After purchasing eBooks on Kobo books store, you may want to share them with your wife, friends, or read them on your other devices. But you can't share them because the purchased books are protected by DRM.
Following this guide, you can own the books you purchased and share them with your famlies and read them on any eReader, even print the pages out.
- Universal method: Remove Kobo DRM from Adobe Digital Editions -- If you use ADE to help manage files.
- Easy method: Remove Kobo DRM from Kobo desktop app -- If you just have a Windows or Mac computer.
- Simplest method: Remove DRM from Kobo eReader device -- If you have a Kobo Glo or Kobo Aura.
As default, you have two ways to download Kobo books to your computer: Sync to computer via Kobo desktop software, or download ACSM file from Kobo website, then use Adobe Digital Editions to convert ACSM to EPUB.
Remove Kobo DRM with Epubor Ultimate [Infographic]
Method 1: Remove DRM from Kobo eBooks via ADE
1. Download .acsm files from Kobo website
Visit your Kobo library, where you can see all the purchased books. On the right side of the cover, there are "Download EPUB" and "ADOBE DRM EPUB" buttons. "Download EPUB" button indicates this book is DRM-Free, while "Adobe DRM EPUB" indicates the book is encrypted.
Clicking "ADOBE DRM EPUB" button you can download an .acsm file, which is the link to get a complete EPUB book.
2. Install ADE and convert acsm to EPUB
Install Adobe Digital Editions (ADE), and authorize your it with your adobe ID.
Drag the .acsm file into ADE, and you will see this read kobo ebooks are downloading.
After the book is fulfilled, the EPUB file will be saved in "Documents/My Digital Editions", and you can remove DRM from this EPUB file.
3. Install Epubor Ultimate
The software automatically scans your Adobe Digital Edition's content folder and imports all the books if you want. And all the imported books will be immediately decrypted. You can also manually drag the EPUB file into Adobe DRM Removal's main interface.
When the process has been finished, you can right click on an item and choose "Explore output folder", where saves the DRM-free books.
Before decryption, please make sure you can read them in Adobe Digital Editions, which is very important for your successful decryption.
This is a common-used method during a long time, yes? But the good news is that there are 2 easier methods provided for you, which saves your time to find your acsm files or kepub files, and even better, you don't have to use ADE and authorize with Adobe ID. You know, we are always meeting different kinds of problems when using ADE to dowloading ebooks.
Method 2: Remove DRM from Kobo Desktop Win/Mac
1. Download Kobo desktop application and sync books.
Download and install Kobo for PC/Mac here: https://www.kobo.com/desktop
(Please note that Kobo desktop support has ended for Windows XP.)
Follow those steps to finish your installing of this app on your computer. Then you should log in with your own Kobo account. The "My Books" will show up all of your purchased Kobo files. You can also choose "BookStore" to buy some books and then click "Sync".
Where does the Kobo desktop store my books (KEPUB format)? How to find them?
For Windows: C:\Users\(user name)\AppData\Local\Kobo\Kobo Desktop Edition\kepub
For Mac: .../Library/Application Support/Kobo/Kobo Desktop Edition/kepub
2. Install Epubor Ultimate to remove Kobo DRM.
Run Epubor Ultimate, click on "Kobo" tab at the left column. All your download books will be there. Drag books to the right then all Kobo drm will be removed smoothly.
Epubor Ultimate helps you remove drm from Kobo KEPUB books and with high quality. If you want to deal with these Kobo Kepub books deeply, you can read this article how to convert Kobo Kepub to epub.
Method 3: Remove DRM from Kobo eReader
This method is pretty easy to go. Just make sure that you had a Kobo eReader and your Kobo books has been finished downloading to your device.
1. Connect Kobo to computer.
Connect via USB, then Kobo says "Computer detected", click "Connect".
2. Run Epubor Ultimate to remove DRM.
Launch this powerful tool. It will detect your device and load all the downloaded books to it.
As what the image shows, from the left side we can see “Kobo device" icon and we can also see some files under this icon.
Note: Please note the step 1 is key step. Don't forget to touch your Kobo after connected to computer, or this tool won't detect your Kobo and kobo books.
Drag them to the left area. DRM removing will soon start and finish.
