Minimal Kobo Reader

I enjoy reading on my Kobo Sage a lot. Before the Sage, I had the Libra H2O. That device went to my wife when she gifted me the Sage. The ability to carry around a huge stack of books on one thin device is so convenient. I still enjoy physical books, but outside of books I read in my home office, my reading occurs on the Kobo.

Make it minimal

The only thing I didn’t enjoy about the Kobo device was the Kobo service side of things. I don’t buy my books through Kobo, and am not interested in “discovering” anything. I just want my books that I sideload to the device, and occasionally the ability to look at a long-form article that I’ve saved to Instapaper. I don’t use Instapaper as my primary read-later app, but I sometimes save an especially long article I’d prefer to read on the Kobo or listen to from CarPlay. My method of sideloading kepub/epub/pdf files is with the integrated Dropbox experience.

So here was my list of features, to work into the most minimal experience I could by tweaking things with tools like nickelmenu and Kobopatch.

• Access to Dropbox
• Toggle for dark/light mode
• Access to Instapaper
• My Books (and nothing else)
• No auto-updating firmware when on WiFi for syncing Instapaper or downloading books from Dropbox (because it breaks the tweaks from time to time; WiFi).
• Eliminate as much unnecessary UI as possible.

Mission Accomplished

With a crafty combo of the two tools mentioned above, I’ve achieved exactly what I wanted. I’ve been using it since late November last year, and it’s glorious and stable. Here’s a sample of how it looks and the menus that get me to all of the above functions where/when needed:

Books View

Menu View

Reading Menu

I’m happy to share examples of my nickelmenu files, etc. Just reach out if you need them along with some links to some great Reddit posts that guided me to my solution (if your needs slightly differ).

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