9 Answers2025-07-08
What is the emotional core of wanting sync? For me it has always been a fear of not being able to find my place again, a fear of discontinuity. But I came to realize that this anxiety could be alleviated not by improved technology, but by a change in habit. I now always try to finish reading a section at a chapter break. If that isn’t possible, I just make a quick note of some unique phrase or other near where I shall pick up again, and then off I go. Our brains are amazing pattern-matching machines. I have trained mine to remember where I left off, and if that doesn’t work, then I simply skim-read until I pick up where I had got to. Ditching the need to have all digital reading perfectly synched has, for me, turned reading into something that is purely reading once again.
8 Answers2026-03-28
"Buy an e-reader" really means "buy into an ecosystem". So, the screen itself is just a part of the whole. All the other functions and so on are outside of the walls of the store of the manufacturer and their approved partners. I chose the Kobo over the Kindle for one reason: direct access to Libby to borrow e-books. If my main source of books was Hoopla, I might have looked for an Android-based e-ink tablet and associated with that respective library. Really it all depends on which ecosystem best serves the main source of books for you.
7 Answers2025-08-11
Hi, Just like you, I have a requirement that must be met: no matter which device I use to read, my reading progress can be recorded automatically, and I won't have to trouble myself to flip back to the page I stopped at when I switch devices. I know Kobo has a mobile app, but can it implement functions like cross-device reading progress sync, just like the Kindle app? Did you ever get an answer to the question you asked earlier?
13 Answers2025-08-15
Thinking about the ecosystem helped. The “library” for me is Libby/OverDrive, the DRM manager and transfer station is Adobe Digital Editions (ADE), and my Kobo eReader is my reading device. So, the “sync” does not go directly from Libby to Kobo, but rather from Libby to ADE to Kobo. ADE is a necessary middleman who checks if I have the right to read a book. So, in short, I’m not “syncing” Libby books to my Kobo, I’m using ADE to lend a compatible file to my Kobo. Thinking of it that way helped me to understand what I’m doing. It’s a loan of a file, not a service that syncs cloud-based copies of books.
7 Answers2025-09-02
Official help is provided for some of the problems, but what if those are not enough? You have to seek help of forums like XDA Developers and MobileRead. We talk about manual changes to database as well as about firmware rollbacks. It is a deep and nasty problem but sometimes it is the only solution.
7 Answers2025-07-02
The trickier problem to manage than syncing position, is managing the download of the audio files for the chapters. Often, a listener’s position will sync between devices, but the audio file for the current chapter may not download on their second device. Then when they try to play it, it will appear to start at the correct position, but then buffeer for long periods of time before playing. The only way to avoid this problem is to make sure that the next 2-3 chapters of audio download on both of your devices when you start a new book.
Sure. Usually these apps Sync up progress automatically between devices and all, but that only really works for Syncing up position (i.e., where you were listening). Downloading audio for actual chapters has to be done manually and, for reasons mentioned before, most apps don’t automatically Sync audio for you to store locally on your device. So on good Wi-Fi you can get away with downloading chapters on the fly, but in the subway, or on the road in a dead zone, remember to Sync up the chapters for your second device as well.
3 Answers2026-06-09
So I just wanted to give a thumbs up to the new audiobook feature on Kobo Plus. I am halfway through listening to “Project Hail Mary” on audio and the narrator is wonderful. The app allows for listening at higher speeds as well as adding bookmark. While browsing around I noticed they list both audiobooks and ebooks under the same title so you can easily switch between the two. Not all titles are available in audio though – but enough that I’ve decided to keep my subscription active. Offline downloading of titles is also great for long flights.
10 Answers2025-09-02
My little trick for reading on both devices is to always stop at the end of a chapter. For some reason the two devices seem to sync better up to a chapter end than to any arbitrary page number. Thus if I finish reading a chapter on my phone, I know that when I pick up my tablet to continue reading, I will start on the correct page for the start of the next chapter. However, if I stop reading in the middle of a chapter on my phone, then there is a 50/50 chance that I will pick up reading on the correct page on my tablet. This is just one of the little idiosyncrasies that I have grown to live with.
11 Answers2025-07-26
I never really managed to get to grips with Calibre. The user interface was just too intense for me.
10 Answers2025-08-03
Why do we accept this? Other media do not have anywhere near this problem. Play a CD anywhere, play a DVD anywhere, stream music or movies anywhere. Books are not even close to being as portable as these other media. We accept the walled-gardens that are Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, etc. because they appear to offer us convenience, but in reality they are inconveniencing us in ways that other media do not. The community created solution to this is Calibre, a bit of a hack, but it works. It is a way to preserve your own digital library against the wishes of the platform. Should Amazon decide to remove books from our libraries or Kobo raise their prices again, at least the books will be DRM-free on your own hard drive.