Just click on "Decrypted" to get your free files from the output folder.
Here highly recommend you view this video:
Frequently Asked Questions after Kobo drm removedQ: How to convert and transfer Kobo eBooks to Kindle
A: The most simple and eff\icient way is to use our most powerful product Epubor Ultimate Converter, which can convert the DRM protected Kobo eBooks to Kindle format. This detail guide how to read Kobo on Kindle can also be a refer.
Q: Can I borrow/lend Kobo eBooks to share with my friends?
A: Unlike Kindle and Nook, so far at least, Kobo has no intention to implement the "Borrowing / Lending" features.
If you want to share your Kobo eBooks with your friends, you can only remove the DRM then send the copy to him/her. This is the only way in which you can do it. For how to remove the DRM from Kobo eBooks please scroll up and read that part carefully.
Q: Can I remove kobo drm free?
Yes, there is free way to remove kobo drm but the process is a little bit complicated. If you are looking for the free way, follow this guide: Calibre Kobo DRM Removal Plugin: Obok_plugin.
Ada Wang works for Epubor and writes articles for a collection of blogs such as ebookconverter.blogspot.com.
Hi again,
Now epubor team has updated our products to support directly remove drm from Kobo books (synced via Kobo desktop or downloaded on Kobo e-ink eReaders).
This article has also been updated to the newest solution, don't forget to read this again.
When I purchase a title from my Kobo Vox it is saved with no problem. I will continue to purchase items this way but I really want the titles that I have already paid for and can't access.
Don't worry about it. As Kobo official site says, ADE supports all Kobo books. So your books might not be the ADE-supported version.
Just take the following steps.
1. Sign in at Kobo’s official site.
2. Click “MY LIBRARY” on the top navigation bar and you will find all your purchased Kobo books.
3.Click “ADOBE DRM EPUB” on the right side of your book and an ACSM file will be downloaded to your computer.
4. Drag the ACSM file to ADE. The EPUB book will be downloaded to your computer during this process, and make sure you can read it on ADE.
http://www.epubor.com/how-to-read-sonykobo-ebooks-on-ade.html
Hi, the same issue we are always meeting, so we epubor suggest you remove drm from your purchased files after finished buying. We don't know when they will gone away!
My own, I will remove drm soon though I just read Kobo books on Kobo.
Hi,
To print Kobo books, you need to make sure they are DRM free. If they are in EPUB format, you'd better convert them to PDF and then print them out.
I have tried 3 methods for dedrm and none of them works.
I found that epubor wouldn't "see" the files in the kepub directory, due to their not having a file type extension, but that if I dragged them into epubor from an external search window epubor then processed them just fine; a rather brute force approach, but it worked.
In other words, while epubor didn't recognize them as being applicable to its search function as they didn't have a recognized file type extension, once it actually opened them up it could properly identify the internal structure of the files and process them.
Thank you for using our software. How did you download your kepub file? If you download them via kobo for pc/mac app, then you can see them under "kobo" tab at the left column of Epubor Ultimate. Please try to drag them from left to right, and the KOBO books will be decrypted.
Interesting.
I'm not sure what made the difference this time, because now the Kobo materials do show up within the Kobo tab.
Last time the "I'm doing stuff" swirly thing kept going forever and a day with no end, this time it was done in less than a minute.
Possibly had something to do with the update that installed when I ran ePubor today?
This is good, since now I can see the names of the books, rather than the unintelligible character string Kobo uses as unique identifiers when viewing the directory in File Explorer. With 466 eBooks currently in that directory, this really makes a difference!
Thank you for your feedback. We are glad to know that your problem has been fixed. Any more problem, please feel free to contact us via support@epubor.com.
Have a nice day~
When I drag most kepub files into the DRM removal window it shows that the file has been decrypted, but when opening the epub file in ADE it shows only the content headings to the left. It does open in calibre, but the file is just scrambled characters. About 1 in 20 files does actually decrypt and is readable. Could you please advise. I'm running the latest version of Kobo Desktop and the latest version of epubor.
Thanks
Are you using the trial version of Epubor software? Please note the trial version only converts 20% content of each book. Pleas upgrade your software to licensed version to enjoy the full features.