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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:
- Start Gospel Library.
- Back up any notes by going to Settings > Account Settings. Click Sync Now. Wait until the Pending Changes number becomes zero.
- Tap the iPhone’s Home button to exit the app.
- Tap and hold the Gospel Library app icon until the icon wiggles and shows an X.
- Tap the X.
- Press the iPhone’s Home button to return to the normal mode.
- Open to the App Store and search for LDS Gospel Library.
- Install the app. Then start it.
- Tap Manage Library.
- Tap the content you want to download.
- 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. |
Comments
Most of the testing is done by volunteers, using whatever devices we have at hand. Your contribution with your device would be welcome.
I have deleted and re-downloaded the app several times.
any ideas on what I can do to fix it?
It would be helpful if the user was able to select the desired version to install.
Thanks again!
I observed the same problem and then realized that, for some reason, the title page of the Book of Mormon doesn't play back. If you're starting there, try 1st Nephi Chapter 1 (or another chapter) and see if that works for you.
These features are on the roadmap to add in a future version.
Which device are you using? I don't know about Android tablets, but there are some shortcuts on the iPad to switch between apps REALLY fast. To enable this feature on the iPad go to Settings -> General -> Multitasking Gestures.
Once you've switched that to "ON" you can swipe up on the screen with 4 fingers to show the multitasking bar. Or you can simply swipe to the left or right with 4 fingers to move between apps. It's great!
I hope that helps.
Sync between devices and the web should be working. It sounds like you have out of date content on the iPhone. If you turn on annotation sync to back up then delete your scripture content then download again through manage library you'll see a play button.
iPhone 5.1.1, 4s
Latest gospel library app
Thanks,
John
No content shown to download under manage library since latest update. My existing content works fine but what happened to my access to new library content to download.
iPod Touch 4.2.1s
Any news on the android update?
iOS will have another update within the next 2 weeks if all goes well.
Android will have another update around early September.
Absolutely!
noel ..Ac
send me notification i want more can i used frofile info to make my account to ldfs hello .. pm.. pls can evaluates me it con...
If I understand your question right, we do not currently have any plans to make bookmarks visible in text while reading. That is an interesting thought though and we will consider it.
Yes it will. This release should be out within a week or two.
Are there plans to allow highlighting within all areas of the manuals or highlighting within the notebooks?
Thanks for a great look app!
The short answer is yes. The long answer involves a lengthy explanation that details how we don't have identifiers on much of the content and in order to add these identifiers we have to have a method in place that will convert from old to new identifiers so we do not lose any or your annotations (highlights, etc). Not sure when this will be completed but we are praying it will be in 2013.
Am I the only one read this answer and laughed? I know it wasn't meant as comedy but I liked it...
Chris
I'm glad you found my attempt at humor. We try to have a sense of humor here at the Church. Especially when it comes to things that tend to take longer than we like. Better that then getting upset.
Your tabs? Can you please explain?
This is unusual but could be caused by a corrupt database. To fix this uninstall the application and then delete the gospel-library folder on the sdcard using a tool like Astro File Manager. Open Astro File Manager and select 'My Files', then select folders. Scroll down until you see gospel-library. Long press this until the option to delete appears. Then reinstall the application. Unfortunately you will have to download the content again and log in for sync as well. Sorry for the problem this has caused you!
Or, simply return the Galaxy S3 and get an iPhone. You'll thank me later. ;)
AWESOME! I laughed out loud. Thanks Mike.
If you are still having an issue I would recommend reporting the issue through the application or going to the Google group and discussing it there.
Absolutely! It is just taking us longer than expected because with how rich the content is with inline videos, mp3's, and pdf's we wanted to make sure we could support it all. We should have January's curriculum available before January, but it may require an application update for you to make full use of it. Then you will see the following months trickle in.
Thanks for all you do! The apps the church provides really help us teachers and leaders!
Thanks!
Jason
Not sure when the Youth Curriculum will be available. There are several issues we are working out still. Some of them surprisingly crash the application.
Right now there are two things blocking us from releasing Mandarin Chinese on Android and iOS. One is that I don't have content in a format I can push out. The second is that neither Android or iOS support the Mandarin character set by default. So we are still investigating the best way to support Mandarin when it is in a format we can push out. This is at least several months out in priority for us. Sorry about any inconvenience this may cause.
Work with the iOS team on this one. Their support email address is ios-support@ldsmail .net.
Manage Library shows blank screen. To get around this, I click the multi-screen icon, then tap on the current window again. Then, I find the item I want (Manuals > Teachings of the Presidents > Lorenzo Snow) and click to download. This results in the app closing regardless of whether I chose the single item or "Download all".
Everything was worked out with her ipad and she is good to go. Thanks!
I'm so excited to have found this app.
Thank you.
It should be available for you now.
Not sure. I would go through the support option on the application for the iPad.
Thank you for the reminder. I'll have them done today for the iOS video catalog.
What platform (iOS, or Android)? I am able to load the content on either just fine.
Make sure you have the latest Gospel Library app (version 2.4.1) and network connectivity then tap on the Refresh button (two arrows in a circle pattern) in the menu when at the home page. Select 'Refresh Catalog' then look in the magazines folder again. All available magazines for 2013 should be listed. March should even be added sometime this week. ;-)
Any idea about the reason?
Thanks for this great app. I use it everyday, very useful!
(With iPad 2)
I would recommend submitting this through the app by emailing support. You can do this under Settings then scroll down to Support. Tap on Email Support and then send an email.
We are sorry about this. There is a new version that should be available within a week or two that fixes this issue.
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