Logos Library is Amazing, Mobile use is not.
I really like the library Logos / Faithlife have brought together, it is probably second to none. But the untethered mobile version of this wonderful library is little more than a book reader. I know someone will protest and say it is way more than just a book reader, but it is also way less than it is when it is connected to the internet. There may be some platforms that do not have the neccasary oomph to get the job done alone, but the modern Android and iOS platforms are not one of them. Even Adobe has recently announced the full version of photoshop for the new iPad. PLEASE place a premium on non connected functionality. As it stands today my Silver logos 7 package may be my last as there are other mobile offerings that do work without needing the internet. If you agree please chime in, I believe the current direction seems to be to add things we aren't all neccasarily in dire need of (the new notes may make me upgrade anyway) but I do believe all of us would benifit by having more disconnected capabilities.
Again I ask for a focus on disconnected functionality.
Thank you.
Comments
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I like you wish for more offline functionality. I'm just trying to keep my app from crashing at this point.
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The latest mobile app is great BUT I agree with the need to have internet independent functionality. I live with very limited access to the net and travel in places that simply do not have it at all or not at the speeds you have in the USA. One more vote for more functionality without the internet. but well done on a great mobile upgrade.
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I agree FL lags behind other bible software companies in its mobile app’s offline capabilities, it they just don’t seem to be interested in doing anything about it, this issue has been raised so many times. I think that is a shame.
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The thing is a lot of people use the app on 4 year old iOS devices, or Android devices from across a wide-budget range with wildly differing capabilities. Smaller capacity phones wouldn’t be able to download my library for offline use.
i really do want the search capabilities improved (mostly how results are displayed) but my passage guides in Logos provide exponentially more information than the resource guide in Olive Tree ever had to deal with, largely because Logos is designed for huge libraries.
We have offline lookups for original languages, we can have a layout with every commentary we’d like, linked to bible texts in multiple languages. We can search any downloaded resource. We can quickly look up English terms offline in our top prioritised bible dictionaries.
But on top of that offline stuff, when connected to the internet we have access to the best word study tool on mobile, the unparalleled exegetical guide, the passage guide and the ability to search all of our thousands of books at the same time or read references to books we haven’t even downloaded in seconds.
There’s stuff I desperately want the mobile app to do that it can’t do right now, but I think it’s easily among the best bible apps on mobile. If I’m offline I have to tailor myself to some of the apps limits, but it’s rare that I can’t accomplish what I need to.
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+1 This is a major issue for me. I often prefer traveling with iPad only and right now Logos is the app that is the greatest challenge both in terms of limited functionality and how many things break without internet. A lot of the earth does not have US style access to wifi nearly all the time. Even on flights where I like to work a lot, the Logos iPad app is too crippled. Given how much Apple has progressed with making the iPad a computer replacement and how many people are using iPads for computers Logos approach is still very surprising to me.
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TOTALLY AGREE!!!
FULL OFFLINE SUPPORT should be a PRIORITY.
The new iPad Pros can easily accommodate a full version of the Logos bible app; from the APPLE WEBSITE
- Video mirroring and video out support: Up to 4K through the USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter and USB-C VGA Multiport Adapter (adapters sold separately)
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more like "Retrograde"
Samuel said:+1 This is a major issue for me. I often prefer traveling with iPad only and right now Logos is the app that is the greatest challenge both in terms of limited functionality and how many things break without internet. A lot of the earth does not have US style access to wifi nearly all the time. Even on flights where I like to work a lot, the Logos iPad app is too crippled. Given how much Apple has progressed with making the iPad a computer replacement and how many people are using iPads for computers Logos approach is still very surprising to me.
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Standing and applauding while nodding my head in full agreement with this thread! 👏👏👏👏
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Additionally, enabling sync of personal books to mobile devices would be a wonderful addition!
There are simply books which are not available in the Logos library (yet) which I have imported to Logos on my computer, and which are synced to the cloud (I believe). Making those books available on mobile devices would be very, very beneficial.
