I made my jailbroken Kindle replace Goodreads robotically and now my studying stats are all the time updated

Many newer Kindle fashions assist you to hyperlink your Kindle and Goodreads accounts in order that the studying progress in your Kindle reveals up in Goodreads. This was by no means the case for my outdated Kindle 4, and if you happen to jailbreak a more recent Kindle and skim utilizing KOReader, you lose the advantages of this native integration. Thankfully, I used to be in a position to make use of a KOReader plugin to get my studying stats to sync with Goodreads.

KOReader already tracks the data that I would like

Unlike some normal Kindles, there is no native method to share it with Goodreads

Goodreads is a social app for readers that you should utilize to trace the books you are studying, make lists of books you need to learn, go away critiques, see what your mates are studying, get suggestions, and extra. One of probably the most helpful options is that you should utilize Goodreads to trace which books you are presently studying and which books you have completed.

For many fashionable Kindle fashions, it is potential to hyperlink your Kindle and Goodreads accounts in order that knowledge might be shared between the 2. Once arrange, if you begin a brand new e book in your Kindle, it will likely be added to Goodreads and marked as Currently Reading. When you have completed, your e book is marked as Read.

This integration was by no means supported on my fourth-generation Kindle, which Amazon has now dropped help for utterly. I jailbroke the Kindle and put in KOReader as an alternative, and KOReader can natively observe my reading statistics. Unfortunately, there is no native method to share this knowledge with Goodreads.

ShelfSync can share my KOReader stats with Goodreads

A small plugin provides the characteristic to my jailbroken Kindle

ShelfSync is a free, open-source KOReader plugin that may share KOReader studying stats with a Goodreads account. It helps syncing with different monitoring providers, akin to StoryGraph, Hardcover, and Pagebound.

You can set up the plugin by dropping it into the KOReader plugins folder or set up it immediately out of your Kindle utilizing the Storefront plugin. Linking to Goodreads is a bit more sophisticated than with an ordinary Kindle; you may’t merely join immediately your Goodreads account. Instead, it’s a must to register to Goodreads on a pc and use ShelfSync’s cookie-import software to repeat the browser cookies that inform Goodreads that you just’re already signed into your account.

Once you are executed, ShelfSync can entry your Goodreads account with out you needing to enter your account particulars and password on the Kindle, which was an enormous aid for me, since getting into textual content on a non-touch Kindle is a horrific course of.

My Goodreads knowledge now updates robotically

Current books, progress stats, and accomplished books all present up in Goodreads

Once I had ShelfSync arrange and linked to Goodreads, I took it for a spin. I attempted opening Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, a e book that I knew wasn’t already on my shelf in Goodreads. After I’d opened the e book, I checked Goodreads, and there in my Currently Reading part was Mrs. Dalloway.

I began studying, and with the default setting of five-minute updates, Goodreads was getting continuous updates of my studying progress. This felt a bit an excessive amount of like I used to be spamming my very own Goodreads account, so I modified the ShelfSync settings to replace after each 25% of the e book was accomplished. ShelfSync also can robotically replace progress everytime you open the e book.

When I completed the e book on my Kindle and marked it as Finished, the standing in Goodreads modified to Read, and I used to be one e book nearer to finishing my Goodreads Reading Challenge for the 12 months. I did not contact Goodreads aside from checking the up to date standing; all of the updates occurred robotically because of ShelfSync.

It’s not as seamless because the Kindle integration

Sometimes it does not work utterly robotically

It wasn’t all plain crusing; utilizing ShelfSync is not fairly as seamless because the native Kindle integration. This is not massively shocking, since Amazon owns Goodreads and makes use of a proprietary methodology to hyperlink accounts, with no helpful Goodreads API out there to different apps.

Sometimes once I open a brand new e book, ShelfSync cannot discover an actual match within the Goodreads library. I then have to verify on the Kindle which Goodreads title matches the one I’m studying. The saved cookie also can expire or be rejected, so I needed to arrange the Goodreads Cookie Refresher companion software to run on my mini PC to produce recent cookies as wanted (mmm, recent cookies).

One different quirk might have been solely right down to utilizing a really outdated Kindle mannequin, however once I opened KOReader, ShelfSync tried to sync my present progress earlier than Wi-Fi had completed connecting, so the replace failed. I had so as to add a small script that waits for a Wi-Fi connection earlier than ShelfSync sends any updates.

On the flip aspect, ShelfSync can do issues that the native Kindle Goodreads integration cannot. Since the native integration hyperlinks your Amazon Kindle account along with your Goodreads account, if you happen to sideload books that are not a part of your Kindle account, these books do not usually get synced with Goodreads, though there are some workarounds.

ShelfSync has taken yet one more job off my arms

I’ve all the time been horrible at protecting Goodreads updated, so I’d preserve ending up having to manually add a ton of books, which I’d then need to mark as Read. With ShelfSync, it is all executed for me, so I can all the time see simply how far behind my Reading Challenge goal I actually am.