - May 24, 2012 Reply

Brooks –
I've wandered all over Amazon.com and can't seem to find "Send to Kindle" for a PC..
Clicking a link at Amazon for "send to KIndle for PC application" yields 93 results. Can you help?
cldsubscribe at gmail.com.

Michael - May 22, 2012 Reply

Does this work for sending things to the Kindle app for Mac or iOS too? Or just to a physical Kindle device?

    Brooks Duncan - May 22, 2012 Reply

    I didn't actually try it for the article, but the "london" and "paris" you see in the screen shot above are my iPhone and iPad respectively, so I assume that will work.

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