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I agree this is one of the most irritating things about the mobile app and it has been raised numerous times over several versions, but no one is listening. I travel internationally a lot, and so you are dead the whole time you are traveling. The capacity problem could easily be solved by simply having an option about features and resources to download. The rest of the world has left Logos far behind.
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Fully agree. The new app is a step back. Can't highlight, cumbersome, freezers regularly.
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Steve. Kilgore said:
The new app is a step back. Can't highlight, cumbersome, freezers regularly.
This has not been my experience at all! Have you tried isolating any causes/issues?
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Steve. Kilgore said:
Can't highlight, cumbersome, freezers regularly.
I haven't tried any highlighting, as I gave up on that a couple of mobile app iterations ago. But I am experiencing freezes, delays, and other oddities. In fact, I posted one from church this morning where the app wouldn't look up a word. I'm told by a responder that it was because I went offline, but I couldn't see any evidence of that when it happened (no loss of connectivity elsewhere with the iPad)...I'm thinking the app was freezing instead.
But that just highlights many of the issues above about offline functionality.
Eating a steady diet of government cheese, and living in a van down by the river.
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Yes, I have spent hours trying to solve the issues. I've summited screenshot and reported bugs. With no help.
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I too have issues with mobile app to the point where it’s almost unusable. Highlighting is buggy and often doesn’t work. Chinese resources are almost ubusable in terms of selecting text. Logos really needs to take a look at these issues.
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Hi everyone,
We know offline use is important to many of our users. We have shipped improvements to offline word lookups, and we're actively working on improving offline search.
Full offline use of the Logos app is not really feasible for many reasons. However, we're wanting to improve the offline experience where we can, especially for core lookups/activities in the app. Additionally, we're working on improvements to the library that will make it easier to download resources, and to know if those resources have been downloaded.
What are some of the primary offline improvements that you'd like to see?
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Daniel Di Bartolo said:
What are some of the primary offline improvements that you'd like to see?
For me:
- Offline support for reverse interlinears
- Translation comparison tool
Daniel Di Bartolo said:
...we're actively working on improving offline search.
This is great - it's the biggest downside of the app. What I'd love from this is:
- For the number of results to be visible at the top
- For results to appear in order (by resource, online or offline) with some kind of reference above hits (bible reference/page reference/chapter heading etc)
- For the results to be cached, so that you can continue to see results after swapping between tabs/apps
- For help working out what modifiers you can use
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Hi Daniel,
Glad to hear that offline usage improvements are coming soon.
My most frequent offline use case of the iOS app (esp. on iPad) is to read, highlight, and digest commentary content for a specific Bible passage I'm preparing to preach on. As such, I would like to see the following features and improvements:
- From the Passage Guide, I can have a button to download the top 10-20 commentaries generated by the PG (download the specific volume pertaining to the Bible book/passage being studied).
- Have another button to "un-download" them when done reading them.
- Make it easier to select and copy text from these commentaries... right now the swipe-to-highlight function really interferes with the ability to easily select and copy, plus the context menu often pops up and gets in the way of the selecting text.
Thanks,
Peter
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Daniel Di Bartolo said:
What are some of the primary offline improvements that you'd like to see?
1. On the Android app, add the same lookup pop-up window for Original Language and Reverse-Interlinears that you added to the iOS app, and make sure they work just as well online or offline, for Original Language and Reverse Interlinears.
2. Make it so that the new homepage cards update properly offline, especially the Liturgy and Saints cards (the v7 cards worked properly offline, when dates changed)
3. Passage Guide
4. Bible Word Study Guide
5. Exegetical Guide
Regarding the most important improvements I'd like to see that would hopefully also work offline...
1. Search would be useful, but currently search is so bad, regardless of whether you are offline or online, that I never use it. Above all, inline search is key for the Mobile App, and should always be the default option, and should work equally well offline or online. Searching in all resources I find is rarely needed or wanted on the mobile app, for me anyway.
