Bible App Review: YouVersion for Android & iOS

As the first app review in my Bible app quest, I'm taking a look at YouVersion (YouVersion Bible App), which was created by Life.Church and is available for Android and iOS.

To the best of my knowledge there are no in-app purchases.

It's a free Bible app with a donate button should you wish to give back.

So how does YouVersion stack up as a Bible study app?

Let's find out!

First, some technical data for those who are interested.

Version tested: 9.0.1

Devices: iPhone XS Max, 12.9" iPad Pro (2018), Samsung Galaxy Tab A and Samsung A52.

The app ran well on each of the devices and should run well on any supported devices as it doesn't seem too demanding.

I use a simple 5-star system. Stars earned will be a red color and stars not earned will be a light gray color.

Here are three examples:

A 5-star rating looks like:

A 3.5-star rating looks like:

A rating with no earned stars looks like:

One thing I always look for first in a Bible app is what Bible translations it has and I'm pleased to report that YouVersion has a ton of them.

I took a look at NKJV, CJB and NASB for my review and they all seemed to work just fine.

The only caveat is that when you download a Bible translation there's a notice about sharing your data with a publisher (looks like name, email and OS).

Normally this is something that bothers me, but it isn't hidden and they tell you what is shared.

While I'd rather purchase the Bibles I want and keep my data to myself, I'm not knocking off any points here because I'm sure many people are just fine with that exchange.

YouVersion doesn't offer other books, concordance, dictionary and commentaries, thus a non-score for this category.

Given that the app is free, I expect this won't change anytime soon.

The app is available on the two major mobile platforms (iOS/Android), so that's great.

It is not available on Mac/Windows, which would be a nice thing for synergy.

On the positive side, highlighting in this Bible app is very simple. All you need to do is tap anywhere in a verse and it brings up a very nice panel to select your highlighting color.

And if you tap several verses you can highlight them as a group.

As to coloring, there are several colors available to use and there's also a custom color selector.

Speaking of custom colors, when you chose a custom color it will place that color at the front of your highlighted color listing so that you can quickly select it again.

On the home screen is a selection entitled "Highlights." This is where your highlights will show up.

However, there are a couple items that could be improved.

If you highlight a verse, then remove the highlight, then highlight it again, your highlights listing will show the same verse twice. This is unfortunate as if not maintained, you could end up with a messy listing.

Here's a screenshot showing what happened when I changed the highlight color of a verse a couple times.

As you can see I quickly ended up with multiple listings for this verse.

Fortunately you can go to the highlights listing and remove duplicate(s). But, if not checked immediately, this could end up being an overwhelming mess.

Lastly, there's one major feature missing, which is the ability to sort highlights by color. Often we highlight in our Bibles in various colors to specify different meanings.

In the YouVersion app all of the highlights are listed in the order they happened (a time log) and there's no way to just list highlights by a color. There's also no way to sort the highlights in any meaningful way other than a timeline.

I think highlighting in the app is off to a great start and improving on these three items will bring it up to a 5/5.

This app does have a way to take a note, kind of, but it's cumbersome and I'm not certain about the value.

If you end up using YouVersion, I'd recommend just taking notes in a 3rd party application.

Here are a couple of the issues with notes:

1. There isn't a good way to go through any notes you've taken. You're simply presented with a scrolling log of all the notes you've taken with the most recent showing first. If you have 10 notes, this is fine. If you have 100+, this is a headache. There's no way that I can see to sort notes or filter them.

2. There's no way to export your notes, which for me is a nonstarter. Out of curiousity I took one note and tried to export it to Apple Notes. However, all that was exported was the scripture and a link to Bible.com. The text of my actual note wasn't included. The best you can do is go note by note and for each one: open the menu, select copy, go to another app, select paste.

Additionally, if you take a note on a verse there will eventually be a little box around the verse number in the app to let you know you have a note for that verse. In my testing it seemed to take 2-3 minutes for that notification to update.

I've given the app 3 points because it technically has a notes feature that someone could use.

I hope to see this developed out in the future.

The search feature worked pretty well. It's called "Discover" in the app.

With the discover feature you can search through the Bible, photos, videos and reading plans.

When searching through the Bible, you can also select the translation and drill down the search to be constrained to a single book. You can also search just the Old Testament, the New Testament or both.

