iOS Logos Offline
I know that this has been mentioned in other places, but I thought I might try and condense some of my thinking (and perhaps the thoughts of others) in this thread. As others have mentioned, the Logos app becomes nothing more than a glorified e-book reader when you go offline. It may be great to have access to all of my books when I am online, but unless you have downloaded all of the resources (which is a tedious task in and of itself) or are online, you are extremely limited in what you can do.
We really need there to be greater offline capability on the iPhone and the iPad. If not the iPhone, definitely the iPad. Here are some of my thoughts as to why it is essential.
- 3G is slow at times and unreliable at others. To rely on either AT&T or Verizon (or another carrier via a hotspot) is to cripple the app. What if I am preaching in an area with basically no 3G coverage? What if the network goes down? I have had both of these happen to me.
- WiFi, like 3G, is not always available. I have an almost 8 week old baby. The other day we stopped in a parking lot while out so that my wife could climb in the back and feed the baby. Guess what--no WiFi in the middle of the parking lot! This is just one instance of many where I was wishing I could do more but without WiFi, I was unable.
- Missionaries. Many are in places without consistent access, but could use the portability of Logos on the iPad.
- Money. I have an iPhone so I could use the hotspot feature to always have 3G access, but at the minimum cost of $20/month (Verizon). For those of us laboring with smaller churches or trying to get through school, that is a lot of money on top of our what may be another data plan. I would like to make the investment in the iPad as it is a great ministry tool. But an additional fee on a monthly basis to be able to use Logos in its entirety is hard to swallow.
- Accordance. Their iOS app is, in many ways, far superior to the Logos app. When we have notes and highlighting, that will catch Logos up. But their app's baked in capabilities are fully functional offline.
- Logos. I have come to expect the best out of Logos. I appreciate the functions that I have now, but I really believe Logos has only began to touch the mobile capability of iOS.
So what would I like to see:
- The ability to choose to download all of my resources. I know that this is a lot of information, but you could force the app to do it over WiFi once and then have all of the resources. Once downloaded, you would be free from the bonds of 3G and WiFi. I also know that it will take up a lot of space, but that is space I believe many would be willing to sacrifice for full Logos usage. I wouldn't mind having fewer songs, videos, etc. with me. Even if full offline use was not immediately available (since it will require coding, testing, etc.), this seems like a feature that would be simple enough to place in an upcoming update.
- The ability to do word studies and the like offline. It has been commented that the iPad is not a laptop and should not be expected to function as such. That is true. But the iPad and other tablets are becoming the go-between so that one can have something more compact than anything else out there (even the MacBook Air) and still be able to be productive no matter where you are. The iPad/iPhone has the processing power to handle a scaled back version of the Word Study, etc. I don't fully expect complete desktop capability, but a scaled back version would be at least a start.
- Of course, I would love the notes and highlighting to be available and able to sync, whether I am online or offline. If I were not online, I could highlight and take notes that would be synced the next time I went online. (I have read notes and highlighting are coming, but wanted to add my vote).
I love my Logos. I run L4 platinum on my MacBook Pro. I use the functions of the iPhone app regularly, but it hurts to see the app so limited when I have to be offline. I appreciate all the work that has been done to date and am thankful for what we have. I am by no means complaining. I would just like to see some improvement to this app, because it really feels second class compared to the leading Mac competitor. Obviously this is my personal perspective so feel free to agree, disagree, or just ignore me! 
Final note: I also am not in the developer's circle or anything of the sort, but maybe this all is being worked on and I just wasted my time typing this!
Thanks!
Ben
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Ben,
I agree with your three wishes, with a little modification and an addition:
- Rather than download all your resources, I'd like us to be able to specify a collection and all resources in that collection would be automatically downloaded. That would work for all users, even those with large libraries.
- This has been discussed before, I would be very nice. OliveTree manage it for some of their resources in a rather clever way. It would be very hard to program - but with notes/highlighting would certainly lift Logos into the undisputed #1 slot.
- From the noises being made by Logos staff, I think this is already being worked on.
- I'd like an internal switch where we could set Logos to work offline, even if we were actually online at the time. Offline is often quicker.