2. I'd also love to see some of the most important dataset Bible tagging available on the Mobile App Reverse-Interlinear and OL Bibles, and have that info appear in the little Info pop-up. Above all Person, Place, Thing, and Event tagging. You could inaugurate the Factbook (also available offline, of course), when you add it! [:)]
Oh... one more thing. I'd like to see the app try to use offline whenever it can. When you have added offline support, it tends to be significantly quicker than the online versions. I notice this above all on the Bible verse look-ups. They are instantaneous offline, but sometimes if the Internet connection is bad they can really make you wait online. How about making them always do it offline, when available and downloaded, for speed, and then add the offline ability to pull down various verses, not just one?
And similarly with other features - when you add offline support, and its faster and works just as well, default to that always.
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Fr Devin Roza said:
Above all, inline search is key for the Mobile App, and should always be the default option, and should work equally well offline or online. Searching in all resources I find is rarely needed or wanted on the mobile app, for me anyway.
Ooh! Ooh! Yes, this.
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Daniel Di Bartolo said:
What are some of the primary offline improvements that you'd like to see?
Basic press-lookup functionality, either by auto-download of key resources or a list of suggested resources which should be downloaded for offline function (this in addition to some of the other fine suggestions made by others).
Eating a steady diet of government cheese, and living in a van down by the river.
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mj strand said:
Additionally, enabling sync of personal books to mobile devices would be a wonderful addition!
There are simply books which are not available in the Logos library (yet) which I have imported to Logos on my computer, and which are synced to the cloud (I believe). Making those books available on mobile devices would be very, very beneficial.
I see you are new to the Logos forums. Welcome! To your suggestion, Faithlife has previously determined they will never support sync of personal books to the mobile apps. If syncing PBBs is necessary for you, I suggest you do what many of us have done -- get a Surface Pro or Surface Go. That way, you have a tablet that runs the full desktop version of the software with access to all of your personal books.
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I certainly agree. Not happy at all with new mobile app!
Bob Deacon
Ipad Air 2 (ios 9.7 (0014)
Windows 11 inside edition
Samsung S23
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Bob Deacon said:
Not happy at all with new mobile app!
What aspects of the L8 mobile app can we improve? How can we make it better for you?
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It is very slow in applying a highlight, it is sometimes difficult selecting text to highlight. I have yet to put it through its paces with notes. I definitely would like offline access for Reverse Interlinears. Please understand, it it not my intent to be negative but IMHO L7 seemed better in some (but not all) ways.
Bob
Bob Deacon
Ipad Air 2 (ios 9.7 (0014)
Windows 11 inside edition
Samsung S23
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Daniel Di Bartolo said:
Hi everyone,
We know offline use is important to many of our users. We have shipped improvements to offline word lookups, and we're actively working on improving offline search.
Full offline use of the Logos app is not really feasible for many reasons. However, we're wanting to improve the offline experience where we can, especially for core lookups/activities in the app. Additionally, we're working on improvements to the library that will make it easier to download resources, and to know if those resources have been downloaded.
What are some of the primary offline improvements that you'd like to see?
I don't mean for this to be rude or cheeky, but I would like for the app to run correctly first. My app worked great when it was L7 but now it is plagued by crashes, freezes, blank pages and locked scrolling forcing numerous restarts and killing my battery. Once that is addressed, I would like to be able to download my resources and run searches offline as well as guides and workflows. Thank you
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Daniel Di Bartolo said:Bob Deacon said:
Not happy at all with new mobile app!
What aspects of the L8 mobile app can we improve? How can we make it better for you?
On my iOS device, it is very difficult to select any text close to a hyperlinked Scripture Reference (either in the line above or underneath). It usually opens the long-press options menu for Scripture references, even though I long-pressed on some text in a different line. This really hinders smooth highlighting.
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I would also like a better option for getting word definitions. I have English dictionaries prioritized towards the top but when using lookup I don't always get results from a dictionary. Maybe add an option like define that pulls from the device dictionary?
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Mattillo said:
Maybe add an option like define that pulls from the device dictionary?
