NickelTiles: an app tile grid for the Kobo home screen (testers wanted)

[bosa]

NickelTiles is a NickelHook mod that turns the Kobo home screen into a grid of app tiles.



What it does

• Every NickelMenu main-menu entry becomes a tile automatically (KOReader, Plato, USB connection, reboot, KPM, ...). The grid updates whenever you add or remove an entry.
• Continue reading: one tile always shows your most recent book, regardless of which reading app you read it in (KOReader, Plato or Kobo's own reader), with the cover (or a book icon, if you prefer) and any of title, author and progress. Tapping it opens the book in the app that last read it. Covers come from EPUB, KEPUB, FB2, MOBI, AZW3 and CBZ books; others (PDF, for example) show the book icon.
• Sleep screen: Requires Kobo native settings "Show book covers full screen" option set to on The sleep screen shows your most recent book's cover no matter which app you read it it, even if you sleep the device after closing the app.
• Settings on the device: a Tiles settings tile opens a page for tiles per row, tile size, which tiles are shown and the options above. Changes apply at once, no reboot. Tiles size themselves to fill your screen's width by default.
• Repair switched-off add-ons: if a crash right after Kobo starts leaves NickelMenu, KPM, NickelHome or other NickelHook add-ons switched off, the settings page lists them and turns them back on with one tap.
• Long-press a tile, then tap another one to swap them. Tiles darken while pressed.

Status: early, testers wanted
So far it has only run on one device: a Tolino Shine 5 (T302), which is Clara BW hardware, running Kobo's Clara BW firmware 4.45.23697. Firmware from 4.23.15505 on uses the same home screen layout and may work, but nobody has tried it yet. If your device or firmware is different, a report helps a lot, even if it is just "it works".

NickelHook's failsafe applies: if Nickel crashes within 3 seconds of the mod loading, the mod disables itself and Nickel starts normally; reinstalling turns it back on. Tip: wait about 30 seconds after a boot before launching KOReader or Plato or rebooting. NickelHook mods (this one, NickelMenu, KPM's add-on) can treat an early restart as a crash and switch themselves off.

Install
With KPM:

kpm add https://github.com/marin-o/NickelTiles --name nickeltiles
kpm check
kpm update nickeltiles

then restart the reader. (KPM's "Update all" reboots on its own but can leave a stale lock that makes KPM keep saying "staged"; restarting yourself avoids that.)
By hand: download KoboRoot.tgz from the latest release, copy it into the .kobo folder, eject and unplug. The reader installs it and restarts.

The grid replaces Kobo's home rows. To keep Kobo's own home widgets under the tiles, turn off "Hide Kobo's home rows" in Tiles settings.

NickelMenu is optional. Without it you get the built-in tiles and any tile: lines from the config file.

Uninstall
"kpm uninstall nickeltiles", or create an empty file named uninstall in .adds/nickel-tiles and reboot. Your settings file is kept.

What to report

• Device model and firmware version (Settings > Device information)
• Does the grid appear on the home screen, fill the width of your screen, and do the tiles launch?
• Continue reading: right book, right cover (which format?), opens in the right app?
• Sleep screen cover (with "Show book covers full screen" on)
• Tiles settings page: do Save and Cancel work, and does the page fit your screen?

If something is wrong: set nt_log:1 in .adds/nickel-tiles/config, reboot, reproduce the problem, then attach .adds/nickel-tiles/nickel-tiles.log. With nt_log:1 the mod also saves screenshots of the home screen and the settings page in that folder.
Reports here or on GitHub are both fine.

Notes

• A NickelMenu entry that rescans the library won't run from a tile; NickelTiles refuses it on purpose, because on the development device a rescan deleted sideloaded books. The same entry still works from NickelMenu's own menu.
• Plato has no way to open a specific book at launch, so Plato books open Plato itself.

Source and releases: https://github.com/marin-o/NickelTiles (MIT). Releases are built by GitHub Actions in the NickelTC image.

Special :
Built on NickelHook by pgaskin; the NickelMenu action handling follows NickelMenu.