It's also worth pointing out that Logos has steadily improved its offline abilities over time, particularly with offline footnotes and searching capabilities.
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
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Mark,
I can see the collection download being more accessible, but we would need a way to guarantee we had everything we needed to perform the Word Studies. Perhaps Logos could design the program with a pre-determined list to download the necessities and then enable a collections/by the book download.
I have heard the same about notes and am really looking forward to them!
Logos has made offline strides and I do not intend to ignore those. I just hope that they do improve it further for their faithful users.
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The other thing I would like to be able to do is look up interlinear data (morphology, lemma, gloss etc.) offline. I can do this with an interlinear display, but I prefer to work from just a plain original-language text and want to quickly look up the words that I don't know as I read. It shouldn't be difficult to have this data incorporated into the resource file (as it is in Logos 4) rather than accessed online.
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I am confused about the capabilities of Logos on the ipad, perhaps someone could help. I had been consdiering ipad 2 but only with wifi not 3g. However it seems that the capabilities offline, which would apply in many of the places I want to use it, are very limited. I do not feel that I can afford or justify the extra cost of 3g .
Reading this set of posts suggests that if I download all my resources (I have a limited library using OL version and a number of other books etc.) My total L4 folder is only 6 gb.
Questions
Can I download all my resources and is it a difficult/time-consuming operation?
Having downloaded can I then do most if not all that I can on my desktop.
There may be a site somewhere detailing all of this but I have not come across it.
Thanks in advance for any help possible.
David Stevely
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David Stevely said:
Can I download all my resources and is it a difficult/time-consuming operation?
No. Publishers maintain the right to decide if a resource will be available on another platform. In my experience, most are available. If you view a resource's bio page on Logos.com, there are icons to let you know if a resource is available on portable devices.
Also, you cannot "batch download" - for each resource you must switch an offline tab to download the resource.
David Stevely said:Having downloaded can I then do most if not all that I can on my desktop.
No, but more features are coming. Logos for the iPad does not equal Logos 4. It allows you to read your resources. It also allows you to do word studies. Highlighting and notes are coming "very soon" according to Bob.
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David,
I was confused at first as well, but the forums helped me sort it all out!
You can download all of your resources, but there is no "bulk" option. You have to open up each resource through the library pane and instruct it to be available offline. Then the app will download the resource. You have to repeat this for each of the resources, whether hundreds or thousands, to get all of it onto your iOS device. As noted above, not all is available due to licensing with publishers. I am confident Logos would put it all on there if they could!
There are several features that are currently not available on iOS (though some, like notes and highlighting have been promised to be coming soon). Alabama24 mentioned several things you can do, but these are only available when you connect to the internet. If you are connected via WiFi or 3G then you can do the word studies, the searches, the passage guide, etc. If you are not connected, you cannot do any of this. You can only access the resources you have downloaded, and you can really only read them. There are some minor searching capabilities, but everything else becomes inactive when offline. No word studies, no passage guide, no library searches. The Logos app becomes not much than a glorified e-reader. In all fairness, it is still awesome to be able to have all of your downloaded resources.
If you are like me and do not want an added data plan, then Logos becomes crippled on the iPad.
Hope this helps!
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Thanks to all for this help.
Given these restrictions I am not sure I can justify the cost.
Is there any chance of search etc offline becoming available in the future/
David Stevely
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That is ultimately a question for the developers. From what I have seen in other forums, the answer right now is no. Of course that could always change. I guess we will have to wait and see.
I feel your pain because I am holding an unopened 32gb Wifi iPad in my hands. I love the potential, but feel I just can't justify the price until some of the features become independent of the internet. Makes me kind of wish I was one of the users who had both Accordance and Logos. Prefer Logos' desktop software, but feel Accordance's iOS app is better. Guess the iPad is going back to the store!!!
In the meantime I will keep on enjoying L4 on my MBPro!
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David Stevely said:
Is there any chance of search etc offline becoming available in the future/
Searching within a single book is available offline. There are some pretty big technical challenges with full library searching offline.
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Dave,
I can only imagine how much power it would take to run a full library search when I consider what it takes for my core i5 MBPro to do it.
