Introduction

I recently purchased a Kobo Libra H20 e-reader to replace my aging old Kobo H20. I’ve always liked the Kobos and my e-reader has always been a great way to consume books, especially for long trips and when space is limited in luggage.

To my dismay, however, they now require you to sign-in with an online account before you can even use the device!

The old Kobo on the left and the new one on the right.

Then I found this brilliant blog post that talks about editing the SQLite database on the Kobo Clara: YingTongLi Blog

This does work on the Libra H20 and wanted to document the process here in case something happens to the other site.

Steps

1. Power on the Kobo.

2. Select “Don’t have a Wi Fi network?” and connect the Kobo to your PC. Don’t download or open the Kobo Desktop software.

3. Browse to the Kobo storage drive that appears in your PC and navigate to the .kobo directory. In there will be a KoboReader.sqlite database file.

4. Open the sqlite database using sqlite3 (on Linux) or sqlite3.exe from here for Windows. Modify the database by inserting a dummy user with this SQL query: INSERT INTO user(UserID,UserKey) VALUES('1','');

5. Finished! Your Kobo should now log you in with a fake account.

And that’s all there is to it :)