Which E-Readers Work With an 8BitDo Micro Page Turner?
Reading in bed with one arm out in the cold to tap the screen gets old. A pocket remote fixes it on some e-readers and not others. Here's the list.
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Every night before sleep, it was arms at odd angles or one arm outside the covers. One reader in r/Onyx_Boox got tired of it, and a Bluetooth page turner was the fix. Someone else in the thread says the best part, with a blanket on, is not having one arm go cold.
One of the turners that thread recommends is the 8BitDo Micro, a pocket-sized game controller with a keyboard mode and a phone app that tells each button which key to send. 8BitDo's own page never mentions e-readers. The compatibility list was worked out by owners, one model at a time, across twenty-odd Reddit threads. This is that list pulled together.
A Kobo or a Boox, yes, and owners have found the habits and fixes that keep it working. A Kindle, no. A PocketBook, not on its own software. The model you own decides whether this is your remote.
Does it work on a Kobo?
Yes, and Kobo is where most of the reports come from. Owners have it turning pages on the Libra 2, Clara 2E, Clara BW and Clara Colour. One Libra owner is two years in, with a single firmware update to get past along the way.
The one Kobo that fought back is the Elipsa 2E. One owner got it going only after editing a configuration file by hand, and even then the arrow keys only turn forward.
How to connect an 8BitDo Micro to a Kobo
Owners describe the same setup whatever Kobo they have, and a Clara owner wrote it up as a short guide. Slide the switch on the bottom of the controller to K, for keyboard mode. On a phone, install the 8BitDo Ultimate Software app, choose which key each button sends, and sync that to the controller. Then pair it from the Kobo's Bluetooth menu.
As far as the Kobo can tell, the Micro is now a tiny keyboard, and that's the whole trick. When it won't connect, that switch is the first thing to check.
What to do when the Micro keeps disconnecting from a Kobo
A Kobo turns Bluetooth off whenever it powers down, so after every sleep the controller has to be reconnected. A reply in a Libra 2 owner's thread has the routine: wake the Kobo, switch the Micro on, hold the pairing button and wait ten to twenty seconds.
One owner who runs NickelMenu, a free add-on for Kobos, has a shortcut that turns Bluetooth on and connects in under ten seconds. Another has set up the same trick for an 8BitDo Zero, the Micro's older sibling.
If it still drops the connection, one owner's advice is to switch off a developer-mode setting that keeps turning Wi-Fi back on, which they call a common culprit.
A Kobo firmware update can stop the pairing, though not every update does. The fixes that got it back:
- Remap and resync. Open the 8BitDo app, map the buttons again and sync to the controller.
- The pairing button. Hold the small button on the controller until its light flashes, which is how a connection failed message was cleared after one update.
- Start the configuration over. Delete it in the app and build it again, which fixed a Micro that stopped after a sync.
One reply's answer was to roll the firmware back. Kobo support told the Libra owner two years in that the controller was no longer supported, but the remap fixed it anyway.
People ask whether the Micro drains the Kobo's battery. The person who wrote the setup guide hasn't noticed any, and the owner with the Wi-Fi advice says that setting is the thing to check for the battery too.
Does it work on an Onyx Boox?
Yes, with an app detour. A Boox runs Android, so the Micro shows up as a Bluetooth keyboard and the reading apps take its keys. Owners report it on the Note Air 4C, Page, Go 7 Color, Tab Mini C and Go 6 Gen II. On the Note Air 4C it works great with refresh and other keys mapped. On the Page it works perfectly after some adjustment, which takes a phone to run the app.
The 8bitdo micro is super functional and is very portable (it just hangs from my bag like a bag charm) so it's my default away-from-home page turner.
u/alikoyyy, in r/Onyx_Boox
The adjustment is the same 8BitDo app as on a Kobo. A Note Air 4C owner says it sometimes took a few tries to talk to the controller, but once the settings uploaded it was flawless.
If the app won't launch, or won't list the Micro at all, the fallback is Key Mapper, a free Android app that does the same job on the Boox itself. A Tab Mini C owner and two others ran into exactly that.
In Boox's own NeoReader the left and right keys turn pages with no mapping needed. Other apps take a bit of hunting. A Go 7 Color owner couldn't get it to turn pages in the Kindle app. The thread pointed at the app's own "turn pages with volume controls" setting, and it worked after that. The screen-refresh button is the gamble: one Go 10.3 owner couldn't make it refresh whatever key they mapped.
If the connection drops, a Go 10.3 Gen 2 owner found it takes ages to come back on its own. Their only sure fix was to forget the controller and pair it again.
Does it work on a Kindle?
No. A Kindle's Bluetooth handles audio only, so it never sees the Micro as a keyboard, and a thread in r/ereader says the same. Hobbyists with jailbroken Kindles have got Bluetooth keyboards partly working with hand-built plugins, which is a weekend project rather than a buying route.
Amazon's own answer is the Kindle Click, a Bluetooth page-turn remote for Kindles released in 2024 or later. An older Kindle, the 2022 basic model and the eleventh-generation Paperwhite included, gets neither, and is left with the clip-on kind that taps the screen.
Does it work on a PocketBook?
Not on PocketBook's own software. The Micro pairs and the keys register, then the connection drops. An Era Color owner lost it within a few seconds of starting to read, every time. Back in 2024 another owner had it work for a few minutes, then not.
A reply put the Era's trouble down to a bug in its software that PocketBook is said to be working on. What rescued that owner was KOReader, the open-source reading app, plus a plugin written for this controller, with the Micro in keyboard mode.
The same route works for a Verse Pro Color owner as a page turner only. For somebody else, though, the Micro shows as paired in KOReader while the buttons do nothing. For a PocketBook it's a coin toss even with KOReader installed, and a no without it.
Bigme, and anything else running Android
Unresolved. A Bigme B7 Pro owner set the switch to K and found the buttons did nothing in several apps. A reply says left and right arrows turn pages in the Kindle app on Android, but nobody has come back to say whether that worked. A Bigme runs Android like a Boox, but one thread isn't enough to say it behaves like one.
For a Kobo or a Boox, order the 8BitDo Micro, do the app setup on your phone before you get into bed, and learn the reconnect routine once. After a Kobo firmware update, the remap is the first thing to try. For a PocketBook, keep the money unless KOReader is already on it. For a Kindle, the Micro is the wrong remote, and the Kindle Click is the right one for any model from 2024 onwards.
