More Tailscale tricks for your jailbroken Kindle
tailscale.com379 points by Error6571 16 hours ago
379 points by Error6571 16 hours ago
KOReader (mentioned in the article, an alternative OSS interface you can install on most ereaders) is really a marvellous piece of software. I was not sure about setting it up at first, fearing it would drain battery out of my Kobo and whatnot, but I never had any issue with it. The amount of stuff you can customize to your liking has no limit and I feel I have reached the endgame of reading comfort. If you own an ereader, I highly recommend installing it. I'm happy and grateful people spend time developing and maintaining it without being paid!
I don’t know man. Maybe it’s a great reader for those who really need to customize everything. However, I found it very hard to use. I can never find settings where I’d expect them to be. Is font or margins or hyphenation under the Gear symbol or the Document symbol or the Wrench symbol or the long-press book settings? Is it then under Typography, Display, Style, Text or Miscellaneous?
I had it on my ereader to check it out, but never got around to it. One time on a long flight I had a Gutenberg Project book that wasn’t rendering correctly and thought I’d give KOReader a try. Spent like 10 minutes trying to find how to disable hyphenation. And even if you get to the right menu, there will be a dozen options to scroll through on 1-3 pages. Maybe if I had internet to check where each setting is to set it up, but it’s not very intuitive to configure. I came from Kobo default reader where all the settings I care about are all front and center and you find them in the first place you look all grouped together.
Also, I realize this is a personal preference, I don’t like the “file explorer” view. I prefer a “library” view like Kobo or Kindle defaults to. If that makes sense.
> Also, I realize this is a personal preference, I don’t like the “file explorer” view. I prefer a “library” view like Kobo or Kindle defaults to. If that makes sense.
I'm with you, my reading device is something where I don't want to fiddle or be distracted by settings and options. I just want a stock, opinionated device with good defaults that just works and I have to charge once a month. That's it.
For many people, this is what the Kindle used to be, but isn't now.
Why? I'm using my old Kindle Paperwhite every day, for many years now and I haven't had any issues or "distractions" pop up ever. Rarely I have to plug it into my computer to send books to it with Calibre, that's my only interaction with this device.
I'm just lazy and toggle airplane mode with the send-to-kindle @kindle.com email, though sometimes Amazon isn't happy and doesn't send it.
It does refresh the lockscreen ads for a month or so, though. I have a cover so they don't really bother me.
agreed, obviously reading a book itself is the simplest way to read a book. but the simplest way to carry around an entire library is technology. so id like to remove the fiddling or needing to interact with said technology as a barrier to me turning off my brain from life to get sucked into a book
It seems like you would only have to do this stuff once. So the main complaint is 'the settings menus need to be better organized'. That seems achievable.
> I don’t like the “file explorer” view
Exact reason why despite having a jailbroken Kindle, I stick to the stock book browser. It's so tough to navigate on an old-gen Kindle with a low refresh rate.
Check out this plugin: https://github.com/AndyHazz/bookshelf.koplugin
I had the same problem and someone here shared the plugin, it does the job very well independently of your file structure and nesting.
One thing I really appreciate about KOReader is that it runs on so many devices. I like its stock experience, and I can have that experience on my Supernote and on my Kobo, and sync progress between the two.
Over the years I've gone from Kindle to Pocketboot to Boox to Kobo. Sometimes eReaders break, sometimes I hand them down to family members. Whenever I need to buy an eReader, as long as runs KOReader somehow I can pick the device purely based on its hardware instead of worrying about the stock software, compatible formats, etc.
But you're absolutely right that finding the specific setting you're looking for is an unintuitive process.
> I care about
Feels like you have my problem: "I can not be bother to switch from another app".
When every one wants their e-reader with custom setup you get that long list of options. Since the beginning of computing I have always wanted a custom UI on apps, i.e. add an icon here that does these three things in the app, or "add this view to that window". Even browsers plugins have a hard time getting it right.
Check out https://github.com/AndyHazz/bookshelf.koplugin
I had the same problem with the missing Home Screen view and that solved it: you can see all your books no matter how deeply nested they are
Yeah, the UI IMO is very confusing and I'm not sure it has any benefits for me or features over the stock Kobo interface. It also will understandably never support vertical writing too so it loses some more appeal there for me.