Now I see the problem FL has. This is the exact OPPOSITE of what I want. It is pulling from my iOS dictionary and I *don't* want that to happen.
"You can please some of the people some of the time..." [:)]
Eating a steady diet of government cheese, and living in a van down by the river.
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Daniel Di Bartolo said:
What aspects of the L8 mobile app can we improve? How can we make it better for you?
Right now, the app's stability needs to be restored. At present, it's approaching unusability. I'm on 8.0.3, and yesterday I still got the: won't turn the page; blank screen; hang; then crash behavior that we've seen since the 8.x was released.
As I've stated elsewhere including in my issue reports from within the app, I've been using the app heavily, daily, for 6+ years - all through seminary and as part of weekly sermon preparation, devotion, and study. There have been long-standing idiosyncrasies that I find frustrating. But nothing that made the app unusable.
Now I don't know if I can rely on it. I hesitate when I think about picking up my iPad to do tasks as simple as reading. The problems I described above occur when all I'm doing is reading. No highlighting or notes, no lookups, no guides, none of that. I can't even confidently read without encountering showstopper bugs.
If those problems can't be fixed, all the enhancements in the world won't mean anything.
Donnie
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It is not feasible mostly it feels like because FL doesn’t want to do it, at one point it was even hinted the mobile versions being phased out in favour of the web app. Now I know all features on mobile may be asking too much but programs like Olivetree’s BibleReader offers great passage guide functions very well. The web app is no answer because until you have a way to download the web app and resources to use offline it is dead in the water as a useful alternative.
-dan
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[:D]
I agree with what the others have said.
It is very close to being unusable.
I try to highlight and it takes three or four times to get that done. If I try to move on after it fails to highlight then it crashes the app.
Sometimes when I try to swipe between 3 or 4 books the pages that represent the book turn black and the app becomes unusable.
It seems to me like the app was released without being tested. You folks at Logos should have the app installed in your devices and work on it an hour per day then maybe you won’t need to ask us all of the time what’s wrong with it.
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Dan Francis said:
It is not feasible mostly it feels like because FL doesn’t want to do it
Actually I don't think that. In fact, the new UI for the Logos 8 Homepage, that is so dysfunctional compared to L7, is the way it is exactly because that is how it needs to look on small mobile screens. And from watching the forums I think FL hears the message loud and clear that an increasing percentage of users not only wants to read on their mobile devices, but also to study, to prepare sermons/other content and to deliver this content. They just have to balance what they can do on such devices in terms of storage size and processing power (which makes it much much easier to run stuff on the Logos server and just show the results - as the Web App does - and permanent connectivity is something many of those demographics enjoy or rather take for granted).
The partial rewrite and redesign of Logos for L8 - which happened without a need to do so from a pure desktop perspective - makes only sense for me under the assumption that it prepares the way for feature parity across the platforms. Thus I see that FL wants to cater to the mobile group even to the extent that they make some of their desktop users very unhappy. The strategic focus is in your direction, guys!
Have joy in the Lord!
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Dan Francis said:
at one point it was even hinted the mobile versions being phased out in favour of the web app
Not sure where this was hinted at, but there's no truth to this rumour that I know of.
If anything, it's the opposite. Visit app.logos.com on your iPhone and the banner across the top will prompt you to install the mobile app!
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Donnie Hale said:
Right now, the app's stability needs to be restored. At present, it's approaching unusability. I'm on 8.0.3, and yesterday I still got the: won't turn the page; blank screen; hang; then crash behavior that we've seen since the 8.x was released.
We have several reports of locked scrolling and blank screens on iOS. Please know that our team is actively working on this. It's particularly difficult to repro and isolate. We'll submit a fix to Apple asap.
Donnie Hale said:As I've stated elsewhere including in my issue reports from within the app, I've been using the app heavily, daily, for 6+ years - all through seminary and as part of weekly sermon preparation, devotion, and study. There have been long-standing idiosyncrasies that I find frustrating. But nothing that made the app unusable.
