Hide the Word in your heart — read it, listen to it, and truly memorize it.
Vachanam is a Bible app for the small daily habits that let the Word of God settle into the heart: a verse learned properly, a chapter listened to on the way to work, a year's reading kept up one day at a time. I built it for our own family and I keep it free forever — no ads, no subscriptions, no accounts. It works offline, on any phone or computer with a browser.
The welcome, a verse learned whole — read, arranged, built, recalled from its first letters, recited — your own lists read aloud, a year's reading plan, a verse beside another translation and its commentary, a highlight and a note — watch it happen:
What it does
Memorize, for real. A verse you add is not "learned" because you read it twice. It climbs a ladder of eight short exercises over days — first just reading it, later putting its phrases in order, rebuilding it from a bank of words, typing it from first letters, and finally reciting it whole. The app checks every step itself and brings each verse back just before you would have forgotten it. Points, a daily streak and a lamp that slowly fills with oil show you how far you have come.
Listen while your hands are busy. Press Read aloud on any list and it is read to you verse after verse — while you cook, drive or rest, with the controls on your lock screen or the car's display. Recite along leaves a silence after each verse for you to say it back, then reads it again so you can check yourself. Record a verse in your own voice and that is the voice you will hear. In eleven Indian languages a real narrator reads whole chapters.
Read the whole Bible as a book. The Bible tab opens every book and chapter as pages you turn — or scroll, if you prefer — in your own text size, spacing and page colour, with bookmarks, footnotes, and a box where you can type any reference and land on it. It reopens where you left off.
See what the Church has said about a verse. Tap a verse and read what the Church Fathers said of it — St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, St. Gregory the Great, St. Bede and more, as St. Thomas Aquinas gathered them — then Haydock's Catholic commentary on all 73 books, Matthew Henry, or the cross-references of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, each opening in place. Translators' notes come in eight Indian languages. Or put the verse beside any other translation, in your language or another, on the same card.
Read the Bible in a year — or follow your Church's calendar. Seven ready-made plans: two ways through the whole Bible in a year, one of them the Catholic plan that follows The Bible in a Year podcast with the day's episode playing on the page; the daily Mass readings; the Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara readings; the CSI · CNI · Mar Thoma readings; and the Revised Common Lectionary. One tap sets up the year, and every day is a short page you can read or listen to and mark done. A teacher can paste in a plan of their own as plain text and share it the same way.
The whole family, on one phone or many. Profiles keep everyone's verses, points and streaks apart on a shared phone. A Family & Friends group joins the scoreboards across phones — make a group, share its code, and one leaderboard follows the whole family without any accounts. Post a list of verses to the group and everyone can learn it together. Children who master a verse get an illustrated Bible scene, not confetti.
Your language. The whole app speaks English, Malayalam, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali, Odia, Gujarati, Punjabi and Assamese, and carries Scripture in Urdu too. English readers can choose among eleven translations, three of them Catholic; Malayalam and Tamil readers have both the classic O.V. and the Indian Revised Version; the other Indian languages read the IRV. More as permissions come in — the full list is under Texts & credits.
Highlight and take notes. Mark the words that struck you in one of four colours, pin a thought to them, or write a note on any verse or chapter. Marks belong to the list they were made in: the same verse can carry a different note in another list, or in the Bible tab.
All 73 books. Three of the English texts carry the deuterocanon — Tobit through Maccabees, and the Catholic portions of Esther and Daniel. Under any other text, Tobit to 2 Maccabees still open, read from another translation that the page names. As far as I know, no other free memorization app carries the full Catholic canon.
Verses by topic. A shelf of 161 ready-made lists — Anxiety, Forgiveness, Marriage, Hope — in every language of the app, each one reviewed so the verses that truly speak to the topic come first. Save one as your own and start climbing.
Really free, forever, for everyone. No ads, no data selling, no premium tier. I built it for our own family's daily use and share it in the hope it serves yours. "Freely you have received; freely give."
How do I install it?
Open vachanam.pages.dev in your browser. On Android, tap Chrome's ⋮ menu and choose Install and create shortcut; on iPhone, tap Safari's Share button and choose Add to Home Screen. From then on it opens like any other app and works without a connection. On a laptop, Chrome and Edge show an install icon at the right end of the address bar (or ⋮ → Cast, save and share → Install page as app); in Safari on a Mac, File → Add to Dock. Or simply keep the site open in a tab — nothing needs installing.
