Mac & PC won't recognize Kobo

[arjanknulst]

I faced the same issue with connecting Kobo Aura H20 2 to Macbook as well. It was not shown. After lots of Googling I found a solution that worked for me.

1. Download and install the free program Calibre (for those who don't know it: it is a free book management program).
2. In Calibre main menu, go to Preferences >> Get plugins to extent Calibre.
3. Search for 'Kobo' and install any Kobo related plugin.
4. There will be a new button in the menu stating 'Kobo Utilities'. Using the dropdown arrow next to this button choose 'Driver' from the menu and select 'Switch between main and extended driver'

Restart your macbook, after that it worked seamlessly for me!
Kobo is now visible in both Finder as well as Calibre and Adobe Digital Editions.

Good luck

[stumped]

Originally Posted by arjanknulst

After lots of Googling I found a solution that worked for me.

1. Download and install the free program Calibre (for those who don't know it: it is a free book management program)...

wow, I don't suppose anyone here has heard of that

I am not seeing any recent mentions of connect via a usb hub, not directly to a usb port which was the cure for my own KObo connection issues ( not an A1 or a H2o2 though )

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by arjanknulst

I faced the same issue with connecting Kobo Aura H20 2 to Macbook as well. It was not shown. After lots of Googling I found a solution that worked for me.

1. Download and install the free program Calibre (for those who don't know it: it is a free book management program).
2. In Calibre main menu, go to Preferences >> Get plugins to extent Calibre.
3. Search for 'Kobo' and install any Kobo related plugin.
4. There will be a new button in the menu stating 'Kobo Utilities'. Using the dropdown arrow next to this button choose 'Driver' from the menu and select 'Switch between main and extended driver'

Restart your macbook, after that it worked seamlessly for me!
Kobo is now visible in both Finder as well as Calibre and Adobe Digital Editions.

Are you completely sure of this? Calibre only uses OS resources to access the devices. If the OS cannot see the device, there is no way that calibre will see it. I suppose that there might be something in how calibre looks for the device that triggers it appearing in Finder, but that would be news to me. And I'm sure if that is the case, there will be an option somewhere in the Mac to do the same thing without calibre.

And steps 3 and 4 are problematic. Nothing in the extra Kobo related plugins will help in detecting a Kobo device. Changing to the KoboTouchExtended driver will not help. It subclasses the built-in KoboTouch driver. And it has no extra code for detecting devices. It relies completely on the code in the KoboTouch driver to do this. If the OS or calibre have trouble seeing the device, then installing the other Kobo-related plugins is not going to help and is only going to confuse the issue.

Now, don't get me wrong, the plugins you are talking about are good, very useful and I highly recommend them to anyone who needs them. But that's the thing: "needs them". No-one should install any plugins that they don't need or understand the purpose of. The KoboTouchExtended driver is only useful to people who want to send books as kepubs but not store them in calibre. Telling someone to install it that doesn't want this, or understand this, is not a good idea. And has led to plenty of questions here when something unexpectedly changed on the device. Opposite of this, all the plugins with "kepub" in their names are only needed if the user actually intends to keep kepubs in their calibre library.

[arjanknulst]

I'm only reporting the steps I took to get it working on with my machine. There might be reasons to not do this; i'm not aware of those. But for me it worked and I wanted to share this experience since you can find many topics across internet discussing the issue but only few solutions.

[macattack17816]

I finally figured it out. This is important!!!!
You MUST use the original micro usb cable that came with your Kobo. It is a thicker than a regular usb cable that you buy from a store. As soon as I plugged in my Kobo using the micro usb cable that came with my Kobo it worked. Your Kobo ereader screen will change to connected to your computer. Tap to continue (on your ereader). On the smaller end of the usb cable it's printed "KOBO". Hope this helps.

[ReaLx3m]

Originally Posted by macattack17816

I finally figured it out. This is important!!!!
You MUST use the original micro usb cable that came with your Kobo. It is a thicker than a regular usb cable that you buy from a store. As soon as I plugged in my Kobo using the micro usb cable that came with my Kobo it worked. Your Kobo ereader screen will change to connected to your computer. Tap to continue (on your ereader). On the smaller end of the usb cable it's printed "KOBO". Hope this helps.

While in your case it helped using the original cable, this statement is very wrong.
You can use any good working micro usb cable.
Thickness makes difference only to the ability of the cable to deliver higher amperage to the device, and kobos generally draw 500ma afaik, which is on the very low end.
The original kobo cable is actually one of the thinnest i have

[Snodgrass]

A curious observation that might help somebody:

I've got three Macs - none of them would recognise my Kobo Glo. Restart, change USB cable, install Kobo Desktop, etc, etc. Nothing worked.

Two days ago I got a Clara. Plugged it in and it connected with no trouble at all. Unplugged, restarted the computer, tried again. Same. Instant recognition.

So just for the hell of it I tried the Glo. Connected, no problem.

Then I tried the Glo with the old Power Mac. Nowt. Swapped it for the Clara. All good. Re-tried the Glo and all was well.

