Bread of Life

Read the Bible. Keep your prayers. Remember the answers.

Bread of Life is a free Bible app that works offline. Your reading plan, prayers and journal stay on your own phone or computer. There is no account, no advertising and nothing tracking you.

Download Source on GitHub

Android, Linux, Windows and macOSVersion 0.4.0MIT licence

The Bible reader on a desktop computer, showing John 15 with verses 4 and 5 highlighted and Matthew Henry’s commentary open in the study panel beside it.
The Now Playing screen on a phone, playing Leviticus 10 from the day’s Bible-in-a-year reading, with the day’s four readings listed below.
The guided reader on a phone, showing Leviticus 10 as the second of the day’s five readings.
The Now Playing screen on a phone, playing Leviticus 10 with the day’s readings listed below.

  • Works offline

    The Berean Standard Bible, cross-references and Hebrew and Greek word study are built in. Read on a plane or in the bush.

  • No account

    Install it and start reading. There is nothing to sign up for and no email to hand over.

  • No ads, no tracking

    No analytics, no advertising, no crash reporting. The app doesn’t report on you to anyone.

  • Open source

    Every line is on GitHub under the MIT licence. Read it, build it yourself, or change it.

Reading and study

The commentaries sit beside the text

Open the study panel and Matthew Henry, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown, Adam Clarke, John Gill, Keil and Delitzsch and Tyndale follow the chapter you are reading. Tap a verse for its cross-references, or look up the Hebrew or Greek word underneath the English.

Highlight a verse, write a note on it, or send it to your journal or prayer list without leaving the page.

  • TranslationsBerean Standard Bible built in; World English, King James, American Standard and Young’s Literal downloaded when you first open them
  • StudySix public-domain commentaries, 340,000 cross-references, Strong’s Greek and the Hebrew of the Westminster Leningrad Codex
  • MemorisingMemory Lane schedules verses for review with spaced repetition
  • SearchFull-text search across the whole Bible, and across your journal
John 15 in the reader on a phone, with verses 4 and 5 highlighted.
John 15 in the reader. Verse 5 is selected, with a toolbar offering five highlight colours, a note, copy, journal and prayer; the study panel beside it lists cross-references for John 15:5.
On a computer: John 15:5 selected, with its cross-references in the study panel.
Listening

Listen while you drive, walk or wash up

Press play on any chapter and the narration carries on through the book and into the next, in the background with the screen off. Play a reading plan and it reads the day’s passages in order, ticking each one off as it finishes.

Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening has a Listen button too. All 732 readings are recorded in a British voice; without a connection, the app reads them with your phone’s own voice.

Android Auto

Bread of Life has its own icon in the car, with tabs for today’s reading, the Bible, the devotional and what you played recently. Say “play John 3” and it does. Chapters you finish in the car count towards your plan.

Now Playing on an unfolded Pixel Fold: the player on the left, the day’s four readings on the right with the first one playing.
Spurgeon’s Morning reading for 27 September on a phone, with the recording playing in the mini-player at the bottom.
Now Playing on an unfolded Pixel Fold, and the morning devotional read aloud on a phone.
Prayer

Write down what you asked for, and what happened

Keep a list of the things you are praying about and tap Prayed each time you pray for one. When a prayer is answered, mark it and write down how.

Over months the answered list becomes something you can scroll back through: dates, how long you prayed, and what came of it in your own words. The Faithfulness review lays it out as a single page to print or save as a PDF.

  • RemindersFlag a prayer and it shows on the dashboard each day until you have prayed for it
  • Journal linksLink a prayer to journal entries and verses, in both directions
The Answered tab of the prayer list on a phone. Each answered prayer shows the date and a note on how it was answered.
The Faithfulness review on a phone: a page headed “A Record of His Faithfulness” listing answered prayers by date, with a Save as PDF button.
The Answered list, and the same prayers as a Faithfulness review ready to print.
Plans, devotionals and a journal

A reading plan you can’t fall behind on

Choose from seven plans, from John in three weeks to the whole Bible in a year, or build your own from any range of books. Progress counts the chapters you have read, not the days on a calendar, so a missed week leaves no backlog.

The dashboard gathers the day in one place: the verse of the day, Spurgeon’s morning or evening reading, today’s passages, your streak and your prayers.

