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Remove Kobo DRM

How to remove DRM of books purchased on Kobo store using kobo-book-downloader.

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  1. Clone kobo-book-downloader repo:
git clone https://github.com/TnS-hun/kobo-book-downloader.git
  1. Create python virtual environment and activate it:
python -m venv env
source env/bin/activate
  1. Install dependencies:
pip install -r requirements.txt
  1. Now we can start using kobo-book-downloader, the first time it will ask for your Kobo credentials.
  2. This only seems to work if you have a Kobo account that was registered using an email instead of an external login provider (e.g. google, facebook, rakuten). If your account isn't registered with an email you can create a new account and then link it with your original account as explained here.
python kobo-book-downloader list --all
  1. After following the initial setup instructions, a list will be shown with the books you've bought.

List command

List command
  1. To download a book run the following command and choose the file(s) to download.
python kobo-book-downloader pick destination_dir/

Download command

Download command

  1. The end result is a lovely DRM-free .epub file ready to be read in any eReader!

  2. kobo-book-downloader also offers other commands. Read more at their Github readme.

I noticed that on some free books it will fail to download, it usually means that the original file is already DRM-free.

Bye.

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