What's new.

The Pillar is now on Google Play, for Android phones and tablets.

• The same translations, word study, commentaries, dictionaries, maps, sermon notes with recording, reading plans and search as on iPhone.
• The King James and the Berean Standard Bible are on the device, so the text is there without a signal.
• Notes, highlights and reading progress stay on the device and in Android's own backup. They don't sync with an iPhone or iPad.
• Handwriting and the journal stay on iPad, because they need an Apple Pencil.
• A subscription is bought through Google Play and unlocks The Pillar on your Android devices. One bought on iPhone doesn't carry over, because Apple and Google bill separately.

The Greek and Hebrew under more of the words you read, on iPhone, iPad and Android.

Added

• Press and hold a word in the NKJV, NASB or CSB to see the Greek or Hebrew behind it, with its Strong's definition and parsing. Each verse is matched against the tagged translations as you read, and nothing licensed is stored. A word that isn't matched simply won't respond. Word-tap also works in the World English Bible and the American Standard Version, so it now covers seven translations.
• Original is second in the study drawer, right after Notes, so the Greek and Hebrew are one tap closer than the cross-references.
• The Library groups itself. Notes and highlights by time (Today, This week, This month, then one section per month), by book in Bible order, or by color, with search across all of them.
• Sermon Notes. On iPhone and iPad the notes box grows with what you write and follows your cursor, with a Done key to drop the keyboard. On both platforms the scanner shows live text with pinch-to-zoom, so you can zoom in on the screen at the front and tap the block you want, and the guidance under the notes is one line at a time, shown only until you've done the thing it describes. The full text moved to Help.
• On Android, the app asks for a Play rating once, after a 3-day streak or a finished reading plan, and never near a renewal.

Fixed

• On Android, returning to a chapter you left open now counts toward the reading streak; before, only turning a page did.
• On Android, a tapped verse tints clay, as on iPhone, instead of the gold that read as a highlight.
• In About, the NASB notice links to lockman.org, as the Lockman Foundation's terms ask.

The Pillar is now free to read, on iPhone, iPad and Android.

Added

• Free to read. Every public-domain translation, your notes, highlights, reading plans, maps and the audio Bible, with no subscription.
• Your first week opens everything. Every study tool and every translation, for seven days. After that, Pillar Premium keeps them, and three verses a day stay open in the study drawer for everyone.
• The verse of the day's chapter is open for study to every reader, every day.
• If you downloaded The Pillar before this update, your first week of Premium starts now.
• Subscribers: nothing changes. Everything you have is still yours.

Fixed

• The welcome banner's day count now changes at midnight, not at the hour the week began.
• On Android, the gold rule beside a chapter's first verses now draws, and the underline beneath a place name no longer drifts in justified text.

Added

• A look inside before you decide. The welcome now ends on John 1:1 with the study drawer open: commentary, cross-references and the Greek for one verse.
• A marker on every verse a margin note runs beside. A long note down the side of a chapter used to put one marker on its first verse; now each verse it passes has one, and tapping a marker shows the lines beside that verse.
• A Handwriting Log in Settings: a short record of what the app did with your Pencil notes, with nothing you wrote in it. If notes ever go missing, send it to us.

Fixed

• Handwriting could be lost when a verse from "Explore in Scripture" or a cross-reference opened the chapter you were already writing in. Two copies of the page were saving over each other; both now keep every stroke. We are sorry to the reader who lost a morning's notes finding this.
• A safeguard now refuses any save that would remove most of a chapter's handwriting without the eraser, and puts back what was already saved.
• On iPad, turning to the next chapter opens it at the top, not at the depth you left the last one.

Added

• Try it before subscribing. The welcome now opens John 1:1, and pressing and holding a word shows the Greek behind it.
• Parts of speech. Press and hold an English word and the study names it — "Noun · nominative · singular · masculine" — including the second word of a phrase like "Most High".
• Verse of the day on Today, with a switch for a morning reminder.
• In sermon notes, the formatting bar now shows when bold, italic or underline is on.

