Asking for my mom, because she’s prone to getting malware on her phone and I think her bible apps might be related.
No I’m not a religious person, I just respect my mom and want to help her while respecting her wishes. I just think the current Bible Reader apps she has are likely malware in disguise.
Yes I realize this isn’t particularly a tech support community. If my question doesn’t belong here, feel free to remove it, but at least suggest an appropriate community to ask first.
you can use the life, which has multiple versions; f-droid, google play, and desktop.
Kiwix + Wikisource archive. There you’ll find the Bible in several editions and many other useful public domain/CC-licensed books.
If you are willing to pay a bit of money, Laridian Pocket Bible is an excellent and safe choice from a reputable company.
AndBible from F-Droid. Free and open source software, no trackers, no ads, no versions requiring paid licensing, no internet connection needed except to download a version(s) the first time. Fast loading because of indexing.
Can you pick the version you want?
Yes, and it has quite a variety, including a ton of translations in other languages too. Do be prepared for your favorite version maybe not being there though. ESV and NIV for example require licensing fees apparently, which the dev opted to not pay because they’re not going to pass along the cost with ads or whatever. Personally I opt for a well respected literal translation like NASB, as well as a more simplified modern version like BBE (Bible in Basic English) to compare against if the syntax is a bit confusing or look at it from a few angles if I want to further extract meaning. And I have good old KJV just for the memories.
No I’m not a religious person
Be one if you want to. No should care. Just don’t be a prick.
https://andbible.org/ looks good.
I’ve heard of YouVersion. Seems good.
If all she’s doing is reading it, there’s always just putting a shortcut to a bible website on her desktop to open as a Chrome Web App. Quick search came up with bible.com and biblegateway.com, both look fine for this.My mom likes to hear the phone speak passages out randomly when she goes to sleep.
I’ve found eSpeak and The Light Bible apps on F-Droid, both look like good legit apps, but they don’t work together…
Bible gateway looks to have a speak button. YouVersion looks to have one, too, from the screenshots.
Wow somebody that believes in the Bible easily gets malware… Who would have ever saw that coming?
Your performative hatred is dull
There are other suggestions, but I would recommend a different approach. Use a standard epub and something like KoReader or Librera FD. If she wants to read a bible she probably has a strong preference about which one. Using a bible app will lock her to whichever that app supports, but using an epub allows her to use the correct version for her.
It also allows her to build skills using her religious text which can transfer to other books. Lots of people enjoy books beyond their central text but still around it, think study guides, history, religious studies, and so on, but also books completely unrelated. Being as she is having trouble with malware you could solve multiple problems in one go and also give her some fun, interesting books alongside things that scratch the religious itch while building skills and reducing the chance of scamming and malware.
Make sure to reboot the phone. Doing so should clear our the malware if the phone is still getting updates.
Oh, it was sometime mid last week that I had to remove about a dozen obviously (to me anyways) fake antivirus, cleaner, and PDF reader apps from her phone. They were spamming her phone left and right saying her phone was full of viruses (of course the malware itself) and saying she was out of storage space (in fact she’s only got 32% space used).
Then of course Samsung, in their infinite wisdom, had to default the power button action to Bixby, which she don’t even use, so I had to go search through the settings to figure out how to configure the power button with the typical sane power/restart menu.
After all that, her phone seemed to work basically perfectly, so I told her to keep me updated on how it works out in the long run, while also respecting her wishes regarding the bible apps, although I was already a bit suspicious of those too.
Yesterday she said she’s getting almost no spam crap like that anymore. Almost? Means there’s still something going on, and I have that sneaky suspicion that the whole avalanche of malware she ended up with started from a random seemingly innocent daily notification from one of those bible reader apps.
You know what’s the worst part about all this? Mama gets all her apps from the Google Play Store…
Is there a reason it has to be a Bible reader and not an open source e-book reader with her favorite translation on it?
Yeah, sounds like a good idea, but mama wants the phone to audibly read it out to her when she goes to sleep…
Any suggestions for an open source app that can read it out loud?
You could try AndBible from F-Droid or Accrescent. Open source and has a decent reader for common translations
^ This is the answer!
Thank you fellow Lemming, I tried and tested AndBible last night, and that’s exactly what my mom is looking for 👍
I use YouVersion. It has lots of different translations and has plans you can set up so you get daily reading in if you want.
Im athiest so don’t get these but I kinda assume there are official ones for the major branches of christianity like catholic or anglican. ones with central authorities. I would think.
