Kobalt: an alternative reader app for Kobo devices - Page 14

fogice · 10-26-2026, 10:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Another thing I noticed: I don't generally use header and footer at all, only the progress bar; but I tried to have the percentage of the book displayed in the right lower corner, and the footer is too large even when set to small - there's a large gap between the lowest row of text and the percentage, which could be substantially reduced, IMO.

That gap is also dependent on the font and font size for your body text, isn't it? Also, you can change your header/footer font, maybe that will help.

JSWolf · 10-26-2026, 11:08 AM

The gap could be unable to be made smaller as it could be margin space.

rantanplan · 10-26-2026, 11:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I don't, but I'd want all the layout and text options to be more or less together, not some of them who knows where. That would be "all over the place", IMO.

It looks like it's more of a "me" problem then

.
Doesn't matter. Kobalt is great and I love it.

onlion · 10-26-2026, 11:44 AM

Great work!
I installed it on my tolino shine 5 and it works great. I have few small suggestion though. First, it would look better if it shows the book cover instead of kobalt splash screen when loading a book.
Second, it would be so good to have little to no loading screen at all. I heard in your video it says it loads the whole book, maybe it can load only the first chapter when you open it and load the rest in the background? I don't know the technical posibility of this but that would be great.
Third, language support. I'm sure the comunity will translate the strings in no time.
I also have a bug report. When I wake the device up and enter my PIN and press Exit Kobalt on the top left side, it shows the PIN lock again and that doesn't go away until I touch somewhere in the screen. This only happens when the device goes to sleep in Kobalt.
Thats all I have to say. Thank you for this great software.

pepperminttree · 10-26-2026, 01:35 PM

As someone who hates Kobo's native renderer but also couldn't deal with booting/rebooting between KOreader/Kobo's interface each time I wanted to access my notebooks, this project seems like a dream come true and I'm really eager to try it now. Thank you so much for sharing this with us!

jackie_w · 10-26-2026, 02:09 PM

@MrSilverstrike,

I hope you're feeling better. Thank you for all your hard work. Here's some feedback for beta4:

Overall impression: excellent progress. Everything I raised in posts #98 and #116 seems to be working well via options in Settings>Styling.
I was interested to see you also added Settings>System to allow customisation of the Kobalt UI fonts. It's here where I found a couple of potential bugs which could use a second look. Steps to reproduce:
1. In the 'User Interface' section, change 'Sans-serif UI typeface' to a different sans font than the default (IBM Plex Sans). Close Settings.
2. 1st "bug". Open the [Aa]Text menu. The 'Auto' button in Alignment and all 3 buttons in Hyphenation now display black-on-black when selected.
3. Close the book then re-open it.
4. 2nd "bug". Do a dictionary word lookup. The word definition text in the popup now displays in a sans font which is very cramped. I'm not sure whether you intended that the font selected in step 1 should also be used for the dictionary popup, but the font *actually* used appears to be neither the one from step 1, nor the original default of IBM Plex Sans.
More dictionary-related thoughts:
- Changing the dictionary is a bit cumbersome if you have a lot installed (only 5 per page). I wonder whether the list of dictionary names could be presented in multiple columns, i.e. more like when choosing a new font.
- The ability to change font-size for the dictionary popup has been a popular request for Nickel over the years. Your default size is OK for me but I suspect is a little small for many users.
I really like the Header/Footer options in the [Layout] menu. It's very intuitive (at least to me). I did wonder whether the following minor inconsistencies were intentional? When selecting Pages in chapter the pages format is 'x/y' whereas the Chapter and page in chapter displays as 'x of y'. Similarly with the pair Page in book and Title and page in book.

I know that many users do have a definite preference for 'x/y' or 'x of y' because they were very early requests for Kobo patching. For those who have a strong preference I wonder whether it might be a future option to use the same pages format throughout the Kobalt GUI, (e.g. TOC, font choices, dictionary popup, list of available dictionaries).

I haven't tested everything yet so I may have more to add over the next few days.

MrSilverstrike · 10-26-2026, 03:15 PM

I see a bunch of things reported here that have already been requested on GitHub, too. I'll get back to individual comments here when I have more time, but for now... I've created this useful post which lists everything that's already implemented and ready for beta 5.

howyoudoin · 10-26-2026, 03:19 PM

Beta 5 looks like a solid update. Thanks for your work.

howyoudoin · 10-26-2026, 03:22 PM

Would it be possible to have the option to make both page turn buttons turn to the next page? (Only for the reading mode)

MrSilverstrike · 10-26-2026, 03:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by howyoudoin

Would it be possible to have the option to make both page turn buttons turn to the next page? (Only for the reading mode)

You mean the hardware buttons?

howyoudoin · 10-26-2026, 03:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrSilverstrike

You mean the hardware buttons?

Yes. It’s a niche use case probably, but there was/is a patch for the firmware that could accomplish this. Useful for when one changes the grip on the device.

MrSilverstrike · 10-26-2026, 04:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by howyoudoin

Yes. It’s a niche use case probably, but there was/is a patch for the firmware that could accomplish this. Useful for when one changes the grip on the device.

I think customizing what the buttons do on devices that have hardware buttons would be nice. I'll consider adding it.

As an aside, unrelated: I just properly tried automatic KOReader sync from this thread and it's kind of magical. I just need to nail when WiFi is started if asleep so it feels really smooth.

Think you guys are gonna love this.

Sirtel · 10-26-2026, 04:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fogice

That gap is also dependent on the font and font size for your body text, isn't it? Also, you can change your header/footer font, maybe that will help.