I would have loved to see topical searches and common subject queries work in the app. For example, here's an image of me searching for "Samaritan woman" and selecting "Bible" in the app.

As you can see, I'm told there's no Bible results for "Samaritan woman."

Now the main reason for this is because I was searching in the CJB (Complete Jewish Bible).

If I was in another version, such as NKJV, John 4:9 would have came up. But in the CJB, "Samaritan woman" is actually "woman from Shomron."

For comparisons, here are excerpts of John 4:9 from the NKJV and CJB:

John 4:9 (NKJV)

Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, 'How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?' ...

John 4:9 (CJB)

The woman from Shomron said to him, 'How is it that you, a Jew, ask for water from me, a woman of Shomron?' ...

This isn't a dig against YouVersion as I think most apps are going to behave the same way. But what would be awesome is a more intelligent search, which would be great for all of us, especially new Bible readers.

For example, this search could deduce that "woman at the well" and "Samaritan woman" or "woman from Shomron" are similar enough to send back the result of John 4:9.

But I digress.

Overall, the search feature is pretty good. A few tweaks here and there and perhaps a topical search would get it a 5/5.

In short, there is no word lookup.

Whenever you touch on a word, it selects the entire verse and brings up the highlighter/share/etc panel.

This makes sense though as the app doesn't have a dictionary, concordance, etc.

One common task in studying the Word is to have more than one Bible translation (or book) open up at the same time. For example, checking out how Psalm 23:1 reads in the CJB verses the NKJV or having a commentary open with the Bible.

YouVersion provides this ability with the split-view reading mode.

You can select two Bible translations to open up and read.

The experience you have will vary depending on what device you're on, so be sure to read that information below in the "Presentation" section.

The short version is this feature shines on the iPad and is so-so on a phone (because of limited screen real estate).

With YouVersion it's very easy to copy Bible verses, share them and even make pictures with verses on them.

I found that having to just touch a word in a verse to bring up a panel for sharing/etc was a great experience.

Both the iOS & Android versions functions similarly. Each platform brings up its own OS panel, which enables you to share to SMS and other apps installed on the system.

The ability to sync between devices is extremely desired for me. If given the choice, I don't want to use a Bible app that doesn't follow me from device to device. If I'm reading John 3 on my phone and move to my tablet, I want the app to open up to John 3.

But way more important is highlighting and notes. If they are locked into the device, that's a no go for me.

While this Bible app doesn't provide general reading syncing, your highlights and notes will follow you provided that you use an account.

If they ever get reading & app state (settings/etc) sync going, this will be a 5/5.

One thing I happen to like is when apps/services have pre-built pathways to follow. In a Bible app, having reading plans is definitely a major benefit.

As you can see in the screenshot, YouVersion has many reading plans that cover everything from topical issues such as love, anger, anxiety, hope and prayer as well as Biblical verse-by-verse follow-along plans.

In my test, I decided to see what they had for Proverbs. I was greeted with several reading plans around Proverbs that were from various creators.

I chose a plan created by YouVersion that went through Proverbs in 31 days.

After starting a plan, you can go to the settings and setup reminder notifications. You can also share the plan with others. And the app will provide you with a status and how to catch up if you get behind.

They also have many plans that include audio/video. For example, I started the War Room reading plan, which is a 6-day devotional.

Aside from the daily reading, there's also a daily devotional video.

The video, which comes from YouTube, plays right in the app on iOS, but on Android it will take you to the YouTube app.

As an aside, if you haven't watched the movie War Room, I highly recommend it!

Given the quantity of reading plans and the diverse mix (reading, audio/video), it's easy to recommend checking this feature out.

This is the big one. If an app is hard to use, hard to read and just feels "off" then it doesn't matter what functions the app has, it's not that valuable.

Because iOS and Android are fundamentally different to develop for and because app creators often will prioritize one over the other, I'm breaking up this section into subsections.

Below I've created these four subsections: iPhone, iPad, Android table and Android phone.

Using YouVersion on my Apple devices was a generally pleasing experience.

