Use at your own risk.įigure 3: Plato is a promising free interface for Kobo e-readers, but still in rapid development. Other models may or may not be open to all the modifications supported by these models. Note, too that the Kobo Clara HD (Figure 1) and Kobo Glo HD seem among the most popular models to hack.

The closest thing to a centralized site for information is the Kobo Hacks and Utilities Index, but do a web search for additional scattered information. To show what can be done with hacks, I’ll cover several of the most useful documented hacks. These experiments sometimes make Kobo a moving target for hackers, but its primary use of the open ePub format makes it popular among those who prefer not to use the proprietary formats like MOBI used by Kindle. For instance, Kobo’s first releases supported a Debian client, and several of its early devices used LCD displays rather than e-ink. Over the years, the company has shown a strong tendency to experiment with its hardware, no doubt in an attempt to increase its market share. The company also hosts its own site for ebooks and audio books. Rakuten Kobo is a Toronto-based company, whose products are a distant second to Kindle e-readers in market share. Still, the variety and ingenuity of known modifications is proof of how determined the free hardware and software communities are to bypass the arbitrary restrictions imposed by proprietary hardware. Moreover, as always when hacking, you may sometimes risk bricking your device. New Kobo models are released frequently, so all documented hacks do not work for every e-reader, especially hardware hacks. However, while I have used Kobo e-readers for a decade, I only recently started to explore Kobo’s hacker community. Any piece of proprietary hardware eventually spawns a community of hackers.

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