Kobo Clara Audiobooks

[PerspexSphinx]

The Kobo Clara, I believe, can play only Kobo Audiobooks, but I was wondering if there was a third party plug-in to let it play plain Mp3, Ogg or Opus files?

[jackie_w]

Not as far as I know, but you might find this thread of some interest Sideloading Audiobooks.

[DNSB]

If you check the thread jackie_w linked to, it will allow you to play MP3 files stored in a .zip archive. Add the .mp3 files to a .zip archive and rename it to .mp3z). The player could be best described as primitive.

Since you only list the Arc 7HD, I am going to assume that you have a Clara 2E, a Clara Colour or a Clara BW. The original Clara HD does not support Bluetooth so no audio connections.

[PerspexSphinx]

Actually I don’t have the Arc 7HD anymore, it got “bricked” because I missed an “Important” update (which put me off Kobo just a bit). It was nice little machine, sort of an eReader/Android Tablet hybrid type thing, but I do have, and am using an old Kobo Glo, which I found in a thrift shop a while back. I works quite nicely and I’ve installed KOReader for its “Dark Mode” and plug-ins.

But I am intrigued by the Clara which seems to have a similar form factor to the Glo. Although the fact that it doesn’t have microSD removable storage, which the Glo (from almost 13 years ago) does, and only officially supports Kobo Audiobooks is not exactly a selling point, but if …

Originally Posted by DNSB

If you check the thread jackie_w linked to, it will allow you to play MP3 files stored in a .zip archive. Add the .mp3 files to a .zip archive and rename it to .mp3z). The player could be best described as primitive.

…actually works that would make the Clara a bit more adaptable.

I haven’t put my Kobo Glo on WiFi since I heard the latest software update has “bricked” some Kobos and that it doesn’t look like they’ve actually fixed the problem with the software update yet. So I thought I would find out a bit more about the Clara, since it would be nice to have Instapaper and two finger zoom for illustrated ePubs etc, and of course just in case something untoward happens to my little Glo, and it unfortunately gets “bricked” by the nice people or “AI's” at Kobo.

By the way, does anyone know if it is safe to update the Kobo Glo yet?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by PerspexSphinx

By the way, does anyone know if it is safe to update the Kobo Glo yet?

AFAIK, the two devices that had issues with the 4.38.23429 update and had their firmware update reverted back to 4.38.23171 were the Kobo N236 Aura Edition 2 and the Kobo N867 Aura H2O Edition 2. The N236 can sometimes be recovered using a factory reset before trying to re-image it while the N867 can only be recovered using the factory reset since it lacks an internal µSD card.

[PerspexSphinx]

So… the consensus is, it should be safe to update a Kobo Glo?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by PerspexSphinx

So… the consensus is, it should be safe to update a Kobo Glo?

Well that would be my opinion. The N236 Aura Edition 2 was the only model I noticed a noticeable increase in image requests for.