Do I need an account?
No. The app asks for a name and a face — that's a profile, and it lives only on your device. A family can share one phone with a profile each, and nobody's verses, points or streak mix with anyone else's. If you just want to look around first, Explore without a profile lets you read and listen straight away; when you make a profile later, what you did comes with you.
Does it work offline?
Yes. Once installed, the app and every chapter you have opened stay on your device, and your lists, notes and progress are always there. Only three things need a connection, because they stream: the daily podcast, the narrated chapters, and the Family & Friends board.
Where does my data live?
On your device, and nowhere else — unless you choose to join a Family & Friends group, which shares exactly what its board shows: your name, avatar, points, streak, number of verses mastered, and armor badge. There are no accounts to leak. Settings → Backup gives you a file you can carry to a new phone and import there. The privacy page is short, because there is little to say.
Who makes this?
One person — no company, no funding, no agenda. Questions, corrections, or a kind word: vachanam.bible@gmail.com, or the Feedback button inside the app.
Memorizing
How does the memorization actually work?
A few honest minutes a day. Each morning the Memorize tab shows which verses are due. A new verse you simply read. As it starts to stick, the exercises get harder: recognizing its opening line, naming its reference, putting its phrases in order, building it from a word bank, typing it from first letters, and at last reciting it. Two clean recitals on different days and it counts as Mastered — after that it comes back at longer and longer intervals, so it stays yours. Nothing is graded by you; the app checks each answer itself.
How do I type in Malayalam, Tamil or Hindi?
You don't have to set anything up. Type the sounds in English letters — "yeshu" — under any typing box and the app understands; spelling can be rough, it listens for the sound. If you'd rather not type, switch to Tap the letters in Settings and pick each word's first letter from four, or press Speak it and say the verse aloud. And if you want your own script, the quickest route on most Android phones is the keyboard itself: tap the ⚙ on Gboard's top row → Languages → Add keyboard and choose your language, picking the transliteration layout so you can keep typing "yeshu" and see യേശു. Not every Samsung phone comes with Gboard: if yours lacks it, install it free from the Play Store first (search "Gboard"), then follow the same steps, or add the language to Samsung's own keyboard under Samsung Keyboard settings → Languages and types. On iPhone nothing needs installing: Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards → Add New Keyboard already lists Malayalam, Tamil, Hindi and the rest. The keyboard's 🎤 microphone can also take your language straight from your voice once its language is set. On a Windows laptop: Settings → Time & language → Language & region → Add a language, and choose the Phonetic keyboard for your language, so you type the sounds on the ordinary keys; switch keyboards with Windows + Space. On a Mac: System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources → Edit → +, choose the language (the transliteration or QWERTY layout where offered) and switch with Control + Space. Speak it on a laptop works in Chrome, Edge and Safari — Firefox has no speech recognition, so the button stays hidden there — and the browser must be allowed to use the microphone. The app shows the steps for your phone or computer beside every typing box.
What are the points, the lamp and the streak?
Every exercise earns points — the harder the recall, the more it's worth, and a wrong answer simply brings the verse back another day. The points are oil for your lamp: each level fills it a little more, after the wise virgins of Matthew 25. Any study at all keeps the day's streak alive. The milestones are Scripture rather than trophies: the Seven Gifts of the Spirit arrive as the streak grows, the Armor of God is put on piece by piece as passages are mastered, and a Fruit of the Spirit ripens for every month of a year's plan read whole. How points are earned on the Progress page lists every exercise and what it pays.
Can I memorize a whole passage, not just single verses?
Yes. A list can hold passages of any length — Psalm 23, Matthew 5:3-12, a whole chapter — and each one climbs the ladder as a single piece. Add one from the Find tab by reference, or select a few words on any reading page and add the verse from right there.
Can I use it only for listening or reading, without the daily review?
Yes. Switch Include in daily review off for any list and it becomes a listening list — many people keep Matthew 5–7 or a set of psalms this way. Reading plans are set aside like this on their own.
Listening
Whose voice reads the verses?
Your device's own voice, by default, in the language of the verse; Test voice in Settings lets you hear and choose one. In Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali, Odia, Gujarati, Punjabi and Assamese — and in Malayalam and Tamil when you read the Indian Revised Version — a human narrator reads whole chapters in the Bible tab and on reading pages, recorded by the IRV's own publisher. And any verse you record yourself plays in your voice, for every profile on that phone.
