Hack the Kobo Elipsa for offline use

Contents

• Factory Reset
• Edit SQLite DB
• Turn off wireless features
• Back up settings
• Use it offline

There’s a semi-standard method for getting Kobo devices to work offline by adding a row to their internal SQLite database. But I tried and failed to apply it to a first gen Elipsa.

I finally got it to work by combining the sqlite3 code from kobo-offline with the idea of adding a second user from a LinuxQuestions thread. Perhaps it also works on the rest of the current (Feb 2024) lineup?

In the 8 months since then I haven’t tried to do anything online and haven’t been prompted to either. Just want to document it here in case it helps someone.

Factory Reset

You could probably skip step #2 here and keep your current settings. But here are the steps that worked for me:

1. Back up your current settings first if you have anything important. See the last step at the bottom for an example tar command.

2. Factory reset, select “don’t have wifi”, connect to computer. Note that this will delete your book index + annotations.

Edit SQLite DB

Insert new data using sqlite:

$ nix-shell -p sqlite3
[nix-shell]$ sqlite3 /media/jefdaj/KOBOeReader/.kobo/KoboReader.sqlite 
SQLite version 3.34.1 2021-01-20 14:10:07
Enter ".help" for usage hints.

sqlite> INSERT INTO 'user' (UserID, UserKey, UserDisplayName, UserEmail)
sqlite> VALUES (3, '', 'Foo', 'bar@baz.qux');
sqlite> INSERT INTO 'user' (UserID, UserKey, UserDisplayName, UserEmail)
sqlite> VALUES (4, '', 'FooFoo', 'bar@baz.com');
sqlite> .save /media/jefdaj/KOBOeReader/.kobo/KoboReader.sqlite
sqlite> .quit

Double check that you ended up with two rows like so:

select * from user;
3||Foo|bar@baz.qux|||0|0|0|||||1||0||||||-1.0|||||0
4||FooFoo|bar@baz.com|||0|0|0|||||1||0||||||-1.0|||||0

Turn off wireless features

Under the settings → accounts menu, you should see bar@baz.com signed in. Disable wifi, bluetooth, automatic sync, & “automatically share data about features”.

Back up settings

This is optional. I want to be able to factory reset and then restore the freshly hacked DB quickly if needed.

$ cd /media/jefdaj/KOBOeReader
$ tar -cvf /tmp/2024-01-09_dot-kobo-hack-success.tar. .kobo/

Use it offline

I mount it as a USB drive and copy EPUBs and PDFs to/from the computer.

You can manage books via drag-and-drop or using something like Calibre. If you read a lot of academic papers you can also sync them via ZotFile. There’s probably an equivalent for Mendeley too.

Finally, I export my notebooks to PDF (individually via the kobo menu) and rsync --delete the Exported Notebooks folder to the PC as a backup.