Did you know you can register an unlimited number of Kindles and Kindle Fires to a single Amazon account? This policy is aimed at letting families share content instead of having to buy multiple copies of everything.
So long as you register all of your household’s Kindles and Kindle Fires to a single Amazon account, and your download preferences are set to save purchases to the Amazon Cloud (this is the default setting), all of your devices will have access to all content (ebooks, apps, instant video downloads, MP3 downloads, etc.) purchased or downloaded from that account. This post gives more details about the Amazon Cloud; just scroll down about halfway, to where the “Amazon’s Cloud – What’s It All About?” section of the post is located.
Anytime anyone in the household makes a purchase or gets a free download from Amazon on his or her Kindle or Kindle Fire, that content will automatically become available to all devices in the household that are registered to the same Amazon account.
In the case of some apps, games and books, new purchases and downloads will automatically show up on the home screen carousel as available to download the next time each device is turned on and synced with your Amazon account. This syncing happens automatically each time you turn on your Fire if you have WiFi set to stay on at all times. If you’ve just downloaded something you don’t want to pop up on your kids’ carousel, you’ll need to turn on the kids’ Fire and manually remove any unwanted new items by doing a tap – hold on the item’s icon and selecting “remove from carousel” from the popup menu. But remember: the new content will still be available for download on the kids’ Fire if they go to the applicable content menu on the device (e.g., Books, Apps).
One Library, Multiple Local Copies Of Content
Note that content downloaded to your devices is concerned, each individual Kindle device will save progress and settings locally. That means that if your son is playing Fragger and has reached level 9 for example, and you decide you’d like to try it too, the copy of Fragger on your device will start at the beginning instead of at level 9. Similarly, if you stop playing after level two, the next time your son fires up the copy of Fragger on his device, it will still be where he left off, on level 9.
This was not always true for Kindle books, but firmware upgrades have enabled local-copy settings and progress functionality. We’ve done the research on this and the testing, so rest assured: if Mom’s reading a book on her Kindle 3G, Dad’s reading the same book on his Kindle Fire, and junior’s got still another copy on his Kindle Touch, each separate device will ‘remember’ each user’s bookmarks and settings. One caveat: Kindle books that the publisher has approved for multi-device usage can be stored on a maximum of 6 different devices that are all registered to the same Amazon account, and Kindle books that haven’t been approved for multi-device usage can only be stored on a single Kindle device. Be sure to check the multi-device setting on the book’s Amazon product page before buying to avoid any disappointment.
Progress and other settings for downloaded content are stored locally on each device, but this is not so for MP3 or video content you choose to stream, rather than download, to a given device. In that case, progress and settings are stored for the last use of the content, and remain in the Cloud right along with that one copy of the content. So if your daughter starts streaming the movie John Carter and has to stop watching twenty minutes in, when another household member tries to stream the same movie from his or her device, it will start playing twenty minutes in. It’s easy enough to ‘play from the beginning’ or rewind to the beginning, but when your daughter comes back to the movie it will open wherever the last household member to stream it left off.
Finally, remember that anytime a family member downloads content to his or her device from the Cloud, a “clean” copy will be downloaded, without any of the settings or progress that may have been saved by other household members already using a local copy of the content on their devices.
Setting Parental Controls On The Kids’ Kindle Fire To Prevent Purchases & Block Access To Adult-Oriented Content
Having a single Amazon content library can save families a lot of money since you don’t have to buy a separate copy of every movie, app, MP3, etc. for each device, but if there are young children in the household you may want to apply parental controls. This is because with a single Amazon library setup, every Kindle Fire in your household will have access to your entire Amazon content library—which may include books with adults-only content, R-rated Instant Videos, or other media that isn’t age-appropriate for younger family members. The single library setup also means all the devices tied to that library are also tied to the associated Amazon account, and can make purchases from that account.
Setting up parental controls on a Kindle Fire is easy. Just go to Settings > More > Parental Controls. When you tap “ON” to turn on parental controls, you’ll be prompted to create a parental controls password. Once you’ve done that, you can block access to specific content types (e.g., books, video playback, etc.) and the web browser if you like, and require entry of your selected password for purchases. If you enable this password protection option, anytime the kids try to make a purchase, whether from the Store link of the various Kindle Fire menus or from within games and apps, they will be prompted to enter the password you’ve created. No password, no purchase.
Even if you’re not worried about your kids making unapproved purchases on purpose, it’s a good idea to enable password protection for purchases simply to prevent unintended in-game purchases. Many games have enticing links and buttons to buy in-game credits or content, and it may not be clear to kids that clicking those links and buttons costs Mom or Dad real money. Accidental purchases are all too common without password protection.
You can change these settings at any time after you initially set up parental controls, but you’ll need the password you entered when you originally enabled parental controls so keep it somewhere safe. If you lose it or forget it, the only way to change parental controls on the device is to reset it to its original factory settings, and that means all your progress on games, customized settings and downloaded personal content will be lost.
More Finely-Tuned Parental Controls
The Fire’s built-in Parental Controls simply allow you to block access to certain types of content and set password protection for purchases. If you want more flexibility than that for parental controls, you’ll need to get a parental controls app. The Kiddoware Kids Place app is a good one to try, and it’s free. This app allows you to control access to specific apps, books, and other types of content by specifying which icons will display on the home screen and blocking access to other screens.
What About Amazon Prime Instant Videos and the Kindle Owners Lending Library?
Amazon Prime memberships allow up to four members of a household to share a single Prime account for purposes of free shipping benefits. With respect to devices, every Kindle or Kindle Fire device registered to a single Amazon account that also has Prime membership will have access to free Prime Instant Videos and the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL). However, there are some limitations.
1. Only two household devices can stream free Prime Instant Video content simultaneously, and they must be streaming different video content at the time.
2. Only one book per Amazon account can be ‘checked out’ of the KOLL at any given time. That means if you have multiple Kindle and Kindle Fire devices sharing a single Amazon account, among all of you, there can only be one KOLL book checked out.
One Household, Multiple Amazon Media Libraries
The one-account setup is great when it’s desirable to share a single media library, but this is not always the case. You may want to buy a Kindle or Kindle Fire as a gift for a college-bound son or daughter and want him or her to take over financial responsibility for purchases made on that device. You may not want to bother with setting up and maintaining parental controls on a Fire you’ve bought for a child, but still want to limit the child’s access to age-appropriate content.
These are two situations where you’re better off registering different devices to different Amazon accounts and therefore, maintaining separate media libraries for each device.
Keep fine tuning the Kindle Fire ownership experience!
That’s our goal! 🙂