Some Kobo Software Shortcomings
You can’t require a password for purchases (like you can, for example, on an Apple TV). You can only set a 4-digit PIN for the entire device, but I wouldn’t want to enter a PIN every time I want to read.
Pocket on Kobo, unlike Pocket on a phone, is useful since it paginates text (on a phone I’d use Instapaper, not Pocket). But Pocket’s article rendering is pretty unreliable, and many articles it won’t even attempt (for these Pocket saves what it calls the “original view,” the actual webpage, which won’t show up at all on a Kobo, despite Kobos having web browsers).
(Kobo’s “beta” browser is “not officially supported” and reportedly much worse than Kindle’s since Amazon’s Nov 2023 update.)
(And Instapaper, itself not perfect but more reliable than Pocket, just announced PDF parsing — converting PDFs to Instapaper’s format.)
The Kobo store has no author pages. For example, there’s no way to look at only books by Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball. You can only do a search for “Michael Lewis,” which includes all the Michael Lewises with books in the Kobo store.
Missing preview samples. Preview samples are probably the single best thing about e-books vs. physical books. But a surprising number of books in the Kobo store seem to randomly have no preview attached. If only Amazon had a preview, I might understand, but why would every store but Kobo have a preview for certain books? (Concrete example: Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis — and all Michael Lewis books seem to be published by Norton, so why exclude this particular title but not, for example, Going Infinite by the same author?)
If you get to the end of a preview sample and, when prompted, buy a book on a Kobo, you not only can’t continue reading from where you are (as you have to tap on the book again in My Books), but also have to manually navigate back to where you were in the book (as it starts over on page one).
No magazines or newspapers. Kindle Unlimited has magazines. Nook has magazines. Libby has magazines. Maybe Kobo could try to partner with Apple News+.
While the font settings advanced tab has a “revert” button, there’s none on the main tab. And no way to revert brightness to its default value (at least without factory resetting the whole device).
You can hide the “recently viewed” book section of the Discover tab in the privacy settings, but you can’t clear it immediately or remove individual titles (I believe it clears itself over time, though).
(“Recently Viewed” isn’t a simple reverse chronological list but uses an algorithm for its order, including whether a book appears at all — the list shows ten items max. So, despite only showing ten, you can’t be guaranteed to clear any particular item by viewing more.)
The Home and Discover tabs can probably be combined into one. And, if it were reliable, a Pocket tab might make sense — it would eliminate an extra tap from More (alternatively, Pocket could be combined with My Books).
Update
Bill Belichick’s new book Art of Winning has no preview in the Kobo store.
Lisa Genova’s 2025 novel More or Less Maddy has no preview in the Kobo store (all her other books do have them).
Jane Mayer’s 2016 book Dark Money has no preview in the Kobo store.
Update May 22
Mozilla, Pocket’s owner, announced today they’re shutting it down on July 8.