How do I listen while driving, or with the screen off?
For the podcast and the narrated chapters, press play and put the phone down: they are recordings, and the lock screen or the car's display shows play, pause and previous / next chapter. For Read aloud with the phone's own voice, press Pocket first — it blacks out the screen but keeps it awake, so the reading carries on in a pocket or a cradle, with previous / next verse on the lock screen. Recite along gives you a silence after each verse to say it back, then reads it again so you can check.
Why does the reading stop when the screen goes off, or when I switch apps?
Because the phone's own voice is spoken by the browser, and phones silence the browser's speech the moment the screen sleeps or the app leaves the front — iPhone always, most Android phones too (Vachanam holds a silent audio session to keep it alive, which helps on some phones and not on others). The podcast and the narrated chapters are real audio and are not affected. Two ways round it: press Pocket before you put the phone down — it keeps the screen awake and black, and the reading never stops — or keep the app in front. When the voice is cut off, the app remembers the verse it was on and picks up there when you come back, not several verses later.
My phone has no voice for my language.
Most Android phones can add one: Settings → Google Text-to-Speech → install voice data for your language. On iPhone: Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content → Voices. And where the phone still has no voice, the human narration above works regardless — it's a recording. On Windows: Settings → Time & language → Language & region → add the language with its Text-to-speech feature (Chrome and Edge also bring online voices of their own). On a Mac: System Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content → System voice → Manage voices.
Reading the Bible
How do I read a chapter, or the whole Bible?
The Bible tab lists every book. Tap a chapter, then a verse — or read the whole chapter, or the whole book. It opens as a book with pages to turn, or as one long page if you'd rather scroll, and it always reopens where you closed it. To jump anywhere, type a reference into the Go to box at the top — John 3:16, Psalm 23. Malayalam book names are understood in both common spellings — ലൂക്കൊസ് or ലൂക്കാ, യെശയ്യാവ് or ഏശയ്യാ, 1 ശമൂവേൽ or 1 സാമുവൽ — and the short forms in print, like അപ്പ. പ്രവ.
Can I change the text size and the page?
Yes. The Aa button opens one sheet for the whole page: text size, line spacing, margins, verse numbers on or off, night, day or system colours, pages or scroll, and whether the Psalms and prophets are set as poetry or run on as prose. Each language remembers its own size.
How do bookmarks work?
As in a paper Bible. Bookmark the page you're on, or tap a verse and choose Bookmark, and the Bookmarks list in the Bible tab takes you back. Bookmarks are places; highlights and notes are marks on the words. Both show on the page.
What commentaries are there, and are they free?
Tap a verse and open the Commentary tab. You'll find the Catena Aurea, St. Thomas Aquinas's chain of the Church Fathers on the four Gospels — St. John Chrysostom and St. Augustine most of all, with St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, St. Gregory the Great, St. Bede, St. Hilary, St. Cyril of Alexandria, Origen and others; Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary on all 73 books; Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary; the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, whose cross-references open in place, the most relevant first; on the Gospels, the Gospel parallels — the same event in the other Gospels, from the Eusebian canon tables; and a Words tab with the verse’s Greek or Hebrew words — what each means, how often its Testament uses it, and where; and in Hindi, the IRV study notes. Translators' notes from the unfoldingWord project are there in Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Odia and Gujarati. All free to read, and each says whose it is.
What does the Words tab show? Can I look up a person or a place?
Tap a verse, choose Study, then Words. It lists the verse’s Greek words (New Testament) or Hebrew words (Old Testament), each with its sound and what it means in that verse. Tap a word for its dictionary meaning, how often the Bible uses it, and every other verse that does — so you can see that Jesus asks Peter with agapaō and Peter answers with phileō (John 21:15). A name gets its own card: who the person is, their family and every mention; a place, where it is, with a map. You can also type a name into Find — “Who is Barnabas?”. The meanings and the summaries are in English.
Can I see a verse in another translation?
Yes. Tap the verse and choose Compare, and the same verse appears in any other text — another English translation, the Malayalam beside the English, the O.V. beside the IRV. The app remembers which second text you like.
Can I print a reading, or save it as a PDF?
Yes. Any reading page can be printed or shared as a PDF, text only or with your notes and highlights. Public-domain translations have no limit; the licensed ones allow up to 500 verses to leave the app as a file, as their publishers ask.
Reading plans
How do the reading plans work?