Did the same with the laptop. Glo - nothing. Clara, then glo - all working.

So not co-incidence. But what was the Clara doing that persuaded the machines to talk to the Glo???

I've got no idea. Anybody?

Happy reading,

Snod.

[PeterT]

One solution that has helped some people is to ensure the Kobo is attached to a USB 2 port. This can be achieved even by plugging a USB 2 hub into a USB 3 ports on the PC or Mac if that's all that your computer offers.

[pvdas]

Originally Posted by arjanknulst

I faced the same issue with connecting Kobo Aura H20 2 to Macbook as well. It was not shown. After lots of Googling I found a solution that worked for me.

1. Download and install the free program Calibre (for those who don't know it: it is a free book management program).
2. In Calibre main menu, go to Preferences >> Get plugins to extent Calibre.
3. Search for 'Kobo' and install any Kobo related plugin.
4. There will be a new button in the menu stating 'Kobo Utilities'. Using the dropdown arrow next to this button choose 'Driver' from the menu and select 'Switch between main and extended driver'

Restart your macbook, after that it worked seamlessly for me!
Kobo is now visible in both Finder as well as Calibre and Adobe Digital Editions.

Good luck

This is the right solution, at least for me! You must change the driver in the Calibre by using the plugin 'Kobo Utilities'. It enables changing the plugin from 'KoboTouchExtended' to 'KoboTouch'. The current driver must be 'KoboTouch'. Then restart your Mac and it will work

I have been trying to solve the problem of my MBP15 not recognizing my KA1 for last 2 years. Only now with this solution finally it works seamlessly. Thank you

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by pvdas

This is the right solution, at least for me! You must change the driver in the Calibre by using the plugin 'Kobo Utilities'. It enables changing the plugin from 'KoboTouchExtended' to 'KoboTouch'. The current driver must be 'KoboTouch'. Then restart your Mac and it will work

I have been trying to solve the problem of my MBP15 not recognizing my KA1 for last 2 years. Only now with this solution finally it works seamlessly. Thank you

Um, no, that didn't fix it. If the KoboTouchExtended driver isn't working to detect a Kobo device, neither will the KoboTouch driver. The KoboTouchExtended driver does exactly what it says, extend the KoboTouch driver. There is no device detection code in the KoboTouchExtended, it just uses the code from the KoboTouch driver for this. I do recommend disabling the KoboTouch driver if the KoboTouchExtended is enabled, but, that is a cautionary thing, and I have never had any issues when both have been enabled. There have been some issues with the KoboTouchExtended in that it sometimes doesn't activate properly, but, these usually only happen at startup, and restarting calibre fixes it. At the worst, reinstalling the KoboTouchExtended driver fixes it.

[Elektron]

Well, my H2O2, when I plug it in, makes a popup saying "USB device not recognized
The last USB device you connected to this PC malfunctioned, and Windows does not recognize it.
"
This only used to happen sometimes, but now it's happening each time!

[JSWolf]

One quick note. When plugging in the USB cable to the Kobo, be gentle.Almost 6 yeats with my H20 and not a sing plroblm with the USB port and most of the time it gets plugged into a USB 3 port.

[4691mls]

Originally Posted by Elektron

Well, my H2O2, when I plug it in, makes a popup saying "USB device not recognized
The last USB device you connected to this PC malfunctioned, and Windows does not recognize it.
"
This only used to happen sometimes, but now it's happening each time!

I haven't plugged my Kobo into my Windows 10 computer recently, but I have plugged in my Tolino reader several times recently and had this problem. The only thing that fixes it (temporarily) is restarting the computer. Surely there must be a better solution.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by 4691mls

I haven't plugged my Kobo into my Windows 10 computer recently, but I have plugged in my Tolino reader several times recently and had this problem. The only thing that fixes it (temporarily) is restarting the computer. Surely there must be a better solution.

Getting Microsoft to fix whatever the broke in the USB drivers might be a start. The tolino hasn't changed, the PC hasn't changed, so the change is probably from a Windows update. Backing out might fix it.

I do see this occasionally. Usually it is me, or a cat, bumping the cable at the wrong time. It tends to leave the USB port in an unusable state. A reboot of the PC is the only fix I have found.

[geek1011]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Getting Microsoft to fix whatever the broke in the USB drivers might be a start. The tolino hasn't changed, the PC hasn't changed, so the change is probably from a Windows update. Backing out might fix it.

I do see this occasionally. Usually it is me, or a cat, bumping the cable at the wrong time. It tends to leave the USB port in an unusable state. A reboot of the PC is the only fix I have found.

I'm always having issues with Kobo devices on all of my Linux computers. On my old desktop, it kept causing the USB ports to act like that. On my Raspberry Pis, it randomly disconnects sometimes. On my Chromebook, it doesn't even detect it sometimes.

Also, my Clara doesn't seem to ever detect my Thinkpad X395 20NL as a computer (it think it's just for charging and doesn't show the connection dialog). It works fine through a (both powered and non-powered) USB 2.0 hub. I haven't looked into this issue because I just use NM for the USB connection action, but I might try and debug it later.