Exactly my thoughts. But it all changed when i just put the tailscale proxy on kindle and allowed claude to ssh into it. Now i can just configure it remotely and never really need to do anything else except reading on kindle itself.
Ohhhh that's not a bad idea at all. I'd read the article and was still largely in the "but why do I care?" space, but hands off management makes a lot of sense.
Why does Tailscale need to be used for Claude? Can’t you just ssh into it locally?
For me Tailscale is what i setup for all my homelab services. This way my Kindle feels like just another homelab service exposed by Tailscale. I'm sure you can do it differently.
Agreed. KOReader is great in terms of capability but it is really let down by poor UI. I got used to it but it's not great
The UI can be confusing at first. Bu take some time to get familiar with it and it can be really nice. The main benefits for me is dealing with poorly formatted epub and sensible viewing of pdf on small screen (kobo libra 2). There’s also OPDS support to connect to my calibre server instance and get book that way.
There’s no benefits if you get your books from the stores. But if you manage your ebook library yourself, koreader is great.
KOReader + BookOrbit (or Calibe or whatever you like best) is awesome.
KOReader is finicky to configure but once you have it set up its hands down the best experience. I use BookShelf as my main UI and BookEnds to configure the header/footer. I also use KOAssistant which lets you select text and chuck it at an LLM to explain/translate/custom-prompt/etc.
It was so nice when reading the Horatio Hornblower series where the old references or nautical terms were foreign to me. Just select a phrase, hit Explain, and in seconds get an LLM response right there on my kindle. Just like how the dictionary works (though obviously the LLM isn’t running locally).
With BookOrbit tracking my reading/annotations and providing my ebooks I’ve reached my perfect reading setup. Using Claude to configure some ESP32-based e-Ink screens to rotate book quotes I’ve personally highlighted in KOReader is peak self-hosted, super custom just tor me.
I’m so glad my coworker encouraged me to go down this route!
> Just select a phrase, hit Explain, and in seconds get an LLM response right there on my kindle.
but will it explain without giving spoilers?
I’m normally selecting snippets small enough that they don’t invite spoilers. I think the plugin gives the book author/title but I don’t know the full prompt (I should look). So far I’ve not hit any spoilers. For all I know the prompt says something about avoiding spoilers.
I’ve thought for a while about writing something that only gives the model access to the book as far as you are. Maybe some king of RAG but with page numbers associated so you can filter “< $currentPage” and being able to ask questions “who is this again?”, “how are they related to X?”. The “world knowledge” is the main thing I’d have to be wary of. It’s going to know Harry is a wizard before you get to that part in the books (albeit that’s early, just making a point).
For the Horatio Hornblower series it was mostly older English phrases that had the feel of a “saying” but I couldn’t be sure of the meaning. Getting a response like “in the late 1700’s this phrase was used to mean…” was really cool, better than having to pull out my phone or just guess.
woahhhhhh i had no clue about book orbit. i found calibre stuff to be a bit jank at times. This is super cool. gonna toss an instance on my server tonight
This [0] may or may not interest you, yes it’s vibe coded but I wanted a way to hook BookOrbit into my Omni-Claude [1] instance.
[0] https://github.com/joshstrange/bookorbit-mcp
[1] This isn’t a “thing”, just Claude code on the CLI that has access to my obsidian notes, home assistant, Unifi, bookorbit, etc. My own, very limited “Claw”. “Speaking” home assistant automations into existence is a whole other topic I could on and on about.
What makes it so good for you? I'm very comfortable with installing stuff like this in general, but I've never felt the need to install KOReader since I don't experience any issues with the basic software.
The only thing I'd maybe like is syncing reading progress with TheStoryGraph, but I can't imagine what else I might want.
In addition to stuff mentioned by others, things I like:
- Fully customizable status bars, top and bottom (I like book progress at the top, chapter progress at the bottom, various indicators like remaining time, brightness level...)
- Custom dictionaries (like reader.dict, very complete), and choice over how to display them
- Advanced typography stuff (override publisher font if you like, add all the ligatures...)
