Here’s a hack to add your own pictures to the Kindle to be used as the screensaver images that get rotated thru.

Adding Pictures to the Kindle Screensaver

1. Connect to your Kindle via USB.
2. Create a folder named ‘pictures’
3. Within that new folder, create another folder name ‘My Pictures’
4. Copy any number of pictures you want into the new ‘My Pictures’ folder. 600×800 is the size of the screen display.
5. On the Kindle, go to the Home Screen
6. Press ALT+Z to cause the Kindle to refresh the book list
7. There should now be a ‘book’ named ‘My Pictures’ displayed. Note that it may not be on the first screen page depending on how you have your display configured/sorted.
8. Open the ‘book’ to start the picture viewer.
9. Cycle thru all of the pictures pressing F (to make them full screen), then ALT+shift+0 (the number zero) to select each one for the screensaver.

IMPORTANT NOTE: These instructions apply only to Kindles earlier than version 3. The Kindle 3 is locked down and does not permit changing the screensaver unless you jailbreak the device – see the comments thread to this post for more details.     April 5, 2011.

To remove the custom screensaver pictures you added to your Kindle, do the following;

1. Connect the Kindle to your PC with the USB cable.
2. Browse to the ‘system’ folder on the Kindle.
3. Open the ‘screen_saver’ folder that is in the ‘system’ folder.  If the folder is not visible, set the folder preferences in Windows Explorer to “Show Hidden Files”  and uncheck the “Hide Protected System Files” option. To do this, click Tools from the top navigation menu, then select “Folder Options…” Make the changes, then save and exit the menu.
4. Delete the .gz files and the screen_saver_last files in that folder.

You may see a cached leftover screensaver picture the next time you hibernate the Kindle, but it will then start to cycle through the default ones that came with the Kindle.