Turn Off Personalized Recommendations in Kindle for Mac or Windows
Kindle on your laptop shows book recommendations based on your reading history and purchases. You can turn these off entirely, or you can keep recommendations but hide them from your home screen. The fastest way is through your account settings, which control what Kindle displays across all your devices.
Open Kindle on your laptop and look for the menu. On Mac, click Kindle in the top menu bar. On Windows, click the three horizontal lines (hamburger menu) in the top left corner. Select Preferences or Settings depending on your version.
In Preferences, find the section labeled Content and Devices or Recommendations. You will see a checkbox next to "Show recommendations based on your reading history" or similar wording. Uncheck this box. Kindle will stop showing personalized suggestions when ready, though you may need to restart the app to see the change take effect.
Key Takeaways
- Personalized recommendations come from Kindle's account settings, not from individual devices, so changing them on your laptop affects what you see everywhere.
- You can turn off recommendations entirely through Preferences, or you can hide them from your home screen while keeping them available in the store.
- The menu location differs between Mac (top menu bar) and Windows (hamburger icon), but the setting name is the same in both versions.
- If recommendations reappear after you turn them off, check whether you have synced your devices or whether a family member with access to your account has turned them back on.
Hide Recommendations From Your Home Screen Without Turning Them Off
If you want to keep recommendations available in the Kindle store but do not want them cluttering your home screen, you can hide them instead of disabling them entirely. This is useful if you sometimes browse recommendations but do not want them as your default view.
On your laptop, go to Preferences (Mac) or Settings (Windows) again. Look for an option called Home Screen or Display Settings. Some versions of Kindle let you choose what appears on your home screen — you can uncheck "Recommendations" while leaving other sections like "Your Library" or "Bestsellers" visible.
If your version does not have a home screen customization option, the only way to hide recommendations is to turn off personalized recommendations entirely. Restart Kindle after making changes to see them take effect.
Manage Your Reading History to Control What Kindle Recommends
Kindle bases recommendations on what you have read and purchased. If you want to reduce recommendations for certain types of books, you can remove individual titles from your reading history. This does not delete the book from your library — it just tells Kindle to stop using it to suggest similar books.
Go to Manage Your Content and Devices on Amazon's website (not in the Kindle app). Sign in with your Amazon account. Click the Books tab. Find a book you want to remove from your history, click the three dots next to it, and select Remove from Device or Delete. You can also right-click a book in your Kindle library on your laptop and choose Remove from Library.
Removing books from your history takes time if you have many titles. A faster approach is to turn off personalized recommendations entirely, which stops Kindle from analyzing your reading history at all.
Stop Recommendations From Syncing Across Your Devices
Your Kindle account syncs recommendations across all your devices — laptop, phone, tablet, and e-reader. If you turn off recommendations on your laptop but they still appear on your phone, the settings may not have synced yet, or another device may have turned them back on.
Check your account settings on Amazon's website to see the master setting. Go to amazon.com, click Account & Lists in the top right, and select Your Account. Find Login & Security or Preferences. Look for Advertising Preferences or Personalization Settings. You can turn off personalized ads and recommendations from this page, which affects all devices tied to your account.
After you change the setting on Amazon's website, close Kindle completely on your laptop and reopen it. The app may take a few minutes to sync the change. If recommendations still appear, sign out of Kindle on your laptop, wait a few minutes, and sign back in.
What to Do If Recommendations Keep Reappearing
Sometimes Kindle resets recommendation settings after an app update or if you sign in on a new device. If recommendations come back after you have turned them off, the most common cause is that your account settings did not save properly.
Go back to Preferences on your laptop and check whether the recommendation setting is still unchecked. If it has been rechecked, uncheck it again and restart Kindle when ready. Do not close the app and reopen it later — restart it right away so the change takes effect before anything else can override it.
If you share your Amazon account with family members, one of them may have turned recommendations back on. Each person with access to your account can change these settings. Ask them to check their Kindle app and confirm the recommendation setting is off, or create separate Amazon accounts if you want independent recommendation histories.
Understand Why Kindle Shows Recommendations
Amazon uses recommendations to encourage you to discover and purchase new books. Kindle learns what you like by tracking what you read, what you rate, what you highlight, and what you search for. The more you use Kindle, the more data it collects about your preferences.
Turning off personalized recommendations does not prevent Kindle from collecting this data — it only prevents Kindle from using that data to show you suggestions. If you want to stop Kindle from tracking your reading entirely, you would need to delete your reading history, which is a separate step from turning off recommendations.
Some readers turn off recommendations to reduce distractions, while others do it for privacy reasons. Both are valid. Kindle will still function normally without recommendations — you can still search for books, browse by category, and access your library.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will turning off recommendations delete my reading history?
No. Turning off recommendations only stops Kindle from showing you suggestions based on what you have read. Your reading history stays in your account unless you manually delete it. If you want to remove your reading history entirely, you can do that separately through your account settings on Amazon's website.
Can I turn off recommendations on my laptop but keep them on my phone?
Not easily. Recommendation settings sync across all devices connected to your Amazon account. If you turn them off in your account settings, they turn off everywhere. You can hide recommendations from your home screen on individual devices, but the underlying setting applies to your whole account.
Do I have to turn off recommendations to stop seeing ads in Kindle?
Recommendations and ads are separate. Turning off personalized recommendations stops Kindle from suggesting books based on your reading history, but you may still see general ads or bestseller lists. To control ads across Amazon, go to your Advertising Preferences on Amazon's website.
Why do recommendations keep coming back after I turn them off?
The most common reason is that the setting did not save properly. Go back to Preferences, confirm the recommendation setting is unchecked, and restart Kindle when ready. If you share your account with others, one of them may have turned recommendations back on. If neither of those applies, try signing out of Kindle, waiting five minutes, and signing back in to force a full sync.
Can I see recommendations without them appearing on my home screen?
Yes, if your version of Kindle has home screen customization. You can hide recommendations from your home screen while keeping them available in the Kindle store. Look in Preferences for a Home Screen or Display Settings option. If your version does not have this feature, you will need to turn off recommendations entirely to remove them from view.