iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

So when you open that one book, you only see blank pages and you can't turn pages to go forward or back?

Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

was back reading again after 10 years without books. Magic. Congratulations to your mum for what I hope are many more great years of reading ❤️

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

The first time I realized what a game changer ereaders could be for older adults, it was speaking to an 85-year old who had stopped reading at 75 because of macular degeneration. He was given a Kobo by his 65 year old son and...

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

They are so good. I have 20-ish I’m carrying around with me all the time. And they look amazing.

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Such a great book. Thank you for the incredible story.

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

That's the goal. As someone struggling through language learning, I love it. Not sure if we get the wider storage in this next fix, but we do bring them back.

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Yes please. It's a whole new renderer and while we really have been putting it through the paces, it always needs more eyes.

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

It's still around I think - has some useful stuff for us that helps with annotations and other goodness. But no longer *necessary* for a good reading experience.

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Did you set prices for other territories? Hit up @kobowritinglife.bsky.social - they have the deep author knowledge.

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The safety-minded get the comfort of knowing that real kobo users have putting the new software through the paces. Everyone gets the best reading experience we can give you. Want to know more about what's inside Kobo OS 6 and what why we are doing it? Read on 👇

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Again, you can hang out until we have the official version locked down if you want (most people will.) But if you're willing to help us test these out, we are so grateful. The adventurous get new features and we get feedback on bugs.

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This is all showing up in our beta program first to give small groups of users an optional early look while providing us feedback. Want to know more about the Kobo OS beta and what we have found so far? Learn all about it here 👇

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

your hand-written annotations on the page as you wrote them. Don’t worry - We captured an exact image of what your annotation looked like when you wrote it and you can click on the 🗒️ icon in the margin to see it in its original state. Highlighting and typed annotations are unchanged.

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Annotations - In-book annotations capability remains the same as ever. But with the renderer changing, we might not be able to display your annotations exactly the same as before (i.e. letter spacing, margins and line spacing can be slightly different). That means we can’t always reproduce

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Tables of Contents - Currently slower than the older version, but we’re working on speeding it up.

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Opening Books - The *first* time you open a book, it will take a few seconds longer. (We are doing a bunch of caching and analysis with that first open that we didn’t do before.) But after that, it should be quick.

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

There are also a couple of things right now that you will notice as not being quite as responsive as the old Kobo software:

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

7. A clock while you read! (I know, took us long enough 🤷‍♂️)

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

6. Wifi & Bluetooth - You can now connect to a Wifi network using WPS, and turn Wifi and Bluetooth on or off separately to help manage battery life better. (shout-out to my Kobo Remote friends. IYKYK.)

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

That required just about every interface on Kobo to get reworked behind the scenes while keeping the UI that you know and love unchanged.

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

5. Accessibility - New regulations, especially in the EU, require that the whole experience have accessibility technologies built in: text-to-speech (TTS), Large Print Mode, and Screen Reader mode via Bluetooth.

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

the many varieties of Captcha, 3DS, library system logins, wifi hotspots and other curveballs that the web now throws at us, even though we are a relatively non-browse-y ereader.

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

4. Security - As modern security checks & fraud detection have become ever more important, we need up-to-date browsers and renderers in the Kobo ereader that could handle...

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Now Kobo ePubs *(aka KEPUBs) and sideloaded ePubs will use the same renderer!

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

3. Renovations - The current Kobo OS has now been in development for more than 10 years. Some of the foundational pieces were getting a bit rusty and it was time to move them to newer, more modern frameworks, including the core ebook renderer that displays all of the pages of your books.

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

2. Performance - A big rebuild of rendering means both stylus performance ✍️ on Kobo Libra Colour and Elipsa 2E, and fixed-layout content like manga and graphic novels will be faster.

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

1. Getting Ready for New Stuff! - Kobo OS 6 is the platform for a bunch of new features that will be dropping soon. Some of these sit at the top of Kobo’s “Most Requested by Users” list (no spoilers - sorry!). Many parts of Kobo ereader software had to be rebuilt to get ready for the new arrivals.

