[davidfor]

Kobo have started releasing firmware version 3.19.5613. Yes, I know, it's a strange number, but they have changed the build process are producing these numbers.

This release is for: Kobo Touch, Kobo Glo, Kobo Aura HD, Kobo Aura, Kobo Aura H2O, Kobo Glo HD, Kobo Touch 2.0.

This release is mainly fixes. The biggest is a fix for all the refresh/flashing problems that were added in firmware 3.18.0. The list of changes I know about are:

• Fix the flashing/refresh issues that were introduced in 3.18.0. This includes the chapter start, post sleep and panning in PDF.
• Gothic and Ryumin fonts replace with "Kobo Tsukushi Mincho" and "Kobo UD Kakugo". As far as I can tell, they are identical. The change was something to do with changing their font supplier.
• Devices will sleep when plugged in. There were some other sleep timing issues that should be fixed.
• Improvements to Turkish translations.
• Japanese reading experience improvements
• Correct book selected for "Current read" search.
• Keyboard or web view could have been blacked out if you slept/woke the device quickly
• Improved performance for certain books with large chapters. This is for kepubs with lots of chapters in a single internal file.
• Other performance improvements for different formats.

The above is a mix of what Kobo told use was in the beta's and what I found during my testing. I have a long list of my "favourite" bugs that I test, and I test most of what is reported here. This means the answer to the question "Is x fixed?" is "I don't know" and probably "No".

Changes reported by others here are:

• On the Aura, the option to turn off pinch to adjust font works.
• On the Aura, refresh at the start of the chapter is working.
• Syncing will not work if you skipped registration by updating the database. This means newer firmware cannot be downloaded without the registration being done.

The desktop is also being updated. The version information for the firmware and desktop applications are:

• Kobo eReaders: 3.19.5613 (2015-Dec-04, 4b76aa47bd)
• Kobo Desktop (Win): 3.19.3619 (2015-Dec-04, 4b76aa47bd)
• Kobo Desktop (Mac): 3.19.2305 (2015-Dec-04, 4b76aa47bd)

If you want to manually install the firmware, the download links are in the first post of the Direct Links to Kobo Firmware thread. And for those who like to patch the firmware, see Instructions for patching firmware 3.19.5613.

Calibre does not support this version yet, but there are no changes needed for the driver except bumping the version number. It is completely safe to use the "Attempt to support newer firmware version" option in the driver.