On the Readings tab, tap Start this plan and every day appears as a list inside the plan. Open a day and all its readings sit on one continuous page — read it, or press play and listen. Marking a portion read moves the bookmark forward, so the plan always opens where you left off. And if a verse strikes you along the way, select a few of its words and add it straight to a memorization list.
Which plans are there?
Seven. Bible in a Year — the classic three streams: Old Testament, New Testament, and a Psalm or Proverb each day. Bible in a Year (Catholic) — the 365 days of The Bible in a Year podcast through all 73 books, with Fr. Mike's episode (or Fr. Daniel's in Malayalam) playing right on the page; here is the plan being started, the episode playing, and the day marked read:
Daily Mass Readings — the Latin rite's lectionary for the year. Syro-Malabar Qurbana Readings and Syro-Malankara Qurbono Readings, from the churches' own published calendars. CSI · CNI · Mar Thoma Readings — the lectionary of the Church of South India, the Church of North India and the Mar Thoma Church. Daily Readings (RCL) — the Revised Common Lectionary. Each plan names its source, so a wrong reading can be corrected.
I fell behind on the podcast on YouTube. Can I pick up here?
Yes. Create a profile, start the Catholic plan, jump to the day you stopped at, listen, and mark it read. This walkthrough shows every tap, and the written guide lists them too:
Can I make my own plan for a class or a parish?
Yes. Paste any plan in as plain text — a reference per line, a heading per day — and it becomes a plan like the ready-made ones. Share it as text and it pastes in on any other phone just the same.
Family & friends
Can my family compete across different phones?
Yes. On the Progress page, create a Family & Friends group and share its join code. Everyone who enters the code appears on one shared leaderboard with their streak, verses mastered and points, whichever phone they study on. No accounts: the code is the whole membership, groups are never listed anywhere, and only the scoreboard's own fields are shared — never verses, notes or reading history. Leave any time and your row leaves with you.
Can we all learn the same verses?
Yes. Post one of your lists to the group and it appears under Shared lists for everyone in it. Each member saves a copy and climbs it on their own phone, and the board shows how many of its verses each person has mastered. A posted list carries verse references only — never anyone's progress or notes.
Is it suitable for children?
It was built with ours. Each child has their own profile and face, and the ladder pays out points and celebrations as verses are mastered — illustrated Bible scenes, the lost coin, the palms of Hosanna, the lamp — rather than confetti. There is nothing to buy, no chat, and nothing leaves the phone unless a parent joins a family group.
Texts & credits
Whose Bible text is it?
Public-domain and openly licensed translations, most of them bundled with the app: the World English Bible and its Catholic Edition, the KJV, ASV and Bible in Basic English, the Douay-Rheims, the Catholic Public Domain Version, the Berean Standard Bible, the Indian Revised Version in eleven languages (CC BY-SA, Bridge Connectivity Solutions), the Malayalam and Tamil O.V., and the Urdu Geo Version. The NIV, Good News Translation and NKJV are used by permission through API.Bible, with each publisher's notice shown beside the text. Licensed scripture is never stored in your saved data.
Where do the commentaries, the narration and the topic lists come from?
The Catena Aurea (Newman's 1841 translation), Matthew Henry and the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge are public domain, taken from the CrossWire Bible Society's modules; Haydock is the 1859 edition, likewise public domain. The Hindi IRV notes and the translators' notes are unfoldingWord's and Bridge Connectivity Solutions', CC BY-SA. The narrated chapters are the IRV's own audio, read by Davar Partners International with Bridge Connectivity Solutions, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Verses by Topic shelf was seeded from the verse index at DailyVerses.net, then reviewed and enhanced here. The Treasury’s “most relevant” references are ranked by readers’ votes at OpenBible.info, CC BY 4.0; the Gospel parallels follow the Eusebian canon tables of the fourth century, public domain. The Greek and Hebrew words and their meanings in the Words tab come from STEPBible.org (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0 — its tagged Greek New Testament and Hebrew Old Testament, with their brief lexicons, reformatted for this app. Further references came from Crossway's Key Bible Verses series (references only; the ESV text is not used). Every page that shows one of these names it.
Why is a book missing in my language?
Most Indian-language translations have 66 books. Vachanam still opens Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch and the Maccabees under every language, read from another translation that the page names — the Good News Translation first, then the Catholic Public Domain Version. I have written to the publishers of the Catholic Indian-language Bibles; those texts will join as permission is granted.