Category: New Products

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Best of the Advanced Feature in PocketBible 3 for Windows

PocketBible for Windows went from having the worst to the best set of features in its Advanced Feature Set (AFS). Let’s take a quick look at what we get in the AFS for PocketBible 3 for Windows.

Appearance Improvements

An AFS subscription gives you three times more color schemes to choose from. Or, if you feel creative, define your own custom color scheme. Custom color schemes control every color used by the app, not just text and background colors in your books.

Layout Improvements

With the Advanced Feature Set, you can name your screen layout, then create an entirely new one, perhaps for a different purpose. You can have one layout for personal Bible study and another for Sunday morning. If you name your layout “Today”, pressing the Today’s Reading button on the toolbar won’t just take you to today’s reading in your favorite devotional, but will open the Today layout where you can have the devotionals, reading plans, and Bibles open that you use for daily reading.

Named layouts open some other possibilities. Expand a single book into an entire, full-screen layout. Or expand a single pane containing one or more books into new layout. Finally, you can expand the tabs of a single pane into parallel panes in a new layout. This last one is an easy way to create parallel Bibles.

Library Search

An AFS subscription enables a new feature in the Study Panel called Library Search. Search your entire library or just a selection of books in your library for words and phrases. Sort by frequency of occurrence of your search term, or sort books in alphabetical order. Choose a result launch a full search of the book, including supplemental searches like “same root word” and “sounds like”.

And new to PocketBible in this version 3 for Windows — export your Library Search results to an external window. From there you can print, save, or copy the results of your search.

Journal Notes

We’re happy to bring Journal Notes to the Windows version for the first time. This popular feature lets you create notes that aren’t tied to a Bible verse or a reference book, but rather are accessed by their title.

View HTML Files

The idea of exporting lists in PocketBible to external windows very quickly led to the ability to view HTML files in external windows, with active Bible reference links back into your PocketBible Bible. Plus, any references that you link to PocketBible will have “hover” support. Rest your mouse cursor on the link and PocketBible will pop up the text of the verse.

Library Navigator

The Library Navigator displays a list of everywhere the current verse in the active Bible is referenced in each book in your library, making it easy to find related commentary or background discussion for any verse in the Bible

Autostudy

The Advanced Feature Set introduces Autostudy to PocketBible for Windows for the first time. This feature allows you to select any group of books, then produce a report showing what every book in your selected books has to say about the chosen verse or word. You can also use it to output everything you need for today’s devotional reading — the article of the devotional itself, plus the text of any verses you need to read from your favorite Bible.

We’ve also brought AI Insights to PocketBible for Windows from the iOS version of the app. Integrated into the Autostudy feature, AI Insights uses ChatGPT to deliver thoughtful commentary, historical and linguistic background, and deeper understanding of the text. With carefully designed prompts, it draws on resources beyond your library to provide Bible-centered, informative insights that enrich your studies.

It also wrote that previous paragraph, by the way. 🙂

Named Highlight Colors

With AFS features enabled, you can assign names to your highlight colors to remind you what each color means.

Text-to-Speech

Just as it does on other platforms, PocketBible 3 for Windows uses built-in text-to-speech capabilities in Windows to read the Bible — or any of your books — to you.

Rather than read about it, why not download PocketBible 3 for Windows and give it a try? You can install it without removing previous versions — they neither interfere with nor interact with each other.

Download PocketBible Now
Learn More About the Advanced Feature Set
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Best of the Standard Features in PocketBible 3 for Windows

It’s difficult to write briefly about this version of PocketBible. Here are some of the things we like best about this new version of PocketBible.

Flexible Layout

Resize panes. Split panes horizontally or vertically to add a new book or group of books. No longer are you limited to only one type of book like you were in version 1, and no longer are you limited to only a certain layout like you were in version 2.

Customizable Appearance

Would you prefer the toolbar across the bottom of the screen? Just change it in Settings. Prefer the Study Panel on the right instead of the left? Change that, too, while you’re there.

PocketBible 1 was almost too customizable when it came to fonts, font sizes, and colors. These applied only to specific types of panes, so to change colors across the board, you had to change colors in several places. Same with fonts and sizes. PocketBible 3 makes it straightforward to change font, text size, and color scheme.

And when you change the text size for your books and Bibles, other text in the app gets bigger or smaller right along with it. On top of that, you can zoom or un-zoom the entire app with a single press of Ctrl++ or Ctrl+-.

Searches

We’ve ported our newer search algorithm from iOS, Android, and macOS to this Windows version. Now when you search for a word, you’ll also find instances where words that sound like what you’re looking for, and other instances where words have the same or similar root word as the one you’re looking for. Exact matches will be at the top of the results list, of course, but these other searches will be available, too.

