How to enable right-to-left (Manga Mode) on Kindle

Manga is traditionally read from right to left (RTL). This means when you finish a page, you tap the left side of your Kindle screen to advance to the next page.

A generic .pdf, or a comic converted with a basic tool, often gets this wrong: you tap the right side of the screen to move to the next page, while reading the panels on the page right-to-left.

Here's why that happens, and why there's no switch in the Kindle settings to fix it.

The missing "Manga Mode" button

Kindle devices actually do have a native Manga Mode. If you buy a manga directly from the Amazon Store, it automatically turns pages from right to left.

The problem is that you cannot manually toggle this mode on or off while reading a book.

The Kindle decides from a setting inside the file you send it. If you send a generic EPUB or PDF, the Kindle assumes it is a standard Western novel and applies Left-to-Right progression.

The fix: one tag in the OPF file

To get right-to-left page turns, the setting has to be in the ebook file before it reaches the device.

An EPUB is basically a zip file containing HTML and XML documents. The file that tells the e-reader how to behave is called the OPF (Open Packaging Format) file.

For Manga Mode, the <spine> element inside the OPF file needs this property:

<spine page-progression-direction="rtl">

Without it, the Kindle turns pages left to right. With it, pages turn right to left.

Letting a converter set it

Unzipping an EPUB, editing the content.opf file and zipping it again is simple if you're used to code, and fiddly if you're not.

Converters made for manga set the tag for you. KCC does it when manga mode is on, and MangaSendr does it on every file it builds.

When you upload a .cbz, .zip, .epub or .pdf file to MangaSendr, it builds a new Kindle-ready EPUB from scratch. While building it, MangaSendr adds the <spine page-progression-direction="rtl"> tag by default.

For manga, that means you never have to think about it.

Western comics

Right to left is the default. When you send a western comic (like Batman or Invincible) from the web app, choose Left to right (comics) under Reading direction on the upload screen, and MangaSendr sets the tag the other way so pages turn like a normal book. The desktop app's watched folders always use right to left. In KCC, leaving Manga mode switched off gives you the same left-to-right page turns.

Your first delivery is free. Pricing covers what's included after that.