- Fully customizable gestures (jump anywhere, recent locations, skim book, bookmark page, adjust brightness...)
- Book map: see a schematic view of the whole book, with chapters / subchapters length (gives me a feeling of how much I've read and is left to read, as would a real book)
- Page number / count that "just works" (epubs on kobo don't count actual page flips which I find annoying)
I’ve only just installed it this week, but for me:
- DRM support (via a Plugin)
- Dark mode on an older device
- SSH Server
- Custom dictionaries
Next on my list is to find a plugin that can transform imperial to metric for when I’m reading American books
Edit: oh and also something that syncs my progress on books not bought from Amazon on multiple devices
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And kilometers to go before I sleep,
And kilometers to go before I sleep.there is even a Syncthing plugin: https://github.com/jasonchoimtt/koreader-syncthing
Auto dark mode after dusk based on your location
Better page flip area options
Active corners that can do custom things and with layers
More text layout options (although the stock kobo firmware is decent at that already)
It’s a bit cumbersome to setup but once you’re done it pays back in how pleasant it makes the device to use.
It's very configurable and extensible. As some have mentioned, the interface can be a bit confusing at times but once you're used to it it's mostly out of your way. I like that I can run it on both my Kobo and android phone and sync progress. I also self host an opds server but you can also connect to calibre, syncthing, or cloud storage to pull down books. There's even a plugin to sync my progress to hardcover, which is a more open alternative to Goodreads.
A few things I like:
- More frontlight options. Ability to toggle on/off easily using corner taps,
- More page layout and typography options e.g. custom fonts,
- Ability to load from Calibre over WiFi (I never plug mine in via USB).
Worth nothing that KOReader doesn't replace the default Kobo firmware. It's easy to install and you launch it from the Kobo firmware so it's easy to quit and go back to normal.
> Worth nothing that KOReader doesn't replace the default Kobo firmware. It's easy to install and you launch it from the Kobo firmware so it's easy to quit and go back to normal.
Ah, that's definitely something I missed, sounds like a good reason to give it a try!
Same for Kindle. Nothing changes, you just have a link to open KOReader and you can still use your device as before, if you choose to
+1 to this. KOReader acts like an always-on "app" opened from the regular kindle launcher. I believe there may be a way to make it auto start on boot, but it doesn't replace the base OS.
The overwhelming thing I hear about KOreader is once people use it for their way of reading (including doing things they coudlnt) they can't use an ereader any other way again.
The interface is a bit complicated. Maybe their brains get rewired after figuring it out. :)
Pretty sure that’s what happens after adapting to Dvorak. Still not sure why ascended beings bother communicating with us though.
I actually switched to dvorak for a while and got fast with it then swapped back due to qwerty, lol.
It felt really nice to type on but my issues were adjacent to the that
You can read epubs directly. Cloud storage. It's got like everything so you should check out the features list.
What does directly mean? I can read epubs directly now (but more importantly, kepubs)
Going from EPUB to KEPUB requires conversion (I believe KEPUB has XHTML directly embedded into it, right?). It's Kobo's proprietary format to "support" fast scrolling with preview, reading time estimates, etc.
Yes, Kobo can potentially read EPUBs natively, however the support is intentionally gimped to try and push you towards KEPUB/their own store.
Ah, I had not considered that the limitations of epubs were due to the device rather than the format. Having said that, Calibre does does the conversion on the fly when I upload my books, so I don't really experience any issues there
> I'm happy and grateful people spend time developing and maintaining it without being paid!
They only don't get paid if you choose to not pay them.
Same on my kobo. The only thing I was missing was the kobo like Home Screen where it shows all your books no matter how deeply nested. But of course there is a plugin for that: https://github.com/AndyHazz/bookshelf.koplugin
The only thing I’m missing now is a stylesheet or something to make a spot on the right edge be free of text as that’s where my external page turner clips (for hands free reading) and it hides part of the book’s text otherwise. If anyone has any clue on how to do it, lmk!
KOReader is a must have for Remarkable 2. If you are going to install it on your Remarkable 2, use reManager.m, it's amazing.
