typesetting.ai

Kindle Previewer: what it is, what it checks, and how to read what it shows you

Published 4 min read

By the typesetting.ai editorial team

Before a Kindle book is uploaded, there is exactly one way to see it the way a Kindle will show it: Kindle Previewer, a free desktop application from Amazon. Not the "Look Inside" on the product page, not the online previewer in the KDP upload flow — those come after. Kindle Previewer runs on your own machine, on the file you are about to send, and it is the check that catches most of what goes wrong.

What it is

A standalone program for Windows and Mac that opens an ebook file and renders it with the same engine Kindle devices use, including the layout features that come with Enhanced Typesetting. The current version is Kindle Previewer 4; Amazon no longer supports version 3 and earlier, so if yours is old, replace it. It is a free download from the Kindle Previewer page in KDP Help.

It needs Windows 10 (64-bit) or later, or macOS 12 or later on Intel or Apple Silicon.

What it opens

Amazon lists the formats it accepts: .epub, .htm / .html / .xhtml, .opf, .kpf, and .doc / .docx — with the note that Word support "is limited to English language content".

For a reflowable book made from a manuscript, that means you can preview either of the two files KDP accepts for it: the EPUB, or the Word document. Kindle: EPUB or Word? is the comparison; if you have both, preview both, because they will not be identical.

It does not open a PDF. A PDF is not a reflowable book and the Previewer has nothing useful to say about one.

What it shows

Three kinds of device, each with orientation and type-size controls:

Switch between them and watch where the text re-breaks. This is the point of a reflowable book, and also the reason a scene break marked with a blank line disappears on one device and not another. Turn the type size up to the largest setting on the phone: if anything falls apart — a heading that wraps ungracefully, a table that will not fit, an image that floats somewhere odd — this is where you find out.

A "View All" filter lists the book's images, lists and tables so you can jump to each. Long books with many of either are worth walking this way.

The two checks that matter

Navigation. Open the table of contents and the navigation panel. Every chapter should be there, in order, with the title you meant. A chapter missing here is a chapter whose heading was typed as a bold paragraph rather than styled as a heading — chapter headings and numbering covers why — and the fix is in the manuscript, not in the Previewer.

Enhanced Typesetting. Under the View menu, Book Information reports whether the file supports Enhanced Typesetting; Amazon's help also describes an Enhanced Typesetting label in the navigation pane when it does. Supported means the book will get Amazon's better layout engine — real hyphenation, kerning, drop caps, Page Flip — once published. Not supported means it will not, and the reason is somewhere in the file. Kindle Enhanced Typesetting: what it is, and how a book gets it goes through what Amazon supports and what tends to break it.

Do both checks every time you re-export. A fix to one chapter can un-style a heading in another.

What it cannot tell you

The Previewer renders; it does not validate. It will open an EPUB with errors in it and show you a book, and the errors surface later when KDP rejects the upload, or never, as an oddity on some device you did not test. For a real check of the file's structure, run EPUBCheck — the EPUB validator here runs it in the browser, and EPUBCheck errors explained says what the output means.

Nor does it tell you what the product page will say. "Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled" on Amazon is decided after publication, by Amazon, and the Previewer's Supported is the best available prediction, not the verdict.

A sensible order

  1. Make the file — from a manuscript, the Kindle formatter produces a reflowable EPUB and a structured Word document.
  2. Validate the EPUB. Fix anything EPUBCheck reports as an error.
  3. Open it in Kindle Previewer. Check navigation, check Book Information, flip through it on the phone at large type.
  4. Upload to KDP. Use KDP's own online previewer as a final look, not a first one.

The short version

Checked against the source

The requirements on this page are published by the organisations below, not by us. We last read them in September 2026 and compared them against what the tool produces. If a requirement has changed since, the source is right and we are wrong — tell us and we will fix it.