So I would post this on the help forums for Adobe Digital Editions, but I can’t find the needle in the haystack of different types of crash that the application presents, so in the spirit of being community minded, here goes a very different post from my usual.

I have a Kobo Clara HD and I use CloudLibrary to borrow eBooks from my local library. To get the books onto the eReader, I have to use Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) due to DRM.

This all worked fine, until a few weeks ago, when ADE started crashing whenever I tried to do anything with the Kobo. I trawled through endless forums, with the top tip being to install the (now unavailable) version 3.0 of ADE. Nothing worked, until I stumbled across this:

How I Fixed Adobe Digital Editions Crashes With Kobo eReader

1. Open ADE and deauthorise the computer.
2. Restart ADE and authorise the computer, then quit ADE. (don’t know if this reauthorisation process is essential, but I did it, so who knows)
3. Mount the Kobo on a computer and open its drive in Finder or Windows Explorer.
4. Find the folder/directory called .adobe-digital-editions and make a backup copy of of somewhere on your computer.
5. Delete the ‘activation’ file from the directory on the Kobo.
6. Open ADE, select the Kobo from the left panel, click the cogwheel settings icon immediately above the devices section, and authorise the device.
7. Now try to transfer your DRM protected book.

This worked for me and my very specific issue. I assume that the activation file on the Kobo became corrupted somehow, which triggered a fatal error in ADE. I had the same issue across macOS Sequoia and Windows 11, but it seems to be resolved now.