Thanks for sticking with us for so long. I bet you've had quite the journey over the last 6 years. Tech has changed a lot. Mobile remains a huge priority for us, and we're investing more now than we every have before.
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I see much attention is given to the Logos Library running on PC than the Mobile App for there has been updates now and then on the PC version to make sure it's running good I know that because I have install the PC version on a PC in the office, i don't own PC what I have is iPad pro 2016, so I don't have the PC in the office all to myself. To the the Mobile App to my view is given little attention. Yet what we must remember is that the world we live in today has become mobile, I cannot carry a desktop PC with me every where but with my iPad or Tablet i can carry every where, And for that matter most people have chosen iPad or Tablet instead of a PC.
I am in Africa, and i can tell you the internet is not everywhere we most time go places and spent months, how do i study, it becomes pain in studying in areas where there are no internet. I complained to a friend and he introduced Logos Mobile App competitor to me, at that time he introduce that Mobile App to me they had put out an advertisement that "FREE FROM WIFI" explaining that they have build their app in way that one can study every where not worrying about internet , in fact I tried it on his iPad and everything work fine offline. And I wondered why can't this work with Logos Mobile App.
Then a thought came to me "may be Logos Bible make money when we are online." if that's the case please give us full functionality and sell the app and we will buy because i love Logos.
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Bukari Daniel said:
in fact I tried it on his iPad and everything work fine offline. And I wondered why can't this work with Logos Mobile App.
I don't know about competitor products but I do agree we need better offline functionality. Some has arrived in the last year and hopefully more will come.
Bukari Daniel said:Then a thought came to me "may be Logos Bible make money when we are online." if that's the case please give us full functionality and sell the app and we will buy because i love Logos.
I don't really know what this means
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Daniel Di Bartolo said:
What aspects of the L8 mobile app can we improve? How can we make it better for you?
Please, please provide a copy bible verses tool. This is a major challenge for me because I like to work on iPad on my notes and I insert verses constantly and there is no clean way to do that with the current app. It would be really nice extra to have copy bible verses available with x-callback-url functionality as well so Logos could be used in a workflow on the iPad. This is so simple but needed so I'm curious how others accomplish this on iPad?
Beyond that, as much offline functionality as possible. Between airplanes and traveling the mobile app is frustrating to use. Sometimes even on wifi things don't work right. It feels like it's designed for constant high speed internet and a lot of the world doesn't have this.
I would be very grateful if we at least had the ability to do two things:
1. A simple word lookup meaning the ability to see the original language behind an English word and open one of my lexicons lexicon. Basically the functionality you have on a right click on the desktop version.
2. A simple ability to search a reference and see a list of commentaries from my library that have matches. In other words, the top part of the passage guide.
Other things like an inline interlinear would also be awesome
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Daniel Di Bartolo said:
What aspects of the L8 mobile app can we improve? How can we make it better for you?
I can't believe I forgot this in my other post, but keyboard shortcuts for everything would be a huge help. While I would have never guessed this a few years ago, power users on the iPad are working as much as possible via keyboard shortcuts. Many of the best apps on iPad have very robust keyboard shortcuts which eliminate the need to touch the screen very much. While it seems counterintuitive it really makes the iPad an excellent productivity platform.
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+1 for this idea. Keyboard shortcuts are key to serious iPad use.
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Please see my post here for the bugs reported: L8 iOS BUG (scrolling, highlighting) HOW TO REPRODUCE - DEV TEAM please read!!!
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Daniel Di Bartolo said:
What aspects of the L8 mobile app can we improve? How can we make it better for you?
Let me add just a bit to this-it's key to be able to integrate Logos on the iPad to easily share information with other apps. For example, I mentioned copy bible verses. I desperately need a feature like this. Ideally also exposed through Siri Shortcuts so I can integrate it into workflows with other apps I use for writing and research. Also, the ability to get a proper citation when I copy a quote out of a book like you do on Logos desktop. Finally, the ability to export out information. For example, when I'm working on a project, I frequently export a search to csv format and pull it into Numbers and create a proper spreadsheet to do analysis on that set of verses. On iOS I don't have any way to share information and get it into a spreadsheet or doc for further analysis or as part of a bigger project.
