Logos 10 Mobile App: What’s New?

Faithlife, the makers of Logos Bible Software, updated their suite of Bible study apps and desktop/laptop programs, releasing Logos 10 Mobile for iPad, iPhone, and Android. Most new features work best on the iPad, but many also work on iPhone and Android. We’ve got a demo of all the most significant upgrades with instructions on how to use these new features.

Logos 10 Mobile App Adds New Selection Menu

When you want to select a verse or some text to highlight it, add a note, or look up information, the Logos 10 Mobile App improves the selection menu.

If you tap on a verse, a popup menu shows up with a few things in it. Depending on your selection, you’ll see highlighters, buttons to interact with the verse, some information from your user notes, the Factbook, or other content. This works in non Bibles too.

The highlights come from the most recent first and then the top highlights in your highlighters tool.

The buttons that you can use to interact with a Bible verse include the following:

• Copy the verse
• Share the passage
• Add a Note
• Search
• Compare in multiple translations
• Perform a Passage Guide on the passage
• Perform an Exegetical Guide on the passage
• Mark the passage as a Favorite
• Translate the text using the new Logos 10 Translation tool
• Clip the selected content
• Create a Visual Copy, which makes the selection into an image to share on social media, save, or use in your presentation.

Below the buttons, you will see cards for items found in the selected text. These take you to the Factbook or Bible dictionaries. It might show an entry from a Lexicon. What it shows depends on what it finds in the selected text.

Slide left or right on the cards to see more of them. Use the menu button in the upper right corner of each card (it looks like three vertical dots) to do more with the content in the cards.

Press and hold on a single word and bring up a different kind of menu that shows info about that one word. You’ll see Word Info that comes from tags on the word. For example, it will show an entry from your top Greek or Hebrew lexicon. You can open it by tapping on the More button.

You’ll also see an entry from an English dictionary or Bible dictionary.

Print Library Tool

Now in Logos 10 you can search your Print Library. However, you’ll have to first add books to the Print Library using the Logos 10 Mobile App.

Tap on the More button, which looks like three horizontal lines in the lower right corner of the screen. If it’s not showing up, tap on the book’s title that’s open on the screen. In the top Library section of the menu, tap on the Print Library ISBN Scanner entry. This opens the camera. You might have to give the app permission first.

You can only add books to the Print Library if Logos also has the book in its digital library store. That’s because they have to have the text of the book in their library to search for text in the book. Any book that you have with an ISBN bar code or QR code will work.

Now, when you search for words or phrases, they will return entries in the Print Library. You can’t read the whole book in Logos, but the Logos 10 Mobile App will tell you where you can find it in your print copy of the book.

Read Aloud in Logos 10 Mobile App

If you like audiobooks, then you’ll love the improvements to the Read Aloud feature in the Logos 10 Mobile app. It’s easy to find in the open book’s top toolbar. It looks like a sound icon. Tap it, and it brings up the reading feature at the bottom of the screen.

In the Read Aloud feature, listeners can pause and play the audio. They can also skip back a verse or a whole book of the Bible. Skip forward a verse or a book too. There’s a speed option to read the book or Bible faster. I like to listen at 1.5 times to many books.

If the book comes with an audiobook version, a download button appears next to the X in the Read Aloud feature box.

Most phones let users add different voices to read books that don’t come with an audiobook version. Open your phone’s Settings app. In iOS, go to Accessibility and then tap on Spoken Content. That opens the screen where you can choose Voices to select your voice.

iOS lists voices by language first and then name. I tapped on English at the top and chose Samantha. The phone gives the user two options. One is regular Samantha and the other reads “enhanced”. I picked the enhanced version and downloaded her voice.

Go back to Logos, choose a book that doesn’t already have an audiobook associated with it, and follow the instructions at the beginning of this section to listen to the book using the iOS voice we chose in settings.

The Android version of the Logos 10 Mobile App plays audio almost identically, except for changing the voices.

Sermon Manager Update

The update to the Sermon Manager in the Logos 10 Mobile App allows users to edit and read sermons created, either in the app or on the desktop. Open the Sermon Manager from the More button, which looks like three horizontal lines stacked on top of each other in the lower right corner of the toolbar.

