Kobo e-Readers have a new homescreen

February 24, 2017 By Michael Kozlowski 19 Comments

Kobo has pushed out a new firmware update for the vast majority of their e-readers that give users a new homescreen experience. It now shows bright and vibrant images of the books you are reading that look really good on higher resolution devices. There is also a direct link to the Kobo digital bookstore and instructions on how to use Pocket.

Kobo rarely provides development logs on new firmware updates. Here is a list of everything we know so far in the 4.3.8842 update pushed out via WIFI to users today.

New home screen. But, this is not be enabled for all people and devices.
Series sorting in the library lists. When selected, the books are sorted as if the series and series index was added to the start of the title.
Search on home screen remembers the last search used.
Buttons on the brightness slider changes the level by 1%.
The Gresyscale Dithering of Gradient colours has *finally* been fixed in the Epub viewer.

Michael Kozlowski

Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about audiobooks and e-readers for the past ten years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and Verge.

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JV
I recently received free kobo glo. So far the kobo experience doesn’t really impress me much. I think i would like it better if it was one the devices with Overdrive integration…but overall i think the Amazon experience is better…and most of the books more expensive on Kobo.
Florent C.
Hate that new home screen 🙁
Michael Kozlowski
It looks more like the Kindle, but you know Kobo has had the same home screen, for what. 5 years? I think that Kobo needed to do something, the home screen does look better on higher resolution screens than lower ones though.
J. Martinios Agathokles
I also preferred the old one. Frankly, I don’t feel like Kobo needed any kind of major overhaul of their homescreen. It was very recognisable as theirs.
David Bowerman
A rather familiar looking screenshot of the new home screen. Perhaps some attribution would have been nice.
Austin
I don’t have this on my Glo HD. I want it though. I updated today but it updated to a version older than the one specified and it all looks the same. Anyone have a glo HD that they got the update for?
Jon Wolf
Way to steal from MobileRead ONCE AGAIN!
Stefan
Same happened to me, try to forget your WiFi network, connect to it again and update again.
Gherhardt Mathisz
Will this apply to the original Kobo Aura?
Captain Vyom
What an idiotic comment. Information and news is freely available and is not the property of a forum that runs solely off tid bits from people who are not even compensated for their contributions.
Jon Wolf
The screen capture used in the article is from a user on MobileRead and there was no credit given.So yeah, the information was stolen from MobileRead. There would have been no issue if proper credit was given instead of just stealing things from others.
Captain Vyom
Oh, okay, I did nothing realise that was what you were referring to. Fair enough. The comment really ought to be more specific. It sounded as though you were objecting to the entire article.
Jon Wolf
I was objecting to the entire article because the information was gotten elsewhere with no credit to where it was taken from.
AuroraHD
Will this work for the Kobo Mini?
Vera
did you guys manage to get the new home screen? I updated mine and it had the new home screen to begin with. When I turned it back on the next time, it revert back to the old home screen.
Stefan
That’s weird. Try resetting device. That should fix the problem. On the other hand maybe you’ve installed some custom sfw on it.
Chiara Scarafiotti
New Home page is AWFUL!!!! i cannot customize and delete the not wanted information. Please revert
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