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📖 re: How do I make the most of my new Kobo eReader?

Sat 25 Dec 2021 19:29:49 EST

First off, before I forget: Merry Christmas. May there be peace on Earth and good will to all. Live long and prosper. Infinite diversity in infinite combinations. I have been almost completely offline since Tuesday the 22d.

~ewok just got a new Kobo eReader, and they ask how to make the most of it:

How Do I Make the Most Out of My Kobo eReader?

Oh, do I have answers for you!

First off, things you can do with the stock firmware that might not be obvious:

You can add TTF fonts in the folder 'fonts' in the root of the user-accessible storage.
You can sync web articles via Pocket. You need a Pocket account, but since Pocket is owned by Mozilla, that's not /terrible/. Save long articles to Pocket in your web browser, read them on your eReader.
Don't forget you can use the limited web browser to browse Gemini via one of the proxies. But IME it's not that great because it scrolls rather than pages, and the scrolling looks ugly.

Second, strongly consider installing KOReader. You can download it and instructions for installing it from a thread on the MobileRead forum.

Installing KOReader on Kobo readers

It's an alternative reader which I prefer to the default for a number of reasons:

It has better font rendering.
It has much better hyphenation.
It supports more file formats (not that important)
It is highly customizable and has a lua extension interface.

One of the extensions I use heavily is the Wallabag extension. It works much like the default reader's Pocket integration, but it works with a self-hosted Wallabag install.

The user interface is not very well designed, and it's not obvious that for setting defaults you usually have to change a setting and long-press the menu or button you're changing. But once you get it set up, it actually looks better than the default reader, as long as you stay in the reader interface and not the settings menus.

The install method above leaves the standard reader in place, so you boot into the standard reader, which now has an extra menu for third-party apps, which includes KOReader.

Anyway, have fun, enjoy your reader, read long books on it!