You’ll find the Sermon Manager in the Tools section of the menu. Tap on it to open it.

You will see all the important features of the Sermon Manager on your iPad. This only works on iPad.

You can also open the Sermon Manager from the tabs button. Hit a plus button to open from the Tools section of the new tab feature.

Canvas Tool on iPad

A canvas shows information in a visual way. The iPad and desktop app tools include many drawing tools, diagramming tools, and text formatting. Add images, icons, and shapes. Do this all to show information in a visual way for presentations or documents. You could create them for your own benefit.

To open or create a Canvas, go to the More button (three horizontal lines in the lower right) and tap on it. Head to the Documents section. Tap on the Canvas item, and you’ll see a list of any Canvases already in your library. Tap one to open it. Work with the canvas, and then you can work with the Canvas.

You can also create a new one from the Tabs screen. Tap the plus icon and go to the Documents tab (right button on the Tabs toolbar). Now tap on the plus icon at the top of the box, which shows a list of the kinds of documents you can add. Tap on Canvas to make a new one.

The Canvas feature is available only on iPad, and only in Bronze packages, and above.

Draw On Screen Feature on iPad

Teaching using Logos as a visual aid got easier with the update to Logos 10 Mobile thanks to my favorite new feature, the Draw On Screen feature on the iPad only. You can now draw on your screen and save that as a screenshot in notes or share it elsewhere.

Open the More button (three horizontal lines in the lower right) and choose Draw On Screen from the Tools section. This brings up the Apple annotation feature, which lets you draw using your Apple Pencil, a third-party stylus, or your fingers.

Drawings can use a pen, highlighter, pencil, eraser, selection tool, and ruler to make straight lines.

When you’re finished drawing on the screen, share the drawing or exit without saving it. You can share the image in a few ways.

• Copy Image – copy it for pasting in a document or note.
• Save to Photos – save it in the iOS Photos app.
• Save as Note – saves the drawing as an unattached note, which you can then manually attach to a verse or paragraph.
• Share – use the iOS Share Sheet feature to send it to a Facebook post, a file on the iPad, Instagram, or other services you use.

Enhanced Panel Linking

You’ve been able to link books before so that your commentary would move along with your Bible as you swiped to advance to the next passage. Now, you can tweak these settings a little so that the Bible drives the link relationship.

Open a book and then slip the screen into at least two books. When you do, a new book will fill the second half. Then, if you like, then add other books. You’ll see a box with the word None in it and a pair of linked chain links. Tap it to bring up the Enhanced Panel Linking feature. Tap the A to link to the other book. Then tap on Follow Only so that this book won’t make the other book move, but the other book will move this one.

For example, I have the NASB and Faithlife Study Bible open above. If I choose Follow Only, then as I swipe up and down on the NASB or left and right in widescreen mode, the FSB will follow it so that the verse in the Bible matches the verse in the study Bible. However, if I choose Set all panels to match, then any book will force the others to follow it. Moving to a new chapter in the FSB will move to that channel in all linked Bibles.

You can also set this from the main book menu in the upper right corner of each book panel, which looks like three vertically stacked dots.

New Logos 10 Mobile App User Interface with More Tiles

The user interface on Logos 10 Mobile gets a much-needed feature update. You can now open as many as six books on your iPad. However, this doesn’t work on the phone since it would be impractical to open that many on a small screen.

To open a layout with more tiles, tap on the Layouts icon in the bottom toolbar on the right. You’ll see a little popup with options for…

• 1 book
• 2 books side-by-side
• 2 books, top and bottom
• 3 books with one on the left and two splitting the right side column
• 3 books with one on the right and two splitting the left side column
• 3 books arranged in verbal columns
• 4 books splitting the screen into four equal quadrants
• 4 books with 2 each in the vertical columns on the left and middle and two splitting the third column

To add two more books, open the layout in the top right of the popup. Then, from the toolbar at the top, tap on the 3 dots which opens the options menu. Choose Split this tile.

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