Change a Kobo book cover: edit the EPUB, then copy it over USB

Change the cover, step by step

Steps 1 to 5 happen in your browser. The book is never uploaded.

1. Open the cover changer and drop your .epub file on it, or choose the file.
2. Read the “Cover found by” line and the warnings. “No cover found” means the book never declared a cover.
3. Pick the new cover: upload a JPEG, PNG, WebP or GIF, or switch to “Make a text cover” and type the title and author.
4. Pick the device preset that is closest to your Kobo screen, for example “6-inch e-reader 1072×1448” or “6.8–7 inch e-reader 1264×1680”, and choose Fill (crop) or Fit (padding).
5. Download the new EPUB. It is saved as “your book (new cover).epub”.

Copy the new EPUB onto your Kobo

When you copy an EPUB onto a Kobo over USB and eject it, the reader imports the book and typically makes the library thumbnails from the cover inside the file. If the file declares no cover, or declares one badly, the library shows a generic cover. So the fix is in the book, not on the device.

6. Remove the old copy of the book from the Kobo, on the reader itself or by deleting the file over USB.
7. Connect the Kobo to your computer with USB and copy the new EPUB into the reader’s storage. Kobo reads EPUB natively, so no conversion is needed.
8. Eject the reader safely, unplug it and wait for it to finish importing before you open the library.

Product names and logos such as Kobo and Rakuten belong to their owners. This site is not affiliated with or endorsed by Kobo and Rakuten; the names and logos are used only to show which devices this guide is about.

Why a Kobo cover is wrong, blank or old

• No cover declared. The book has no cover entry in its metadata.
• Broken cover entry. It names an image that is missing from the book.
• Cached thumbnail. Kobo keeps small cover pictures so the library loads quickly. If you replace a book but keep the same entry in the library, the old thumbnail can be shown again.
• A duplicate copy. Two copies of the same book can sit in the library, and you may be looking at the old one.
• Sleep cover. On many models the reader can show the current book’s cover while it sleeps. That picture comes from the same cover, so a bad cover also looks bad there.

Refreshing a Kobo cover that will not change

Remove the old copy from the reader (on the device, or by deleting the file over USB), restart the reader, eject safely, and add the new file again. If the old picture still shows, the thumbnails are on many models kept in a hidden folder named .kobo-images on the device. Removing the pictures for that book there makes the reader build them again. Delete only the thumbnail files for that one book, and only if the simpler steps did not help.

Kepub files

A .kepub.epub file is a normal EPUB zip with extra markup added for Kobo. The cover changer opens it like any other EPUB and copies the chapter files across unchanged. The download is named like “book.kepub (new cover).epub”; rename it so it ends in .kepub.epub again if you want Kobo to treat it as a kepub file. Kobo store books are DRM-protected, so they cannot be changed here.

Calibre or this tool?

Calibre is a good choice if you manage a whole library. This tool is for the one job of changing a cover quickly.

For a three-way comparison that also includes Sigil, see the comparison table of this tool, Calibre and Sigil.

Good to know

This tool changes EPUB files you own. It does not promise a result on every Kobo model, because what the device shows is up to the device. We do not remove DRM.