Setting up my Kobo Clara BW Ereader

I recently purchased a Kobo Clara BW in a bid to hopefully start reading books more. While I don’t necessarily have a preference for paper vs ebook, (I don’t really read books), I thought it would be a good purchase. I also have a seemingly bricked Kobo Clara HD that I was planning to install PostmarketOS on, but thats a different project for another time.

One of the awesome things about Kobo is that its easy to sideload books using just a computer and a USB cable.

Bypassing the Kobo sign in

When you start the Kobo Clara BW, you will be prompted by a seemingly dark pattern sign in screen demanding you make an account. To Kobos credit, any somewhat valid email address will you get you through here, but that’s just not good enough for me. Thankfully, its incredibly easy to bypass this sign in screen.

Plug the Kobo into your computer using a USB-C cable. A prompt will come up asking if you want to attach to your computer, tap yes.

It will show up as a device, for me, /dev/sdd

Mount this however you typically do, for me thats udisks

udisksctl mount --block-device /dev/sdd

It shows up for me as /run/media/cqst/KOBOeReader/

We need to edit the file and create it if it doesn’t exist.

$ ed /run/media/cqst/KOBOeReader/.kobo/Kobo/Kobo \eReader.conf

and add SideloadedMode=true

[ApplicationPreferences]
SideloadedMode=true

Unmount your Kobo

udisksctl unmount --block-device /dev/sdd

unplug it, and reboot. It may take a couple seconds, but you should be booted directly into your library without having to provide an email address or connect to the internet!

Adding epubs

To add epubs, simply mount and add epubs to the /run/media/cqst/KOBOeReader directory.

Conclusion

This is my first eReader, and I don’t really have much experience to say if its good or not yet, but I will say getting it in this sideloaded state was incredibly easy.

For more documentation on the settings, see this Wiki page. https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kobo_Configuration_Options