A similarly awesome ebook reader on Android is Librera. The package on F-Droid is the full version but one may also buy it on the play store the support the Ukranian developer.
I’ve just jailbroken my Kindle this week. I have a Paperwhite 7th Generation and my biggest problem was that I didn’t have dark mode on it. Turns out the only reason that is is because Amazon didn’t want me to have it. Maybe maybe I’ll buy a new device. KOReader has no problem with dark mode and is much faster and snappier than the Kindle software.
What’s funnier is that both my son and my wife have the Paperwhite 10th generation, but only my wife’s device has dark mode. Same exact device, different software depending on when it was bought.
The second major reason for Jailbreaking is that KOReader can do DRM through a plugin so I was finally able to loan out ebooks from my library. No need for a new device, the 10 year old one works extremely well with the right software
> Same exact device, different software depending on when it was bought.
Can't you update it to the latest firmware?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
I had no idea I can update it manually, I’ve always relied on the over the air update, that, in this case, says I’m on the newest version
Nooo, now you can’t jailbreak it :,(
That’s what I did before I looked into KOReader and now I’m sad I did
Turn off updates and wait.
Also, if the rest of the software world is any guide, turning an LLM loose on it would find a new jailbreak in short order.
Which DRM does it support? Can you buy Amazon books and read them? If so, does the DRM plugin come from Amazon?
ACSM, I don’t know about Amazon. In my case I can still use the kindle software itself to read those if I decide to ever buy from Amazon again
I had a similar project for bringing up Tailscale on a very resource-limited router, the gl.inet SFT1200, which has only 128 megabytes of RAM, and a dual-core MIPS processor.
Despite my best efforts, the original tailscale-go was simply not going to work, since it used too much RAM, even when I followed some of the tips for stripping the unneeded parts of the binary. Thankfully there was an open-source port to Rust, which more effectively used memory: https://github.com/GeiserX/tailscale-rs
What was surprising to me is that every Kindle released since 2019 has, at minimum, 512 megabytes of RAM, and therefore plenty of memory for tailscale-go to use.
Jokes on you Tailscale, the kindle community already has Bluetooth keyboard support https://github.com/zampierilucas/kindle-hid-passthrough :p
Ok, this one crosses the bar - time to jailbreak my Kindle. On days when I don't vibe-code (or code less), I get this withdrawal-like feeling (lack of dopamine?), and I tend to spend too much time watching dumb X posts or striving for anything that ticks my nerves. Actually, I could use this time to catch up on my RSS queue.
That could be a signal that you have an unhealthy relationship with vibe-coding. I agree an e-reader could help with that!
You will probably also want to add `--no-logs-no-support` (don't mind the FUD-y argument name) to the scripted invocation of `tailscaled` here: https://github.com/victoria-riley-barnett/koreader-tailscale...
Otherwise Tailscale (the company) will be collecting your behavioral metadata every time you use your Kindle (what other hosts it connects to, on what ports, connection open and close timestamps, etc): https://tailscale.com/docs/features/logging#opt-out-of-clien...
Yes obviously the actual connection contents are encrypted, but ”just metadata” tells a whole heck of a lot about you: https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metad...
If metadata loging is a concern, worth mentioning you can self host the co ordinates server with the headscale instead. cuts tailscale is out of loop entirely rather than just opting out of what claim to collect.
Kind of a hijack comment, but since RSS was mentioned - Do you guys have some recommendations for ereader friendly feeds? Content like r/longreads is what comes to mind.
I suspect my jailbroken Kindles will soon get a brand new, in-house developed bare-metal OS of my own design 100%, as it is now possible to do it, which was nearly impossible few years ago...
What makes it possible now, is there a new mediatek bootrom vuln?
LLMs got powerful enough to implement much of what's missing from scratch. My guess is most older devices/bootloaders would soon be jailbroken/cracked in some... automated manner thanks to LLMs getting very powerful in reverse-engineering. There are plenty of implications we should think so.
Well, as of today I am not aware of any applicable bootchain exploits. Bootroms are small, and it's plausible for there to be no software bugs to find, regardless of how smart your LLM or human brain is (which is why fault injection modchips exist).