If we had the ability to easily share data out of iOS as on desktop that would be a big help. Right now the core apps I use are pretty much fully functional on iOS and it would be a big help to my workflow for logos to be fully functional and by that I do not mean every function that's on desktop, but a reasonable core functionality that works off and online.
Thanks for listening!
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“It is very close to being unusable.
I try to highlight and it takes three or four times to get that done. If I try to move on after it fails to highlight then it crashes the app.“
While myapp has has yet to crash ALL other aspects mentioned here apply to my situation as well.
Bib
Bob Deacon
Ipad Air 2 (ios 9.7 (0014)
Windows 11 inside edition
Samsung S23
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Samuel said:Daniel Di Bartolo said:
What aspects of the L8 mobile app can we improve? How can we make it better for you?
I can't believe I forgot this in my other post, but keyboard shortcuts for everything would be a huge help. While I would have never guessed this a few years ago, power users on the iPad are working as much as possible via keyboard shortcuts. Many of the best apps on iPad have very robust keyboard shortcuts which eliminate the need to touch the screen very much. While it seems counterintuitive it really makes the iPad an excellent productivity platform.
This is very important to iPad users!
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Hi Daniel! While I would happily take as much functionality as it's possible to provide, the main thing I wish for right now is just for the books I've downloaded to be accessible if I lose my internet connectivity. As it is, the mobile app basically stops working if I can't stay connected to the internet. The wifi at my church is spotty sometimes, and when that happens, I can't use the Logos app at all, even to use a Bible that I've downloaded. I thought the point of downloading resources was so that they would be available offline. If this is not true, is there any point to downloading them?
I'm a huge fan of all things Logos, but I hope that the mobile app can be improved to at least provide minimal functionality when offline. Thank you and the whole Logos team for the fantastic things you do!
Bob
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This is without doubt the worst aspect of the system. It has been brought up over and over. The earlier comments were "what do you expect from a free product". I think they have been extremely slow to recognize that mobile is the product for many people. I guessing the architecture doesn't take that into account and so it is a difficult thing to solve.
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Ditto on the errors Mattillo reports!
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André Kamphuis said:
On my iOS device, it is very difficult to select any text close to a hyperlinked Scripture Reference (either in the line above or underneath). It usually opens the long-press options menu for Scripture references, even though I long-pressed on some text in a different line. This really hinders smooth highlighting.
Ditto
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Ditto on the factbook and the person place and thing tagging. I would like to see these limited things available offline, although I do recognize that the mobile version won't ever be the workhorse of the pc/mac version. That doesn't seem like the niche mobile is about.
Here is another simple way to help satisfy some of this need however, based on the unique strengths and uses of mobile, if it could be implemented into the desktop or web version:
I created my own custom guide for the desktop version that runs a series of searches on a pretty sophisticated list of resources. I absolutely LOVE my custom guide, but once it has done its work, all I have to do is start wading through READING everything I found. If there were a way to export the contents of the guide on the desktop as a "reader's edition" so that it were essentially a downloadable printout of everything I check off the guide that I want to read, I would then be happy to open that on mobile and start working through it, offline.
This would basically hot-stitch together my dictionaries (only the entries relevant to the guide) and commentaries, church father readings, etc into a binder which I could then work through. Bonus points if I can add notes to the reader and they actually record back to the original resources, as currently I do something like this by exporting to a Word file and assembling it quickly into an epub which I open up on a kindle, but notes are out of the ecosystem of logos and can't be easily added back in. I know I can "print" the guide, but this only shows the short forms and doesn't actually pull the relevant chapters from the resources themselves.
Let me spend 15 minutes in front of my glowing computer in my office, and 4 hours with my mobile edition at the beach; as this tends to be the way I am already using the mobile app. The desktop version is powerful, but the fact is that you don't read long books on a computer as well as on a tablet (e-ink especially).
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