Cross device Sync

[PeterT]

Interesting series of posts on Threads from mtamblyn of Kobo..

See https://www.threads.com/share/_w5Boajyy/

The next month is going to be busy for us here at Kobo, but here's a little something that snuck out in advance:
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We know some of you have been driven slowly crazy by the way your reading progress on the Kobo app doesn't always correctly sync with your ereader, or your ereader to your app. Annoying. Bad experience. No one liked it. So...

We rebuilt the entire bookmarking and progress syncing system from the ground up. The old one hails back to our earliest days of making ereaders and it was in a scary part of the code that no one wanted to touch. But intrepid engineers strapped on the miner's helmets, packed snacks and energy drinks, and went deep into Kobo's syncing infrastructure and rebuilt big pieces of it from scratch. Now we have...

a thoroughly modern way of figuring out which change to a book's progress is most recent, giving everyone a much more accurate way of deciding where in the book you are now. Want to move over to this brave new world? Here's how you do it:

(First off, this only matters if you are an ereader+app user. Or a multi-ereader user. if you aren't trying to keep two devices in sync, this hasn't been a problem for you and I'm sorry to make you read this far.

if you are using an ereader, go into Settings > Device Information, Repair Your Kobo Account. Or for apps, sign out of your account and then sign back in. Sorry about that. But we need to reload and rebuild your library with all new progress tokens.

(Signing out and back in to your account on your ereader works too but Repair is usually quicker.)

You have to do this for all devices you're signed in to, i.e. your phone, iPad, your three ereaders, cat's ereader, etc. But you only have to do it once, and when it's done, everything will stay nicely sync'd up from now on. ❤️

I've not tried any of this but....

[Sirtel]

I expect it's for direct Kobo downloads only, so it's useless to me.

[nana77]

Personally, I'll like if there is a feature that allows a book to stand "finished" when prompted, not having to redo it every time opening it to search a page.
Not a big problem, but it messes within Storygraph too now, if not paying attentions.

[Apollyon202]

Wait, is this actually only for non-sideloaded books?
Not that I've ever used more than one device at once, but if this is the big improvement in firmware 5.x, along with the clock in the book, then looks like I'm staying on firmware 4.x for another 5 to 10 years mate.

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by nana77

Personally, I'll like if there is a feature that allows a book to stand "finished" when prompted, not having to redo it every time opening it to search a page.

I've had this problem as well. I've also noticed a new (to me) problem, where I usually have My Books set to display only books I'm currently reading, and when I finish a book, it returns to My Books, but the book I just finished is still in the list, even though I'm not reading it anymore. This causes Nickel to get confused, and the book's status will spontaneously change from Finished to 99%, apparently because it can't understand why a finished book would be displayed in the list of books I'm currently reading. I then have to change the view to display all books, change the book's status from Finished to Unread, and then change the status to Finished again.

Ah, the joys of reading on a portable computer.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by nana77

Personally, I'll like if there is a feature that allows a book to stand "finished" when prompted, not having to redo it every time opening it to search a page.
Not a big problem, but it messes within Storygraph too now, if not paying attentions.

I totally agree with this feature.

[Yapyap]

Originally Posted by Apollyon202

Wait, is this actually only for non-sideloaded books?

Yes. He clarified this at least in this reply on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/mtamblyn.bs.../3mv7sjajkz22i

Sorry - not sideloaded. But a person can dream…

[Cactus Chef]

Do we think this will change the way the KEPUB-specific spans work?