Notes

We’ve ported the rich text noted editor, similar to what we use on other platforms, to Windows. If you want something bold, just press Ctrl+B or select the “bold” button. No more trying to remember weird HTML tags to do a simple task.

External Windows

Search results, both of your books and your notes, lists of bookmarks, and lists of highlighted verses can all be exported to an external window. You can save, print, or copy from these windows. When you’re done with them you can close them, or leave them open and they’ll be there the next time you launch PocketBible

Compatibility with All Our Bibles

A few years back we found we had to make changes to our Bible format in order to make it easier to release new translations of the Bible. We were able to update the iOS, Android, and macOS versions of PocketBible, but in a story too sad for this blog, we couldn’t update the Windows versions — until now. The new version of PocketBible works with all our Bibles. Seems like that would have happened sooner. We agree. But it’s here now.

Automatic Sync of User-Created Data

PocketBible 1 for Windows Desktop required you to manually sync your data to our server. PocketBible 2 for Windows Store required you to pay to even use those features. In PocketBible 3, synchronization of your notes, highlights, bookmarks, and devotional reading progress is automatic — or manual if you prefer. You can more easily keep all your devices in sync. And it’s included in the standard feature set.

Cloud Library

Originally in PocketBible 1, each book had to be manually downloaded and installed using the Windows installer process. We eventually wrote a Cloud Library app, but it was a stand-alone, separate app that could be hard for some to find and use. PocketBible 2 had an integrated Cloud Library functionality, but it was finicky and to be honest, even when it worked it wouldn’t display the correct download progress percentage. And sometimes it would just start downloading books whether you wanted it to or not. The Cloud Library function in PocketBible 3 is built-in, easy-to-use, and reliable.

More Standardized User Interface

PocketBible 2 for Windows Store was originally designed for Windows Phone. (I bet you didn’t know that.) So it had some behaviors that made sense on a phone but were mystifying on the desktop. For example, right-click caused the toolbars to be displayed — toolbars we all thought should always be visible. To get the menu you normally get when you right-click, you had to press and hold the mouse button. Navigating back and forth by pages required hitting hidden buttons. In PocketBible 3, the toolbar is always at the top of the screen (or the bottom if you prefer), and right-click always displays a context menu as expected.

Rather than read about it, why not download PocketBible 3 for Windows and give it a try? You can install it without removing previous versions — they neither interfere with nor interact with each other.

Download PocketBible Now

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PocketBible 3 for Windows is Now Live!

Sunday, November 2, 2025 — Today we released the long-awaited PocketBible 3 for Windows. The new app is available for download from our website.

Coincident with this release, the old Windows Desktop (version 1), Windows Store (version 2), and Windows Phone versions of PocketBible have been retired.

How To Upgrade

Current users of the Windows Desktop version of PocketBible who are running Windows 10 or 11 can update by syncing their user data (notes, highlights, bookmarks, and devotional reading progress) to our server (assuming you’ve been doing that from time to time and want to keep this data), then download the new version by following the instructions below.

Current users of the Windows Store version of PocketBible who are running Windows 10 or 11 can update by syncing their user data (notes, highlights, bookmarks, and devotional reading progress) to our server (assuming you have the Advanced Feature Set, which is required in order to use that feature on the Windows Store version of PocketBible), then download the new version by following the instructions below.

To install PocketBible 3 for Windows, go to https://laridian.com and select the Windows platform from the list on the right. Select the large PocketBible graphic and follow the download instructions on that page. The new version doesn’t replace your old version; it’s an entirely new app. Once you’re sure it’s going to work for you, you can remove the old version.

Advanced Feature Set Users

If you own a subscription for the Advanced Feature Set for PocketBible for Windows Store, your subscription will just work on the new version. It will automatically enable the AFS once you launch the new app and register.

If you own the old “legacy” AFS version for PocketBible for Windows Store from before it became a subscription, your AFS will also be recognized by PocketBible 3 once you register. However, you will only have access to the AFS features that are implemented in the new version and were present when you purchased your copy of the AFS. Most of the features of the Windows Store AFS are standard in this new version. The only two features that your legacy AFS will enable are named layouts and text-to-speech. To get the rest of the AFS features, you’ll need a subscription.

Future of Versions 1 and 2

We are stopping distribution of older versions of PocketBible immediately.

We don’t have an official end date for tech support for the older versions, but we will be encouraging everyone with any problems at all to upgrade. We will eventually announce an end to support; probably sooner for version 2 than for version 1, since users of version 2 can likely run version 3, while users of version 2 still running Windows XP, Vista, and 7 won’t be able to run this new version until they upgrade their hardware.

Caveat Emptor

There are sure to be problems for a little while now that this version is getting wider distribution. Our beta testers have been working on it since March, so we have a lot of confidence in it. If you run into problems, contact tech support and let us know.