But is there the chance of any other features becoming offline available in the future? I don't expect the same level of access as I have on my full system, but perhaps a scaled back system? I don't do development so I don't know the ins and outs of what it would take for even a scaled version. That is why I started this thread. I was hoping we could get some more information on the limitations, possibilities, etc.
I do not want to seem ungrateful. Thanks for your hard work because I do use the Logos app regularly on my iPhone where I have 3G service.
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Thanks for that information. This is better than I had anticipated from my earlier understanding.
What about looking up from a bible into greek and hebrew lexicons offline?
David Stevely
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Many of features of Logos 4, Biblia.com and Logos mobile make extensive use of our search technology and large(ish) datasets. This makes it difficult to bring them to mobile devices. We solve this by keeping the data and processing "in the cloud." Unfortunately "the cloud" isn't always available, but Internet connectivity is becoming more and more pervasive.
If we were able to provide "scaled back" features offline as you suggest, what features or components of features would be most important? For example, there are many sections in the passage guide; which ones do you use most often?
thanks,
Dave
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Dave Dunkin said:
If we were able to provide "scaled back" features offline as you suggest, what features or components of features would be most important? For example, there are many sections in the passage guide; which ones do you use most often?
Having the morphology and lemmas built in to original-language texts would be good (and I hope fairly simple to implement). I don't like interlinears but do like to have this information when I am online, the same way that I have when Logos 4 is offline.
Also sorting out links that don't work in the iOS but do in Logos 4 is important. This particularly affects pseudepigrapha and Dead Sea Scrolls.
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My usage of the passage guide components would concentrate on commentaries, my content, cross references and grammars.
This in addition of course to morphology (interlinear would be great), bible search and links to lexicons.
The other items would not be important when using an ipad; if needed I would use a desk top or laptop.
The ipad would be used principally in services where a laptop might be obtrusive and having done desk study beforehand the ipad would cover issues raised I had not thought of in advace. Another use would be in listening to some one else ministering, if I had a question it would help in being a good Berean to "search the scriptures whether those things were so". My memory is no longer what is once was and I need all the help I can get.
David
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Dave Dunkin said:
If we were able to provide "scaled back" features offline as you suggest, what features or components of features would be most important? For example, there are many sections in the passage guide; which ones do you use most often?
The two most useful features would be reverse interlinear lookup and the commentaries section in the passage guide. I know both features would need the equivalent of L4's mstidx files. Perhaps it would be possible for you to generate these files on the server, and then they could be downloaded onto the device. (And ideally merged into one file for speed.)
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
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I think that the passage guide features would be commentaries first and perhaps the cross-references as well. But commentaries would take the number one spot for me.
I do think that the morphology links and such being built into the text would be useful. It would also be nice to have the ability to do word studies, even if it were limited to a very small set of the most often used resources. It would be great if the interlinear would actually be able to link to the resources for looking up the lemma.
It seems most who are posting into this thread agree that commentaries and expanded original language accessibility are the keys things for which we are looking. This would add what I think would be great features to fill out the offline mode. Of course, we could always mentions notes and highlighting, but a little birdie has told us that is on the way!
Dave, thanks again for watching and inputing on this thread. The greatest thing about Logos is how involved the developers are in the forums. You are always listening to customer feedback to improve the program. For that reason alone I will be staying with Logos.
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Hi Dave,
This post is helpful to understand, I think, why I can't "look up" GRAMCORD morph info on the iPad with Wifi OFF. It seems like you're saying the code to perform the "searches" to get the lemma tag info for Greek or Hebrew texts lives in the cloud. i.e., there are not separate ObjectiveC, Java, etc. versions of the code to execute the "Look up" feature but instead a web service (maybe) in the cloud that does the work and returns the results for the ObjectiveC code (on the iPad) or Java code (on the Android) to "consume." From this it seems that I will just have to be in range of Internet access and have Wifi connection in order to use the "Look up" feature. Is that correct?
Best regards,
David
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David Bradford said:
it seems that I will just have to be in range of Internet access and have Wifi connection in order to use the "Look up" feature. Is that correct?
Yes. The "Look Up" (reverse interlinear) feature requires an active Internet connection.
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