Category: iOS (iPhone iPad)

For almost three years now, our dedicated iOS YouVersion community (iPhone, iPod touch, and more recently, iPad) has been engaging with and sharing God’s Word through their Apple devices. And during that time, regular app updates have debuted new languages and features like social connections, offline versions, notes, and of course reading plans. Today we’re thrilled to share the dawn of the all-new, next generation of the Bible App­™ for iOS: VERSION 3.0.

This complete overhaul makes connecting with the Bible simpler and more flexible than ever before. You can find a complete feature list at the end of this post, but here are just a few highlights (click the images to enlarge):

• Audio Bibles. From the main Bible Reader, you’ll be able to have the Bible read to you (a full list of the audio versions available at launch is below). Although not in this release, audio Bibles will even be coming soon to the reader in your Reading Plan!
• Easier Reading. With the words of Christ in red (in participating versions) and adjustable brightness, contrast, and fonts, you’ll be able to read clearly in any light, making your text the size and look that’s most comfortable for your eyes.
• Dashboard Launcher. You’ll be able to directly access the most commonly used features from the newly designed welcome screen. (Many of these features will just be one click away on most other screens too.)
• Recent Activity. A quick chronological list helps you see everything you’ve done while you’ve been using the Bible App, with each item just one tap away from jumping right back to it.

As soon as Version 3.0 hits the iTunes App Store, you can be sure we’ll announce it here and on Facebook and Twitter. But even more great tools are on the horizon. Besides everything you see here, still to come in a future release…

• Audio for reading plans
• Improved Bookmarks with addition of Highlighting
• All-new, easier navigation for books, chapters and verses

The newest release of the Bible App™ for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, version 2.7.2, is available now in the iTunes App Store, or as a direct browser download. This update includes performance enhancements and bug fixes, perhaps most significantly the one that corrects the error that was causing the Bible App to crash on iPads.

In our last release, you might remember that we improved our language interface options for German, Spanish and Chinese. Today we’re pleased to be adding Korean, French, Russian, Portuguese, Dutch and Slovak to that ever-growing list. What this means is that users who set their iOS device to one of these languages will experience the Bible App’s controls natively in that language. This is only possible through the dedication and commitment of YouVersion’s terrific volunteers. Speaking of which…if there’s a language you would like us to add—and you can help us with the translation of our interface—we’d love to hear from you. Let us know how you’d be willing to help and sign up as a volunteer.

If you enjoy using the Bible App on your Apple device, we’d love it if you’d share it with friends, whether in person or online at sites like Facebook, Twitter, or other places where you connect. And as we continue trying to help more and more people around the world daily engage with the Bible, we’d especially appreciate you spreading the word to your friends who speak languages other than English.