[GUI Plugin] Kobo Utilities

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by theducks

OTTO does that. You know, all those cleaner programs that folk buy and let run in background because it is easier than taking care to properly end all work, the reviewing the proposed 'clear this list' or wondering why there are some Calibre (or any other app) temp files still there, when the app is shut down.

I clear the temp directory after a reboot. That way I know I'm not going to cause any sort of problem.

[dcbrow2]

First, I really appreciate the work on this plugin by both the original author Davidfor and Majutsushi who now maintains it.

I have an issue where the "Show Reading Position Change" dialog that comes up when I connect my Kobo Clara BW shows the same books every time even when everything matches (date, percent read). At least all the stuff that shows up in the dialog matches. Books I haven't read or changed in weeks still show up.

Although the attached screenshot only shows the first 7, there are 15 books that show up. They show up every time I connect. The list must keeps growing as I finish more books.

Is this normal behavior or should I do something to fix it?

I am running on a Mac with calibre 9.11 and plugin version 2.28.1, so everything is current.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Majutsushi]

After you get that dialog please open the plugin options, click the "View log" button there, and post the contents here.

[dcbrow2]

Thanks. The log is posted below. Looking at it, I'm guessing the issue is the amount of time left difference. I didn't set up a column for that in Calibre because it didn't seem worth syncing. And the dialog doesn't report that as a difference so I didn't think it was being used. But I will test setting up a column for that and see if it fixes the issue. Thanks.

Spoiler:

09:13:01: Storing reading positions for device Kobo Clara BW (N365654050934)
09:13:01: Using profile 'Kobo Clara BW'
09:13:02: Fire Watch: Found changes:
- Rest of book estimate: 44 (device) → None (Calibre)
09:13:02: Witch Week: Found changes:
- Rest of book estimate: 18571 (device) → None (Calibre)
09:13:02: Sweet Thursday: Found changes:
- Rest of book estimate: 20572 (device) → None (Calibre)
09:13:02: Beautyland: Found changes:
- Rest of book estimate: 151 (device) → None (Calibre)
09:13:02: The Ministry of Time: A Novel: Found changes:
- Rest of book estimate: 1379 (device) → None (Calibre)
09:13:02: Gaman: The Story of a Japanese American Prisoner in a War That Never Ended: A Memoir: Found changes:
- Rest of book estimate: 11169 (device) → None (Calibre)
09:13:02: Women Crime Writers 1940s: Found changes:
- Last read time: 2026-08-01 04:22:04+00:00 (device) → 2026-07-31 23:49:48+00:00 (Calibre)
- Time spent reading: 18021 (device) → 17998 (Calibre)
- Rest of book estimate: 16258 (device) → None (Calibre)
09:13:03: The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles: Found changes:
- Last read time: 2026-08-01 16:12:39+00:00 (device) → 2026-07-31 04:07:14+00:00 (Calibre)
- Percent read: 21 (device) → 4 (Calibre)
- Chapter ID: OEBPS/xhtml/chapter6.xhtml#kobo.2.1 (device) → OEBPS/xhtml/prologue.xhtml#kobo.8.3 (Calibre)
- Time spent reading: 5206 (device) → 333 (Calibre)
- Rest of book estimate: 13391 (device) → None (Calibre)
09:13:03: The SBL Study Bible: Found changes:
- Last read time: 2026-08-01 04:13:16+00:00 (device) → 2026-07-31 04:06:52+00:00 (Calibre)
- Percent read: 29 (device) → 28 (Calibre)
- Chapter ID: text/part0078_split_015.html#kobo.2.1 (device) → text/part0078_split_014.html#kobo.2.1 (Calibre)
- Time spent reading: 5509 (device) → 4912 (Calibre)
- Rest of book estimate: 338305 (device) → None (Calibre)
09:13:03: Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang: Found changes:
- Rest of book estimate: 19295 (device) → None (Calibre)
09:13:03: The Conjure-Man Dies: Found changes:
- Rest of book estimate: 13488 (device) → None (Calibre)
09:13:03: The MANIAC: Found changes:
- Rest of book estimate: 22081 (device) → None (Calibre)
09:13:03: Some Desperate Glory: Found changes:
- Rest of book estimate: 11204 (device) → None (Calibre)
09:13:03: The End of Eternity: Found changes:
- Rest of book estimate: 771 (device) → None (Calibre)
09:13:03: Mind of My Mind: Found changes:
- Rest of book estimate: 1621 (device) → None (Calibre)
09:13:03: Found 15 books with changes
09:14:01: Updating reading positions for books:
- Fire Watch (Connie Willis)
- Witch Week (Diana Wynne Jones)
- Sweet Thursday (John Steinbeck)
- Beautyland (Marie-Helene Bertino)
- The Ministry of Time: A Novel (Kaliane Bradley)
- Gaman: The Story of a Japanese American Prisoner in a War That Never Ended: A Memoir (Kenichi Yabusaki)
- Women Crime Writers 1940s (Sarah Weinman)
- The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles (Malka Older)
- The SBL Study Bible (Society of Biblical Literature)
- Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (Kate Wilhelm)
- The Conjure-Man Dies (Rudolph Fisher)
- The MANIAC (Benjamin Labatut)
- Some Desperate Glory (Emily Tesh)
- The End of Eternity (Isaac Asimov)
- Mind of My Mind (Octavia Butler)
09:14:01: Storing reading positions completed - 15 changed.

[dcbrow2]

Setting up that last column fixed this issue, so the lesson learned is, set up columns in calibre for all the elements synced by KoboTouch even if you don't care to track those.

Thanks again for the plugin.

[Majutsushi]

Thanks for the log! The plugin shouldn't consider custom columns that haven't been configured for checking whether a book has changed, so I've made a change that fixes that.

[Majutsushi]

Changes in this release:

• Fixed a bug where custom columns that weren't configured for storing changes were still considered for checking whether books needed updating.

[dcbrow2]

Thank you again for your work on the plugin and the updates.

I had something weird happen to my Kobo recently. For some reason it did a factory reset after I disconnected it from my computer before it was fully ejected (in my defense, I thought it was ejected!). I was able to restore collections and percent read using the utility, so that is good.

But I can't restore time spent reading on the Kobo and that seems to be completely lost. The Kobo shows 0 hours read. It's not a big deal, but since the Kobo Utilities plug in reads the seconds I've been reading and I have all that data in Calibre now, can it be restored to the kobo?

I did a search and didn't see this being discussed, but if I missed it, apologies.

I did look in the database using a sql viewer and see time spent in the contents table (I think, I'm going from memory), but I tried changing the value of one book and didn't do anything.

Any advice is appreciated.

[Majutsushi]

Unfortunately the plugin currently doesn't support restoring those columns, but I'll look into adding support for that to the existing features that change metadata and restore reading positions.

Updating the relevant values in the database directly should work, after all that is what the plugin is doing as well. If you want to have a look yourself, the columns for this case are 'TimeSpentReading' and 'RestOfBookEstimate' in the 'content' table.

[pickmansmodel]

Originally Posted by Majutsushi

There was a bug in KoboUtilities that made it not find the correct plugboards when selecting that option. I've just released a new version that fixes that, so using that tool should work for you now.

Is there any chance that there was a regression with this? I'm currently experiencing the same issue where Send to Device works as expected for multiple authors with the plugboard that I have set up, but Kobo Utilities->Update metadata in device library overwrites multiple authors by concatenating with "&".

I'm using v2.28.2 of the plugin.