A great feature of the Amazon Kindle eReader is that it offers you a handy guide on how much time is left in a particular chapter or book. The device calculates this time by analyzing your reading speed over time: how many words are on a page and how long it takes you to turn each page. This is great because it helps you decide quickly if you have enough time to finish the next chapter before your lunch break is over, for example.

But if you get distracted and set the Kindle down without closing your book or, in our case, if you fall asleep while reading, the statistics can become skewed by this idle time during which the Kindle thinks you’re still stuck on a single page. Luckily, as discovered by MobileRead forum user whitearrow (by way of Lifehacker), you can reset this estimated reading time data.

To reset your Kindle reading time, fire up your Kindle and open a book. Head to the search box, which you would normally use to search for words or phrases in the book, and type the following case sensitive command:

;ReadingTimeReset



Your Kindle will perform a search but won’t find anything. Press the Back button to head back to your book and you’ll now notice in the lower left corner that your reading time statistics have been reset and that the Kindle is now “(re)learning reading speed.” After a few pages of a normal reading, the stats will update with new estimated times based on your current pace.



While this is helpful for getting rid of those anomalous incidents where you left the Kindle open for a long time without turning any pages, it can also be useful if you’re loaning your Kindle to a friend or family member. By resetting the reading statistics, you’ll give the other reader more accurate data for their own usage.

Note that while Kindle apps on other mobile platforms like iOS have a similar reading time feature, this trick didn’t work for us when we tested it, and therefore appears limited to the E Ink-based Kindle products.