Even if your kindle is on older firmware that doesn’t have some of the kernel extensions needed by Tailscale to create the .. TUN ? Type network interface, you can still kind of get it working in the user space mode with .. -tun -userspace-networking
And then I see my koreader calibre is pointing at localhost:8081.. so maybe there was a proxy?
It’s been a while since I set it up. But it’s possible
ah, to live in a country where the government doesn't block wireguard packets
As someone completely out of the loop - which countries block WireGuard packets en masse?
China, Iran, Russia
I knew this was the case, but I did a couple of stopovers in China earlier this year when flying to/from Japan, and using Tailscale to connect through my local homelab worked perfectly.
All mobile roaming traffic is tunneled through your home country. The host network simply forwards everything to and from your provider at home.
That's only if you're using roaming on your home provider which I doubt many people are. Most people visiting China are either one WiFi (thus are inside the Chinese firewall) or are using a travel (e)sim which usually routes packets through one of the neighbouring countries/regions. Last time I was there Tailscale with my exit node terminating at a residential British IP address worked fine on both but discovering relay nodes on WiFi didn't work so I had to switch to data.
Which is also why you get Google results in your own language, even if you're in Japan. Google receive your requests from an IP address in your own country.
Between KOReader, SSH, and Tailscale, something completely wrecked the battery life of my Kindle Oasis, and introduced frequent reboots/crashes. That was a previous implementation, maybe things have improved.
Yeah, my first guess is Tailscale. It's a pretty bit battery hog when on iOS. And frankly Android too.
Bought a second hand kindle and love it after near 10 years of my first kindle battery bloated
Still not want to jailbreak it because experience is good and I just share some books to the phone app and it get synced to the kindle device
Love tailscale though, perhaps Need buy some full open source ebook reader with tailscale installed
I own a Boox and I've thought about putting it on my tailnet... I love the device, but unfortunately, I trust it about as far as I trust the Chinese government, which means no connections to my accounts or networks, ever. It's a shame.
Can't let a Boox mention go by without highlighting that they've never released the linux kernel source for any of their devices. They've been challenged on it and refused to comply with the GPL for over 10 years now.
You don’t have any Chinese made electronics in your home network otherwise? TV, router, networking gear etc?
No. I mean, I don't allow appliances onto my network. I have a dumb TV. Apart from a Roku with some netflix credentials, only my phone and my laptop have any software that's logged into my tailnet, vpn, bank accounts, email, etc.
I used to worry about this, but what’s more likely, trouble with Chinese electronics or American? And if travelling though either of those places?
Between the two of them, it rules out most the devices I have or what like.
I made this for ESP32 in Rust giving full Tailscale experience with NAT-traversal https://github.com/punnerud/mpe-tunnel
Any suggestions for an ancient Chromebook?
Have one that is managed by a school from 10 years ago and they failed to release the device.
I am a fan of alpine Linux which i think may work well on an old Chromebook.
Any suggestions/links welcome
If you still want ChromeOS, try https://chromeos.google/intl/en_au/products/chromeos-flex/
If you want to boot a Linux distribution, try https://docs.mrchromebox.tech/
Along with farfatched's suggestions, you could look into Postmarket OS (based on Alpine Linux).
The devices page on their wiki shows compatibility with specific devices - https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices
> managed by a school […] and they failed to release the device.
This means you cannot install the alternate OS setups mentioned in sibling comments.
Throw it away.
ETA: info correct as of a long time ago. I have done no new research.
It would be useful to compare Imiron with existing formal methods tools so developers can quickly see where it fits.
That is pretty cool! Anyonehad success with this kn a Tolino reader? I'll give it a try too
Would be great to see some way to run WireGuard on kindle or kobo devices
Adding a few real-world setups, like Calibre, Nextcloud, or Home Assistant, would help readers understand the practical benefits.
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Reader mode is in all major browsers.
Also I really don't see how this meets "unreadable". It's very plain and normal, at least on mobile. (Which is a compliment to the site)
I was also going to make a snarky comment about AI written blog posts but they are just so prevalent now it’s barely worth saying. I just have to suppress the irritation and parse out the information. And I’m guilty of doing AI documentation so I’m a total hypocrite.
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