Kobo's reading statistics on your Tolino, for sideloaded EPUBs too.
-informational){kind=icon}
Installation · Features · Privacy · How it works · Development · Releases · Deutsch
Tolino e-readers run the same software as Kobo devices, but Kobo's "Reading Stats" are switched off on them, and even on a Kobo they only work for kepub files. NickelReadingStats is a NickelHook mod that turns them back on, adds them to regular EPUBs, and keeps your Tolino a Tolino: store, cloud, DRM and privacy behave as before.
Important
Using v0.1.0 or v0.2.0? Please update to the latest release. Those versions let Kobo's analytics run on the Tolino and could upload reading events to Google. v0.2.1 and later stop this and deletes entries that have not been sent yet. See Privacy.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Book statistics | Per-book page in the reading menu with chapter bars. Chapters already read are highlighted, and "time left" estimates are shown. |
| Activity | "Activity" entry in the More menu: hours read, minutes per session, pages per minute. |
| Regular EPUBs | Works for sideloaded EPUBs and books bought in a Tolino store, not just kepubs. Word counts are computed in the background and cached per book. |
| Tolino stays Tolino | Kobo behaviour is enabled only for the few functions that record reading time and page turns. The Thalia (or other bookseller) account, sync and downloads are unaffected. |
| Privacy | Kobo's analytics and Google Analytics are silenced on the Tolino. |
| Fails safe | Every hook is optional and degrades gracefully: if something does not match the firmware, a statistic is missing, not your device's behaviour. |
Book statistics in the reading menu (left) and the Activity page (right) on a Tolino with firmware 5.18, German UI.
| Device / firmware | Status |
|---|---|
| Tolino, firmware 5.18+ (Qt 6) | ✅ Tested (5.18.264769) |
| Kobo, firmware 5.18 / 6.0 (Qt 6) | |
| Kobo / Tolino, firmware 4.x (Qt 5) | ❌ Not supported |
| Content | Statistics |
|---|---|
Sideloaded EPUB (.epub) |
✅ Added by this mod |
| Tolino store book (EPUB with watermark) | ✅ Added by this mod |
| Tolino store book with DRM (Adobe, encrypted) | |
kepub (.kepub.epub, Kobo store books) |
✅ Unchanged, as provided by Nickel |
| Fixed-layout EPUB, image-only books, PDF, comics | ❌ Excluded, like Nickel does for kepubs |
Tip
No NickelMenu or other mod is required. NickelReadingStats brings its own hook framework.
- Download
Kobo.tgzfrom the latest release. - Connect the device via USB and copy
Kobo.tgzinto the hidden.kobo/folder. - Eject the device. It installs the update on the next start; if it does not restart by itself, restart it.
Open a sideloaded EPUB and give the word count a moment. Then the book statistics appear in the reading menu, and "Activity" shows up in the More menu. Hours read and pages per minute only fill up after you have actually read for a while.
Update: copy the newer Kobo.tgz the same way; there is no need to
uninstall first.
Uninstall: create an empty file named readingstats_uninstall (no file
extension) in the device's root folder and restart. The mod removes itself
and the device is back to stock behaviour.
Kobo's reading-life code, which the statistics need, also contains Kobo's analytics. A stock Tolino never runs it. NickelReadingStats lets the statistics part run and keeps the analytics part silent on a Tolino:
| Stock Tolino | With NickelReadingStats 0.2.1 or later | |
|---|---|---|
| Reading statistics stored on the device | — | ✅ |
Analytics events (KoboReader.sqlite) |
none | none (dropped) |
Google Analytics queue (.kobo/Kobo/Analytics.conf) |
none | none (silenced, old entries deleted) |
The statistics stay on the device. On a Kobo, analytics behave exactly as without the mod. Details: Privacy internals.
- Encrypted (DRM-protected) books cannot be word-counted: the mod would have to bypass the DRM to read their chapters, and it does not. For these books the reading time, sessions and pages per minute are still recorded, but the book statistics show no chapter bars and no "time left" estimate. Watermarked store books are not encrypted and are fully supported.
- The "time left" estimate can read too low, even "0 minutes", until Nickel has learned your reading speed from a few longer sessions. Nickel updates the speed only when a book is opened again.
- A book made of a single large HTML file shows a single chapter bar.
- The book statistics appear a moment after opening a book, once the background word count is done.
- Kobo devices have not been tested on a device yet. The firmware check (symbols, calling conventions, class layout, offsets) passes for Kobo 5.18.270971 and 6.0.276679. If you have a Kobo, feedback is very welcome.
On a Tolino, the statistics are hidden behind several checks of
Device::isTolino() and a kepub-only rule. The mod hooks these functions in
libnickel.so.1.0.0, answers "not a Tolino" only to the five Kobo
reading-life functions that need it, counts words for regular EPUBs itself,
and silences Kobo's analytics. The full description, with every hook and
the call graph, is in docs/ARCHITECTURE.md.
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/dkuester/NickelReadingStats.git
cd NickelReadingStats/hook
docker run --rm --volume="$PWD:$PWD" --workdir="$PWD" ghcr.io/dkuester/nickelstorygraph-toolchain 'make kobo'
make -C tests check # host unit testsEvery v* tag builds Kobo.tgz in CI and publishes it as a release.
Building, the test levels, the firmware symbol/ABI checks and CI are described
in docs/DEVELOPMENT.md.
| Bug reports and questions | Issues. Please include device model, firmware version (.kobo/version) and mod version. |
| Downloads and changelog | Releases |
| Earlier history | Issues and pull requests up to v0.2.1 are in the archived Codeberg repository. |
| Contributing | Pull requests against main; CI must pass. See docs/DEVELOPMENT.md. |
Warning
This mod changes the behaviour of your e-reader's software. It is not affiliated with Kobo, Rakuten or the Tolino alliance. Use it at your own risk.
This mod stands on the shoulders of:
- NickelHook (MIT, © 2020–2025
Patrick Gaskin): the hook framework, used in the
qt6-supportfork by Nico Verbruggen (nicoverbruggen/NickelHook), which adds Qt 6 support. - Qt 6.5.2 (The Qt Project / The Qt Company):
QZipReader(private API, LGPL-3.0/GPL-2.0/GPL-3.0) for reading EPUBs, plusQXmlStreamReaderandQRegularExpression. - Toolchain image
ghcr.io/dkuester/nickelstorygraph-toolchainfrom NickelStorygraph: the Docker cross-compile toolchain (arm-kobo-linux-gnueabihf, GCC 11.5, Qt 6.5.2), built on pgaskin/NickelTC. - Kobo/Tolino firmware (
libnickel.so.1.0.0; Tolino 5.18, Kobo 5.18 and 6.0): the target binary. The internal classes (Device,ReadingView,Content,EventEngine) were reverse-engineered via symbol analysis and Capstone disassembly.
This mod was reverse-engineered and built with the help of AI assistants. The analysis of the firmware gates, the disassembly and the first implementation were done with Hermes Agent (Nous Research). The code review, the hardening and the privacy fixes in v0.2.x were done with Claude Code (Anthropic). Technical review, on-device testing and sign-off were done by a human.