Skip to main content

Getting (near) infinite lives in Candy Crush Soda on Kindle HDX

I'm running a social experiment to see how many views would get a post targeted to a different audience.

This hack is focused on Amazon's Kindle line since it does not allow changing the date via the settings, but it's applicable to all Android devices.

I would suggest having a cheap tablet just for the game, since the clock will be way off. Also, connecting to WiFi will, in some cases, update the clock.

The preparations will take around 15 minutes, only once, afterwards it should take around 20 seconds to get your life back. Actually, if you are playing this game, you are never getting your life back.

Edit - quicker way: change the date 1 day after, go back to the game, see 5 lives restored, change back 1 day, go back to the game.

What you need:


Kindle Fire or Kindle Fire HDX rooted
Terminal Emulator - install the store version if possible or sideload the apk
Hacker's Keyboard - not needed but highly recommended.

Preparations:


Disable WiFi to block automatic clock updates.
Activate Hacker's Keyboard (if installed) by going into the application and following the instructions.

Procedure:


After your lives are exhausted, start Terminal Emulator and type the text in bold below

u0_a22@android:/ $su
Click grant root if requested.
root@android:/ #date
The reply should be something like:
root@android:/ #dateWed Jul 8 14:00:00 CEST 2015root@android:/ #
 Take note of the date and type the text in bold below:
root@android:/ #date -s 20150708.16000Wed Jul 8 16:00:00 CEST 2015root@android:/ #
As you can see, the date -s command sets the date to a string in the form of yyyyMMdd.hhmm - where yyyy is the year, MM is the month number, dd is the day of the month, hh is the hour and mm are the minutes.
By running the command above we essentially added two hours to the current time.

Do not close the terminal, just go back to playing the game by tapping the home icon.

Repeat:


After your lives are exhausted, go to the home screen and drag from the top to open the notification drawer. Select 'Terminal Emulator / Terminal session is running' from the list.

If you have Hacker's Keyboard installed just press arrow up on the keyboard to get the last command.
Hit the left/right arrow keys to move to the hour section and replace 16 with 18, press enter:
root@android:/ #date -s 20150708.18000Wed Jul 8 18:00:00 CEST 2015root@android:/ #
Each 2 extra hours add 3 lives, this is the most efficient way to not lose any lives.
Do this every time you are out of lives, should take around 20 seconds or less.

Extra:


Currently there is a bug in the game - if more than 24 (or 48?) hours have passed you get the full 5 lives, as usual. If you don't start a new game and change the date back any number of days you still have all the 5 lives. So you can go forward 2 days and back 2 days each time.

You don't need to necessarily calculate the days when the hour gets past 24, the date command will do that for you:
root@android:/ #date -s 20150708.36000Wed Jul 9 12:00:00 CEST 2015root@android:/ #

This means that you can keep adding 2 until you get to 98. I haven't tried to see what happens afterwards.

Comments

Popular

FiberHome AN5506-02-F router hack

Ikea SKARSTA sit/standing desk hack

Floureon BYC17.GH3 thermostat teardown and impression

Non-genuine battery in Lenovo X230

Zoom G1 guitar effects pedal repair

Philips 3200 Coffee Machine - part 1

Racechip tuning box - part 2 - reverse engineering