Libra Colour “Recently Opened” Bug

[Cootey]

I noticed today on my KLC that my “recently opened” pull down sheet showed books that had been recently downloaded, not read. The books in “recently opened“ were different than the four recently read books along the top of my home page, as well as the top books in “my books“ when filtered for reading and recent.

I bought a handful of books the other day. I also finished off a bunch of books right after that, but have been too busy to start more. It seems that “recently opened“ will display newly added books over unfinished books depending on which was more recent. It shouldn’t do that, though. I hadn’t opened any of them yet.

To fix the problem I had to open three of the books along the top of the home page in order to replace the three recently added books that were showing up in the “recently opened“ sheet. (That was a mouthful!)

When I finish those three books, I assume the recently added books will take their place again in “recently opened“ even though they’ve never been opened. Maybe that’s as designed, but Kobo mislabeled it? I’m wondering if anyone else has noticed this.

[Aleron Ives]

Yes, the pulldown displays the three most recently accessed books, regardless of whether you're actually reading them or not. You can even end up with finished books in the list, if you haven't accessed new books since finishing the last one. It has been this way since Kobo introduced the feature in 4.34, so Kobo either doesn't consider this to be a bug or isn't in a rush to improve the feature.

[Cootey]

I see. That’s disappointing to hear. Now I won’t waste any time on “fixing” it.

I do recall seeing finished books in the list before. Unless I’m switching between two current reads, I tend to ignore the feature since it isn’t implemented very well. They should relabel it to “Recent Activity” since it shows the three most updated database entries regardless of whether the book is “open” or not.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

Yes, the pulldown displays the three most recently accessed books, regardless of whether you're actually reading them or not. You can even end up with finished books in the list, if you haven't accessed new books since finishing the last one. It has been this way since Kobo introduced the feature in 4.34, so Kobo either doesn't consider this to be a bug or isn't in a rush to improve the feature.

It can be the 3 most recently added books. It's a nearly but not completely useless feature. On a Kobo with Nebo Notebooks it does allow hopping between and ebook and a notebook that you created to separately write notes as pen annotation in an epub or PDF is not exported as text.

[Aleron Ives]

I find it to be a useful feature for switching between the books I'm currently reading, but it is annoying having my current reads get bumped from the list every time I load new books. Oh well.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

I find it to be a useful feature for switching between the books I'm currently reading, but it is annoying having my current reads get bumped from the list every time I load new books. Oh well.

There is a solution to the problem. Change the date in the database for those eBooks. The best way to do it is for someone to add a feature to do this in Kobo Utilities.

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

I find it to be a useful feature for switching between the books I'm currently reading, but it is annoying having my current reads get bumped from the list every time I load new books. Oh well.

Indeed.

I have used the feature to switch between notebooks and my current read once before, but because of this problem, I stopped using it and then forgot about it. When I accidentally trigger it, I just dismissed it offhandedly and continued reading.

I do wish they would fix it, however. It could be so useful. And if they reduced the cover thumbnail sizes, they could fit another book or two in there.

Years ago, I would take the time to jump into online chats with Kobo tech-support and let them know about bugs I encountered or features that needed improvement, but now you have to go through Minerva, and when I do get through to a technician, they’ll just tell me to reset my Kobo. 🫤

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

There is a solution to the problem. Change the date in the database for those eBooks. The best way to do it is for someone to add a feature to do this in Kobo Utilities.

That isn’t a bad idea. Fiddling with databases isn’t something that I’m particularly skilled at, however. I wonder if there is a way to use “touch” through NickelMenu on the most recently opened books to bump them back to the chronological top.

[Aleron Ives]

Touch can only update the timestamps, not the database entries of which books were accessed when. You'd need to do a rescan after editing the timestamps in order for the Kobo to notice the changes, and you'd constantly have to edit the script to target the books you want to be edited.

It's much less work to just go into My Books and tap on the books you want to be in the list.

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

Touch can only update the timestamps, not the database entries of which books were accessed when. You'd need to do a rescan after editing the timestamps in order for the Kobo to notice the changes, and you'd constantly have to edit the script to target the books you want to be edited.

It's much less work to just go into My Books and tap on the books you want to be in the list.

Actually, that was my tentative plan. To use touch and then do a rescan to update the DB. On the KLC, the rescan is quite quick. The trick would be to only update the correct files. I wouldn’t want to hardcode the book files into the script, but filtering the files might move me into realms of Linux Gnosticism that I fear to tread. I’d need to drill down into Kobo’s directories since most of my current reads aren’t sideloaded in the root of the drive. Opening them manually (as I did last night) would be less of a headache, but my curiosity is piqued.

[Cootey]

I spent a little bit of time on this tonight just for fun.

Using NickelMenu, you can telnet in and sort your books in mnt/onboard/ by access time with “ls -lu -tu”. You can even use “touch -a filename” to update the access time and date of a file.

But it makes no difference. Even after rescanning, I couldn’t use the above technique to bump an older book into that “recently opened”pulldown sheet. Also, touching files in .kobo/kepub made no change as well.

This trick will have to be done in the SQLite db, and I am not confident with those commands to fiddle with my Koboreader.sqlite file, even with a backup. Maybe some other time.