Before talking about anything device specific, here are some key items that were the same across the Apple devices:

1. Fonts: The default font was San Francisco, which is a nice font. You could select many others, so this is a 5/5 for me.
2. Text Size: Another 5/5 as you can adjust the text size as needed.
3. Line Height: You have 3 line heights to chose from, which is great.
4. Text Color: Unfortunately the text color is set by the app. I hope this changes. 0/5
5. Background Color: There are 7 background colors to chose from (light to dark) and I believe this will satisfy many if not most. However, I expect to be able to set my own custom color these days, so I'm dinging the score slightly. 4/5
6. When you bring up the highlight panel it may not be intuitive, but you can scroll the highlighted colors left and right. Scroll all the way to the right to see the custom color option.
7. When utilizing the side-by-side Bible translation feature both translations are locked to each other, which means scrolling in either window will keep both translations at the same spot. A minor improvement will be the ability to unlock the windows so I can explore in one and come back. 4.5/5

When reading on the phone, you will see left/right arrows on the bottom of screen, but you can just swipe left/right to go to the previous or next chapter.

Also if you're reading on the phone in portrait mode, you won't have the ability to bring up two Bibles side-by-side (expected since it would be really awkward). Once you go to landscape mode the option will appear.

My main issue on the iPhone, which is somewhat minor, is that in landscape mode the words don't flow from end to end on the screen. Instead the left and right side have a chunky padding applied. I wish I had the option to dial this down and use more screen real estate.

Overall, YouVersion is good experience on the iPhone.

While the iPad experience was great overall, the text flow in landscape mode I mentioned above drove me bonkers on the iPad. It's worse.

In landscape mode, there's about 50% of the screen real estate being kept blank.

What's annoying is that when I did a side-by-side Bible reading the text went 100% of the screen. I truly hope this is something that they fix. I'd like to read on my entire iPad when in landscape mode.

If you plan to read in portrait mode, this won't be a concern.

My preferred way to use YouVersion is on the iPad.

The Android phone experience and Android tablet experience are very different from each other so I didn't provide an overall OS score.

Overall, the Android version of this Bible app is good.

It's pretty similar to the iOS version and very usable.

I did dock it a full point because the presentation option for background color is limited compared to the iOS version, which has a handful of selections.

In the Android version you get two background choices: black and white.

I'm very picky with presentation options (especially as I get older), but I suspect many of you will be at least somewhat ok with the two options given.

Sadly, I don't recommend YouVersion on an Android tablet at all unless you don't have any other Bible app. It just isn't a great experience when compared to the other versions.

Here are a few things that stood out:

1. As you can see in the screenshot the "home" section is this little sliver on the left side. There's no way to increase that side. The reader section always takes up the space you see there. It's unfortunate because the left side felt so unusable at that size on the tablet. I'm not sure the screenshot really conveys how it felt when using the app. There's just too much information crammed in there.
2. As you try to navigate you're constantly presented with small little popup windows rather than using the tablet real estate.
3. In the side-by-side Bible viewer, the versions aren't locked as they are with the iOS so if you even scroll a side by mistake, you've lost where you were at.
4. I found navigating to different areas of the app to be poor and it could be confusing as to how to get back or where you are at times.

I hope in the future the Android tablet version gets some love and I'll gladly update when that happens.

As a side note, Android in general has a "tablet problem." Unlike the iOS side of the equation, many apps simply aren't good because many developers don't spend the time to optimize for Android tablets.

Because of this, I always recommend people get some version of the iPad and only an Android tablet as a last resort.

I think YouVersion makes a great first entry into my quest for the best Bible app (subjectively). How will it end up ranking? Only time will tell, but we're off to a good start.

Two things that stand out to me are the quantity of reading plans covering many topics and the ability to get many Bible translations for free.

Even if you already have a go-to Bible study app, I could see YouVersion being used as a "reading plan" app since there are so many plans or even a quick translation lookup source.

If you don't have a Bible app yet, this one will definitely get you started well. And if you're looking for an app for quick verse lookups and general Bible reading, YouVersion will do a good job provided you're on any iOS device or using an Android phone.

Unfortunately, the Android tablet experience is just not good. If you need something to use on your Android tablet, I recommend you look elsewhere unless you have no other Bible app yet because having no Bible on your device isn't good. So start here.

I do hope that in time there will be Android app updates for tablets that will make the app more usable and will bring it on par with the polish of the iOS version. That would be fantastic.

With the YouVersion Bible app review down, it's time to move on to the next app. I hope you'll keep reading and that you'll find the perfect app(s) for you.

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