Fixed

• The Greek and Hebrew interlinear was empty for 62 of the Psalms and a dozen other Old Testament chapters, including Genesis 32 and Isaiah 64. Every Old Testament chapter has it now.
• Some Hebrew nouns were labeled "common" when they were in the construct form.
• A verse typed into a note after other words, like "then John 3:16", was sometimes missed.
• Tapping "Jesus" in John 11:35 opened the study for "to weep". It and 53 other words that carried a neighbor's Strong's number now open the right study.

Notes, sermons and journal entries are now also saved in a new format alongside the old one, which keeps them readable as The Pillar comes to more devices. Nothing you have written changes.

Added

• Handwritten journal pages export as images, alongside your typed notes. Before, a handwritten page exported as one line of text explaining it could not be included — so the writing you most wanted to keep was the only part that did not come out.
• The journal list collapses by month, so a year of entries stays a year you can scroll.

Fixed

• On a first launch, the subscription screen could appear before the welcome.
• When the App Store was slow to answer, the subscription screen gave up too soon. It now keeps trying.
• A dictionary entry could be about a different word that happened to be spelled the same.

Added

• The Christian Standard Bible, shown live alongside the New King James, NASB, New Living Translation and The Message. Fourteen English translations now.
• A new book picker. Choose a testament, tap a book from the grid, and your three most recent books are one tap away — no more scrolling from Genesis.
• Rate The Pillar from Settings, whenever you like, without waiting to be asked.

Fixed

• Pressing and holding a word for its Greek or Hebrew left the word selected behind the sheet, and could move the page. It no longer does either.
• 2 Thessalonians and Song of Solomon wrapped to two lines in the book picker.

Fixed

• Two ways the reader lost its place: jumping to another chapter from the picker opened it partway down, and adding or removing a highlight threw the page upward. Both hold your position now.
• Your reading streak now syncs between iPhone and iPad, so a six-day run is a six-day run on both.

The first public release. Everything below is in it.

Read

• Thirteen English translations, from the King James to the Berean Standard Bible, with the New King James, NASB, New Living Translation and The Message shown live.
• Three Spanish Bibles — Reina-Valera 1909, Palabra de Dios para Ti and the Nueva Biblia Viva — plus Arabic, and the Greek and Hebrew themselves.
• Offline reading. The King James is built in; other translations download where their license allows, and chapters you read are kept.
• Red-letter text, a parallel view, chapter swipe, and a human-narrated audio Bible with lock-screen controls.

Study

• Press and hold a word for its Greek or Hebrew, Strong's number, lexicon entry and every occurrence, in the King James and the Berean.
• The study drawer on every verse: commentary, cross-references, notes, the interlinear, five dictionaries, places and topics.
• Eighty-nine written word studies, and commentaries from Matthew Henry, Adam Clarke, John Gill, Calvin, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown, F. B. Meyer and more.
• Search by meaning. "Related in meaning" finds the verse even when you don't know its words. Runs on the device.
• Maps. A map for every chapter, an Atlas of more than 1,200 places, all offline.

Keep

• Highlights, notes and tags, searchable in one Library, with Markdown export.
• Sermon notes with recording, pause and resume, Mark timestamps, verse drop-in and a freehand canvas.
• Apple Pencil on iPad. Margin ink anchored to the verse, writing over the text, sweep-to-highlight, lasso, hold-to-snap shapes, and a journal.
• Reading plans, streaks, and a daily verse reminder scheduled on your device.
• iCloud sync between your iPhone and iPad, through your own account. We never see it.

Fixed on the way to launch

• Margin handwriting could scramble or drop after rotating the iPad or switching translations. It now stays exactly where you put it, and erased ink stays erased.
• The American Standard Version stopped after verse 1 in Philemon, Jude, Obadiah, 2 John and 3 John.
• Subscribing could show "The App Store didn't respond" if Apple's payment sheet took a while.