The percentage looks tiny and there's a huge gap between it and the text. The font size I use for body text isn't that large either.

Sirtel · 10-26-2026, 04:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The gap could be unable to be made smaller as it could be margin space.

I tried to decrease the margins, but then the upper margin got too small and there was still a fairly large gap under the text.

MrSilverstrike · 10-26-2026, 04:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I tried to decrease the margins, but then the upper margin got too small and there was still a fairly large gap under the text.

This is because the font size currently affects an additional margin. So the bigger the text gets, the larger this margin becomes. That's not really ideal, so this is fixed in beta 5!

I'm also looking into adding more font size options for the header and footer.

10-26-2026, 02:09 PM	#201
jackie_w Grand Sorcerer Posts: 6,349 Karma: 16800000 Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: UK Device: ClaraHD, Forma, Libra2, Clara2E, LibraCol, PBTouchHD3	@MrSilverstrike, I hope you're feeling better. Thank you for all your hard work. Here's some feedback for beta4: Overall impression: excellent progress. Everything I raised in posts #98 and #116 seems to be working well via options in Settings>Styling. I was interested to see you also added Settings>System to allow customisation of the Kobalt UI fonts. It's here where I found a couple of potential bugs which could use a second look. Steps to reproduce: In the 'User Interface' section, change 'Sans-serif UI typeface' to a different sans font than the default (IBM Plex Sans). Close Settings. 1st "bug". Open the [Aa]Text menu. The 'Auto' button in Alignment and all 3 buttons in Hyphenation now display black-on-black when selected. Close the book then re-open it. 2nd "bug". Do a dictionary word lookup. The word definition text in the popup now displays in a sans font which is very cramped. I'm not sure whether you intended that the font selected in step 1 should also be used for the dictionary popup, but the font actually used appears to be neither the one from step 1, nor the original default of IBM Plex Sans. More dictionary-related thoughts: Changing the dictionary is a bit cumbersome if you have a lot installed (only 5 per page). I wonder whether the list of dictionary names could be presented in multiple columns, i.e. more like when choosing a new font. The ability to change font-size for the dictionary popup has been a popular request for Nickel over the years. Your default size is OK for me but I suspect is a little small for many users. I really like the Header/Footer options in the [Layout] menu. It's very intuitive (at least to me). I did wonder whether the following minor inconsistencies were intentional? When selecting Pages in chapter the pages format is 'x/y' whereas the Chapter and page in chapter displays as 'x of y'. Similarly with the pair Page in book and Title and page in book. I know that many users do have a definite preference for 'x/y' or 'x of y' because they were very early requests for Kobo patching. For those who have a strong preference I wonder whether it might be a future option to use the same pages format throughout the Kobalt GUI, (e.g. TOC, font choices, dictionary popup, list of available dictionaries). I haven't tested everything yet so I may have more to add over the next few days.

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10-26-2026, 11:08 AM	#197
JSWolf Resident Curmudgeon Posts: 85,448 Karma: 154365103 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Roslindale, Massachusetts Device: Kobo Libra 2, Kobo Aura H2O, PRS-650, PRS-T1, nook STR, PW3	The gap could be unable to be made smaller as it could be margin space.

10-26-2026, 11:44 AM	#199
onlion Member Posts: 11 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jul 2025 Device: Tolino Vision 3 HD	Great work! I installed it on my tolino shine 5 and it works great. I have few small suggestion though. First, it would look better if it shows the book cover instead of kobalt splash screen when loading a book. Second, it would be so good to have little to no loading screen at all. I heard in your video it says it loads the whole book, maybe it can load only the first chapter when you open it and load the rest in the background? I don't know the technical posibility of this but that would be great. Third, language support. I'm sure the comunity will translate the strings in no time. I also have a bug report. When I wake the device up and enter my PIN and press Exit Kobalt on the top left side, it shows the PIN lock again and that doesn't go away until I touch somewhere in the screen. This only happens when the device goes to sleep in Kobalt. Thats all I have to say. Thank you for this great software.

10-26-2026, 01:35 PM	#200
pepperminttree Member Posts: 15 Karma: 37108 Join Date: May 2026 Device: Kobo Libra Colour, Boox Palma 2, Woxter Scriba 195 S	As someone who hates Kobo's native renderer but also couldn't deal with booting/rebooting between KOreader/Kobo's interface each time I wanted to access my notebooks, this project seems like a dream come true and I'm really eager to try it now. Thank you so much for sharing this with us!

10-26-2026, 03:15 PM	#202
MrSilverstrike Kobo Mod Maker Posts: 190 Karma: 1270810 Join Date: Apr 2024 Location: Belgium Device: Kobo Libra Color, Kobo Clara Color	I see a bunch of things reported here that have already been requested on GitHub, too. I'll get back to individual comments here when I have more time, but for now... I've created this useful post which lists everything that's already implemented and ready for beta 5.

10-26-2026, 03:19 PM	#203
howyoudoin how YOU doin? Posts: 1,114 Karma: 7371047 Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: India Device: Kindle Keyboard, iPad Pro 10.5”, Kobo Aura H2O, Kobo Libra 2	Beta 5 looks like a solid update. Thanks for your work.

10-26-2026, 03:22 PM	#204
howyoudoin how YOU doin? Posts: 1,114 Karma: 7371047 Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: India Device: Kindle Keyboard, iPad Pro 10.5”, Kobo Aura H2O, Kobo Libra 2	Would it be possible to have the option to make both page turn buttons turn to the next page? (Only for the reading mode)

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