Gospel Library provides a comprehensive collection of Church material on your mobile device, including scriptures, conference addresses, magazines, manuals, and even videos. Recently the Gospel Library app for iOS has been updated with three new features:

• Improved media playback options
• Study Notebook integration
• LDS Music integration

Improved Media Playback Options

You can now listen to audio narrations for English scriptures, general conference addresses, magazines, and some lesson material. You can also watch videos of general conference addresses and other material. When you’re viewing content with media playback options, a play button appears enabled in the lower-right corner of the app.

When you click the Play button for conference addresses, you’re prompted with either video or audio media options.

If you play the audio, the play button changes states to indicate the audio is playing. If you choose the video option, the video stream plays.

Overall, the media playback gives you more options to consume the content, rather than just reading. 

Note that the inclusion of audio and video with Gospel Library requires the presence of media links in the content. These media links were not included in previous content downloads, so to play the audio or video, you must either delete and re-install the library content (a somewhat tedious process), or you must delete and re-install the Gospel Library app (the preferred method).

Before you delete the app, make sure any notes you added have been synchronized with your LDS Account (otherwise they will be lost when you delete the app).

To delete and re-install the Gospel Library app:

1. Start Gospel Library.
2. Back up any notes by going to Settings > Account Settings. Click Sync Now. Wait until the Pending Changes number becomes zero.
3. Tap the iPhone’s Home button to exit the app.
4. Tap and hold the Gospel Library app icon until the icon wiggles and shows an X.
5. Tap the X.
6. Press the iPhone’s Home button to return to the normal mode.
7. Open to the App Store and search for LDS Gospel Library.
8. Install the app. Then start it.
9. Tap Manage Library.
10. Tap the content you want to download.
11. Tap the green download arrow to download the content.

When you re-download the latest content to the Library, the new content will contain media links to play audio and video. (Note that the audio or video itself does not download locally but rather streams from a Church server; you must have either WiFi or a cellular connection to play the media).

Study Notebook Integration

My Study Notebook is now accessible from within the iOS Gospel Library app. Previously, notes synchronized between the two apps, but now you can access My Study Notebook directly within the Gospel Library interface, rather than just from LDS.org. A Notebook button appears in the upper-left corner of the Gospel Library app home screen.

This Notebook view shows you content from My Study Notebook. These items include the following:

• Marks: Passages you highlighted.
• Notes: Passages you annotated.
• Tags: Passages you have tagged.
• Links: Passages you have linked.
• Documents: Documents help you collect and organize your notes for talks, lessons, and topical study.

Probably the most common features are tags and documents. When you tag passages with a keyword, such as millennium, all passages with that same tag appear in a list.

You can add passages to a document by tapping and holding a verse, and then tapping Send.

LDS Music Integration

The iOS Gospel Library app also integrates with LDS Music. When you view a song from the Hymnbook or Children’s Songbook, a link labeled Open in LDS Music link appears at the top of the screen. When you click the link, the song opens in LDS Music. LDS Music shows sheet music and plays audio.

In the image above, the left screen is from Gospel Library. When you click Open in LDS Music, the hymn opens in LDS Music. When you finish the song, the Return to Gospel Library link takes you back to Gospel Library.

Note that if you don’t have LDS Music installed, when you click Open in LDS Music, you will be invited to install it.

Roadmap

Currently these new features are only available for the iOS version of Gospel Library. Eventually the features will be available for the other platforms as well.