Kobo Clara BW · Guides
Reading gestures on the Kobo Clara BW
The Clara BW has no page-turn buttons, so every action is a tap or a swipe. Here is what each one does and how to change the tap zones.
Because the Clara BW has no buttons, the touch controls are the whole story. Most people settle on either tapping the sides or swiping, and adjust the tap zones once under Reading settings if forward and back feel wrong. The left-edge slide for brightness is worth remembering — it saves opening the menu every time the light needs a nudge.
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Learn the tap zones
While reading, a tap on the right two-thirds of the screen turns the page forward, a tap on the left third turns it back, and a tap across the top centre opens the reading menu. There are no physical buttons on this model, so these zones are how you turn pages by touch.
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Use swipes as an alternative
Swipe right-to-left to go forward and left-to-right to go back. Swipes work anywhere on the page, which some people find more reliable than aiming for a tap zone one-handed.
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Open the navigation bar and chapter list
Swipe up from the bottom edge for a bar showing your position in the book, a chapter list, and quick jumps. Swipe it away or tap the page to dismiss it.
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Open brightness and warm light
Swipe down from the top edge for the quick settings panel with the brightness and warm-light sliders and a shortcut into Settings.
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Adjust brightness with a slide on the left edge
Place a finger on the far left edge of the screen while reading and slide it up or down to change the front-light brightness without opening any menu. This is a built-in Kobo shortcut.
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Change what the tap zones do
Go to the home screen, open the menu, then Settings, then "Reading settings". You can turn off tap-to-turn entirely and rely on swipes, or change which side is forward. Left-handed readers who hold the device in the left hand often swap the sides here.
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Know the limit of the stock software
Kobo lets you adjust the tap zones but not assign gestures to other actions such as bookmarks or dictionary lookups. If you want every corner and swipe to be a configurable action, that is one of the reasons people install [KOReader](/devices/kobo/clara-bw/koreader/).