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

First off - this update is going out to - Kobo Clara Colour - Kobo Clara BW - Kobo Libra Colour - Kobo Elipsa 2E We will be looking at support for other devices in the future. These have the combination of memory, processor speed needed to support the new software and features. Why do we need it?

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Question of the day: What is Kobo OS 6? What’s changing? Kobo OS is the software that powers our ereaders and handles everything from turning pages to library downloads.Because this is starting to roll out as a limited, optional beta, I thought I would share some details (very excited!). Read on…

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

These all get addressed in the next release, Kobo OS 6.0.1, and then we will open the Beta back up to the next groups of users and continue on!

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

4. (fixing 🛠️) When using our new on-device Adobe DRM sign-in, books didn’t open properly. 5. (fixing 🛠️) Installing the beta with a very large library could lead to the ereader getting stuck in the middle of the update, leaving the device stuck or some books blank.

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

3. (fixing 🛠️) The “My Words” list went away. The fix will return it with your previous words intact (if you don’t know it, My Words is the beta feature where the words you looked up with the dictionary are added to your My Words list for later reference. Great for language learning.)

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

2. (fixing 🛠️) Reading “time remaining” was sometimes incorrect.

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

1. (fixing 🛠️) Reading stats, annotations, side-loaded books sometimes disappeared. They were still on the ereader, just weren’t being shown. (Again, don’t revert back to the old version of the OS - we can make them reappear again with the next release).

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

At the end of last week and over the weekend, we did Round 1, Kobo OS 6.0 beta. Now we are pausing and fixing while we get Beta 6.0.1 ready. Here’s what we found and are fixing:

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Second - emphasis on “limited” - we roll this out to blocks of about 25,000 users at a time, seeing how things are working then adding more people. If you don’t see it yet, don’t worry. All part of the process. When we see something that isn’t working, we pause, fix, and then continue to roll out.

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

First - emphasis on “optional”. You don’t have to do this right now. We do a beta release to gather feedback and see if there are any issues we missed before rolling it out to a bigger audience. For the more adventurous, it gives an early look to new Kobo features.

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

We have a beta version of Kobo OS 6.0 that is showing up to a limited number of Kobo customers as an optional update. Here’s what it’s for, what we’ve learned so far, and what happens next:

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Can’t wait to find out where I end up 👍

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I’m sticking around. No worries.

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Tell me a bit more about what you’re seeing. Were these books purchased on kobo or picked from Kobo Plus?

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

This week, when you visit kobo.com, you may get an "are you human" challenge. Why? We are getting *hammered* by bot traffic right now. Some of our AI friends are just crushing our search, running huge numbers of queries. So we're taking steps to make sure the site works for all of our reading humans

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Anyway, everyone here has been awesome, so I'm going to make sure the love is spread evenly between all of my short-messaging-platform parasocial friends. ❤️

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Thank you to the @kobobooks.bsky.social social team who worked some magic and a very understanding person at Meta who may have given things a nudge. Altogether, a good reminder to diversify your social media channels. Without our industry connections, not sure if I could have found a way back.

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

while answering Kobo questions in English, French, Malay, Indonesian, Dutch, and Chinese -- combined to make me look like something more nefarious than a CEO with bad sleep habits and overworked dopamine receptors (or more bot-like). An algorithmic trapdoor opened up and I went to Threads jail!

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

If you're already Bluesky, you probably won't care, but the social gods reached down from Meta Olympus and brought my Threads account back to life. The working theory: some combination of round-the-clock posting, four timezones in one week working across four devices, work VPNs vs. personal...

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

that's a fairly lateral move, but I get it. If you ever feel like giving it another shot, we're here for you!

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Michael Tamblyn @mtamblyn.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Thanks! Missing all my kobo friends. 😂

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