Libra Colour I have a new KLC! Which mods do I install first?

[Schwiney]

Hello everyone!

I have recently gotten a Kobo Libra Colour and have been enjoying the experience greatly, whether it be books, comics, or manga. However, wherever I look, I always see people saying to mod it and that it improves the reader experience greatly. So, even though I want to wait until my warranty is done, because it is new, I have decided to mod it after all!

So, the big question: Which mods do I install first? I don't really know which ones are the best to do, or which ones to do first, in which order. So if you could help me get started, that would be amazing.

Thank you all for your help!

[Sirtel]

No, it's not necessary to mod it. Plenty of users don't. But if you feel you have to, then the most popular mods are patching, NickelMenu, changing the Kobo configuration file and installing KOReader. Also custom fonts and screensavers, although those can't really be called modding.

I patch and have a few changes in the conf file. I don't use NickelMenu or KOReader, although I've tried the latter. Others consider either NickelMenu or KOReader essential. So it's up to your personal preferences.

[DNSB]

Use it for a while and then, if you decide you want to modify it, do so. Some people like to heavily modify their devices, others will do minimal changes. Personally, the only mods I use are NickelMenu and the KoboPatch mod to have ePubs and kepubs close to the same font size. For myself, I seldom spend more than a couple of seconds on the home screen so all the KoboPatch mods for the homescreen are not of interest. I edit my purchases to give a consistent appearance so the mods for those purposes are, again, not of interest to me.

I do have a collection of images I use for the screensaver since I find having the book cover displayed to be boring and I do have a collection of fonts. I really don't consider either of those two items as being mods.

[Schwiney]

Well, I just want quality of life stuff, ig, mainly because the default reader has not been doing anything wrong, and everything is good, so that's that. I guess I should just stick to the quality of life stuff then?

[Sirtel]

I also edit my books and all of them have consistent appearance. That's not the main purpose of patching. Patching modifies default Kobo options, letting you change them more to your personal preferences. Like more finely tuned font sizes, line-spacing, margins, word spacing in kepubs. It has nothing to do with editing or not editing your books.

[Schwiney]

Yeah, I don't really want or need anything to edit books or stuff like that; I just need things that would improve my reading and Kobo experience.

[DNSB]

For me, quite a few of the KoboPatch mods are book appearance related (widows/orphans, line spacing, etc.).

I would suggest using your KLC for a while and then deciding what you would like to change and if those changes are supported by the KoboPatch tool.

Though I will promptly contradict myself and suggest installing NickelMenu. Some of the options such as triggering a USB connect without needing to unplug/replug the USB cable are very useful since you need to connect a Kobo twice when sideloading books. The first pass sends the book and when you disconnect, the import process creates the database entries for the book. The second pass is then able to update the database entry with metadata, series info., etc.

[organized_chaos]

I like NickelMenu. It adds a new menu icon on the home screen and lets you add custom shortcuts to it and a few other places.

I've added a few things to the NickelMenu config on my Kobo Clara 2E:

• My contact info in case I lose the device and someone wants to return it:

  menu_item :main : _Contact Info :dbg_msg :First Last Name - 555-867-5309

• Shutdown shortcut:

  menu_item: main: Shutdown: power: shutdown

• Hide the first icon:

  experimental:menu_main_15505_0_enabled:0

• Rename "My Books" to "Books":

  experimental:menu_main_15505_1_label:Books

Documentation is available on the developer's website: https://pgaskin.net/NickelMenu/

I also have KOReader installed but I don't use it. The default reading experience on my Kobo is fine without KOReader.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by DNSB

For me, quite a few of the KoboPatch mods are book appearance related (widows/orphans, line spacing, etc.)

Yes, but most of them are useful for many people whether or not they edit their books. Like, I delete line-height from my books, but I must set the Kobo line spacing to something even when my books have none in the css, and I prefer more options at the narrower end of the scale than there are available by default. Same for font sizes and margins. I don't use the widows/orphans patch, because yeah, I set that to 1 both in the books and the Kobo config file.

You may not be interested in patching because you're perfectly satisfied with the default options on your Kobos. I'm not - for me there are too many default options at the larger end I'll never use, and too few at the smaller end. My books having been edited and looking absolutely uniform has nothing to do with it.

[Schwiney]

I have just installed NickelMenu, and I must say, it is a great add-on! However, I think that it honestly is enough for me, but who knows? I might change my mind...

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Schwiney

I have just installed NickelMenu, and I must say, it is a great add-on! However, I think that it honestly is enough for me, but who knows? I might change my mind...

There are the patches that can make a lot of things better.