It's 2020. Does anyone still miss the old, tiled homescreen?

[ZodWallop]

So I think the 4.20.x software is great. There's enough features and improvements that in my opinion, anyone with a Kobo should be using it.

But as I was browsing around I saw some images of the old, tiled Kobo home screen and realized I do miss it. Am I the only one?

Here's a couple of screenshots comparing the old and new home screens. The images may be too small to be useful, but I wanted to make sure they fit the guidelines.

[NiLuJe]

Being able to pin things would be nice (e.g., free idea: star some stuff, starred content has priority), but I certainly don't miss the metro-inspired uneven layout .

[ZodWallop]

I would welcome a new version of the tiled home screen. I'm assuming Kobo would see it as a step backwards, so I don't expect it.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

Being able to pin things would be nice (e.g., free idea: star some stuff, starred content has priority), but I certainly don't miss the metro-inspired uneven layout .

I find the books in the top row all being displayed at the same size boring. Maybe they could display your most recently opened book at a larger size and display the rest smaller.

[koboy]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

So I think the 4.20.x software is great. There's enough features and improvements that in my opinion, anyone with a Kobo should be using it.

But as I was browsing around I saw some images of the old, tiled Kobo home screen and realized I do miss it. Am I the only one?

Here's a couple of screenshots comparing the old and new home screens. The images may be too small to be useful, but I wanted to make sure they fit the guidelines.

i don't miss what i still have

best wishes koboy

[Cedros]

Now that you mention it, I do miss the old home page. I'm not even sure why, except that the tiled home screen seemed better organized. More intuitive, maybe. However I'm certainly happy enough with the newest update.

[DNSB]

I voted for What's a home screen. I spend so little time looking at the home screen that, to me, the layout is a matter of indifference.

[MGlitch]

I like the new screen. I just wish that you could have more than your current four reading books active. At least with patches I’m able to remove the clutter I never wanna see from the new homescreen, the old one would let you dismiss them sure but if an action called them up they were right back on the screen.

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I voted for What's a home screen. I spend so little time looking at the home screen that, to me, the layout is a matter of indifference.

While I like the new over the old I agree more with this. I’m in a book far more than I’m looking at the homescreen.

[issybird]

I still have the tiles on my Glo; I use that as a book repository and have no reason to update it. I was slow to update my other devices, but in the end, it was too inconvenient not to be able to download my purchases from Kobo and my borrows from OverDrive and not to be able to sync my reading position across my devices.

The tiles were useful; they let me navigate in one click to my most-visited collections, something that can take several clicks now. And, of course, it was trivial to eliminate the junk that was of no interest.

[Ripplinger]

While I really liked having multiple series pinned to the home screen and books of my choice, Kobo's implementation of the tiled home screen was absolutely horrible. It came across as a childish attempt playing with blocks that failed miserably. If they had stuck to standardized sizes for the tiles, it would have been functional and looked 100x times better than it did with odd-sized tiles scattered everywhere.

So I voted for the new home screen.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by koboy

i don't miss what i still have

Honestly, though I miss the tiles, I really would recommend the newer OS. Kobo has made a bunch of improvements. I noticed a big speed increase on my Aura with the updates. Pulling up collections would temporarily freeze up my Aura. That stopped. And having series and collections separated is nice.

[davidfor]

It's almost definitely pedantic, but, "Old home screen" is a problem to me. Kobo have had at least three layouts for the home screen while I have been using them. The first one I saw was the mosaic of the five most recent books. If I'd just seen the poll, that is the one I would have thought of as "old".

My preference would be the tiled home screen but without the absurd "search bar". But, with the current top icon bar and menus. Probably, as it's been a while since I used the tiled home screen and I don't remember exactly what they menus looked like.

[koboy]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Honestly, though I miss the tiles, I really would recommend the newer OS. Kobo has made a bunch of improvements. I noticed a big speed increase on my Aura with the updates. Pulling up collections would temporarily freeze up my Aura. That stopped. And having series and collections separated is nice.

the choice/option to have multiple collections/book covers on the old tiled homescreen and the ability to dismiss them all if i choose/want to do so far outweighs any of the new features/improvements.

each to their own


edit. the collections taking forever and a day to go into/freezing has nothing to do with preferring the far more user friendly old tiled homescreen and everything to do with that particular firmware. i'm using 3.16.0

best wishes koboy

[dmapr]

I picked "what's a home screen?" because I honestly don't remember the old home screen and the only thing I use on the new home screen is the "My Books" link — to the point that I don't know what other information is on it.