Customize your Kobo home screen to be more minimalist.
NickelHome is a small mod for Kobo eReaders that hooks into the home screen and hides specific built-in widgets (certain columns and rows on the home screen) based on a simple configuration file.
It is built on NickelHook and is a standalone sibling of NickelMenu. The home-screen hiding feature started in my NickelMenu fork and is offered here as a standalone option.
Important
NickelHome needs the standard NickelMenu, not a fork. If you set your Kobo up with my NickelMenu fork (or with an older KoboPatch Web UI that bundled it), that fork also hooks the home screen, and the conflict stops NickelHome's hiding from working (its hooks silently never fire). Install the standard NickelMenu over the fork first (its plugin has the same filename, so it replaces it), reboot, and NickelHome will then work. This does not apply to the current KoboPatch Web UI, which installs standard NickelMenu together with NickelHome.
NickelHome hides home-screen widgets by their internal name. The lookups are scoped so other views that reuse the same names aren't affected.
| Config option | Hides |
|---|---|
hide_home_row1col2_enabled |
The dynamic slot next to your current read. |
hide_home_row2col2_enabled |
The dynamic slot next to "My Books". |
hide_home_row2_enabled |
The entire second row, including "My Books" and the content next to it. |
hide_home_row3_enabled |
The entire third row, which usually displays notices and CTAs. |
The two "dynamic slots" are the spots Kobo fills with a collection, author, wishlist, related reads, recommendations, or Top Picks / store tile ("Top 50", "Coming soon to audiobooks", ...). Hiding a slot also stops it from being filled in the first place, so content arriving late (e.g. a Top Picks tile refreshed by a store sync) can't pop back up in a slot you've hidden.
This needs firmware 4.23.15505 or newer (the version that introduced the current home-screen layout), and works on the Kobo 4.x firmware line only. If a widget doesn't exist on your firmware, it's skipped and a note is written to the log. Support for the 5.x firmware line (a completely different system) is not planned.
- NickelHome only hides home-screen widgets; nothing else on your device is changed.
- If a widget can't be found on your firmware, it's simply left alone.
- If Nickel ever fails to start, a failsafe automatically uninstalls the mod, so it can't be the cause of a boot loop. You can also trigger it manually by powering the Kobo off right after it starts booting.
- It removes itself cleanly (see below), leaving your Kobo as it was.
Download KoboRoot.tgz from the latest release, copy it into the hidden .kobo folder on your Kobo, then eject. It installs on the next reboot.
You don't need to configure anything. Out of the box, NickelHome applies a "minimal" home screen that hides everything except your current read and your "My Books" widget. Just install it and reboot.
The defaults ship as a template at KOBOeReader/.adds/nickel-home/default (refreshed on every update). On first boot, if no config exists yet, NickelHome copies that template to KOBOeReader/.adds/nickel-home/config:
# The recommendation column next to your current read.
hide_home_row1col2_enabled:1
# The content next to "My Books".
hide_home_row2col2_enabled:1
# The entire third row, which usually displays notices and CTAs.
hide_home_row3_enabled:1
To change what's hidden, edit config: set an option to 0 to keep that element, or add hide_home_row2_enabled:1 to also hide the entire second row (including "My Books"). Two more settings are available: nhm_enabled:0 turns the mod off without uninstalling it, and nhm_log:1 enables verbose logging.
Each line is key:val, with # for comments. Spaces around fields are ignored, and if an option is declared more than once, the first declaration wins. The full documentation is installed to .adds/nickel-home/doc. A reboot is required for changes to take effect.
If something doesn't look right, NickelHome keeps a small log file that makes it much easier to help you. Connect your Kobo to a computer over USB and look for:
KOBOeReader/.adds/nickel-home/nickel-home.log
Attach that file when you report an issue. It records which version of the mod you're running, your Kobo's firmware, and which widgets were hidden, and it normally stays short. If you're asked for more detail, open the config file in the same folder, add the line nhm_log:1, reboot, and try again.
Needs podman or Docker; see CONTRIBUTING.md for the full instructions. In short: clone with --recursive and run ./build.sh to produce KoboRoot.tgz.
Delete the entire .adds/nickel-home/ folder, then reboot. NickelHome treats the missing configuration folder as an uninstall request and removes its installed library on the next startup. You can also create an empty file named uninstall in .adds/nickel-home/, then reboot.
See CONTRIBUTING.md. Bug reports need the log file; the issue form asks for it.
NickelHome stands entirely on the shoulders of Patrick Gaskin's work, both NickelHook and NickelMenu. Because it is derived from a PR I made for NickelMenu itself, it is licensed under the MIT License; see LICENSE.
This mod was created by the author with the help of the following large language models: Claude Opus 4.8, Claude Fable, GPT 5.5, and some old-school manual work as well.