  • RemindersAt 2 pm and 8 pm by default. They stop once you have read, even if you read on another device
  • DevotionalsSpurgeon’s Morning and Evening and Faith’s Checkbook
  • JournalFormatted entries with tags, linked to the verses and prayers they are about
The dashboard on a desktop: verse of the day, Spurgeon’s morning reading with a Listen button, day 41 of a Bible-in-a-year plan, a 23-day reading streak and prayer counts.
The guided reader on a phone, showing Leviticus 10 as the second of the day’s five readings.
Your data

What you write stays on your device

Stored locally

Prayers, journal entries, notes, highlights and reading progress live in a database on your phone or computer. The app works completely without a network.

Sync, if you want it

Sync between devices is optional and off until you turn it on. Use the hosted sync server, or run your own: the server is a small open-source program in the same repository, set up with Docker.

Encrypted before it leaves

Turn on end-to-end encryption and your journal, prayers and notes are encrypted on the device before they sync, so the sync server, hosted or your own, cannot read them. A 24-word recovery phrase unlocks them on your other devices.

What goes online

Only what you ask for: a commentary or translation the first time you open it (then it is cached), audio narration, and the optional AI study helper, which talks to the provider you choose using your own key.

Download

Free on every platform

Version 0.4.0. Every build comes from GitHub Actions and is attached to the GitHub release.

For this device

Android

Install through Obtainium and it updates itself from each GitHub release. No store and no Google account needed. Or download the APK and install it yourself.

Add to Obtainium APK
How to install
  1. Install Obtainium from F-Droid or its GitHub releases.
  2. On your phone, tap Add to Obtainium above. Or in Obtainium choose Add App and paste https://github.com/matt-shearing/bread-of-life.
  3. Obtainium installs the latest APK and checks for new releases.

Android Auto on GrapheneOS needs a one-time setup, described in the mobile notes.

For this device

Linux

An AppImage that runs on most distributions, a .deb for Debian and Ubuntu, and a package in the Arch User Repository.

AppImage .deb
yay -S bread-of-life-bin
Requirements

The app uses the system WebView. Most desktops already have it; on a minimal install add WebKitGTK 4.1 and GTK 3:

  • Debian, Ubuntu: sudo apt install libwebkit2gtk-4.1-0 libgtk-3-0
  • Fedora: sudo dnf install webkit2gtk4.1 gtk3
  • AppImage: chmod +x Bread*.AppImage, then run it.

The AUR package pulls in its own dependencies.

For this device

Windows

An installer for Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit.

Installer (.exe)
If Windows warns you

The installer isn’t code-signed yet, so SmartScreen may say it is from an unknown publisher. Choose More info, then Run anyway.

For this device

macOS

One universal disk image for Apple silicon and Intel Macs.

Disk image (.dmg)
How to open an unsigned app

The app isn’t signed with an Apple Developer ID yet, so macOS blocks it the first time.

  1. Open the .dmg and drag Bread of Life to Applications.
  2. In Applications, Control-click the app, choose Open, then Open again.
  3. On macOS 15 or later, if there is no Open button: try to open the app once, then go to System Settings › Privacy & Security and choose Open Anyway.

If macOS says the app is damaged, run this in Terminal: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Bread of Life.app"

Older versions and release notes are on the releases page. To build from source, see the README.

Credits and licences

Where the words come from

The app’s code is MIT-licensed. The scripture and study material it carries are public domain or Creative Commons, and belong to the people who made them.

Full credits on GitHub

Berean Standard Bible
Via the HelloAO Free Use Bible API. Public domain (CC0)
Hebrew text and morphology
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (Westminster Leningrad Codex), by Open Scriptures. Reformatted to JSON. CC BY 4.0
Cross-references
OpenBible.info, derived from the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. Reformatted to JSON. CC BY 4.0
Greek word tags and lexicon
Strong’s Concordance and the BSB word tags. Public domain
Commentaries and other translations
Matthew Henry, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown, Clarke, Gill, Keil and Delitzsch, Tyndale; WEB, KJV, ASV and YLT, via HelloAO. Public domain
Spurgeon’s devotionals
Morning and Evening and Faith’s Checkbook, from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Recordings made with the Kokoro-82M voice model (Apache 2.0). Public domain
Software and fonts
Tauri, React, Vite, Tailwind CSS, Radix UI, Dexie, Tiptap, Lucide (MIT, ISC, Apache 2.0). Inter, and Merriweather (subset here as “BoL Serif”). SIL Open Font Licence