Pencil Bible: Journal & Study

I’ve been hoping to find an app like this and was super stoked when I came across this one, there’s not any other like it. I love how you can customize font, line height, margin width, etc. so I had high hopes…but I’m actually kind of bummed now that I’ve been using it for a few days. For starters, there isn’t a very wide selection of versions, not even the ones more common in contemporary Christian churches, like NLT or NASB or NKJV. Maybe I’m just used to other Bible apps, but I expected more of a wide selection. Plus, you have to pay for different versions, so it’s not like you can easily switch to other ones to just to quickly compare translations. The note taking function in and of itself is an excellent concept, but it’s SUPER glitchy. It will draw random lines across the screen, lag for a really long time, and be unresponsive to clicks within the toolbar buttons (to change color, change tool, undo, redo, erase, etc.) For context, I am using a new iPad pro and apple pencil that is all up to date. It says the app itself was updated 2 weeks ago, so there shouldn’t be any issues in terms of outdated tech on either end. I’m glad there was a free trial option (10 chapters of notes), because the glitching and limited version selection don’t really make the $60+ subscription worth it to me. If they add more common translations and fix the bugs, that will be another story, but for now I guess I’ll just settle for typing my notes in other Bible apps and hoping that I’ll come across a better alternative in the future.

I absolutely love this concept. I have always wanted some sort of digital bible with the ability to hand write your own notes into it, rather than type them in some hidden menu where they are hidden from view and hard to access/remember that you even took a note on that verse in the past. It always seemed clunky to me to use a digital bible and a physical notebook. Even with the addition of splitting the screen between two apps, it never felt natural to use a bible one one half of the screen and a note taking app on the other, especially because the note taking apps get squished so much they’re hard to use. The translation selection, while limited, does offer a good selection of translations and I see that there are several more on the way as well. I understand obtaining rights to use the text is hard, but what’s there already is a very good starting point. My one complaint with the app is when using the pencil, palm rejection is not great. I unfortunately noticed it right off of the bat when using the Bible in landscape mode. Resting my hand on the display to write will result in the pencil sometimes working, sometimes not, which makes taking notes in the margins more difficult. It seems to confuse some strokes with swipes and tries to scroll the screen, or it won’t write anything for a bit so I try again a couple times, it’ll flash everything I tried to write, then it disappears. Not sure if this is because I am using an older iPad and there’s more lag than the newer ones, but other apps with pencil support, like Penultimate, work just fine and I never have palm rejection issues. Hopefully this can get patched at some point, but until then I will definitely continue using this. It’s about time someone developed an app like this.