# Cardinal > Cardinal is a Bible app for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, built for being alone > with Scripture. No feed, no streaks, no badges, no account. Reading the Bible in > it is free and always will be. > > App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6758185643 > Site: https://cardinalbible.app/ > Requires iOS 17.0 or later. Rated 5.0 out of 5 from 13 App Store ratings. This file is the full text of cardinalbible.app in one plain-text document, for assistants and answer engines. Everything in it is a claim the app can be held to. A shorter map lives at https://cardinalbible.app/llms.txt. ## The one-line answer Cardinal is the Bible app you reach for when you want to read Scripture and be left alone: no social feed, no streak to protect, no account to create, and no paywall in front of the text. --- ## Why Cardinal exists Bible apps have become social platforms, full of feeds and features that distract you from simply reading the Bible. Cardinal is different. It was built for one person, alone with Scripture, for as long as they want to stay there. Everything in it is judged by whether it helps you read, or pulls you away from reading. That is why so much is missing on purpose: - No feed, comments, or profiles. Nothing you do here is performed for anyone. - No streaks, badges, or missed-day guilt. Nothing keeps score. Missing a day is not a failure. - No ads, and no tracking you across apps. You are not the product being sold. - No gate on reading. The Bible itself never sits behind a subscription. --- ## Read **Plain modern English, from the first tap.** Cardinal opens on the Berean Standard Bible. No setup, no account, no choosing a plan before you are allowed to read a verse. - **Seventeen translations.** Eight live on your phone from the first launch and read offline, including the King James, Berean Standard, World English and Majority Standard Bibles. Five more are free and can be downloaded in full. - **Highlight the exact words.** Long-press and drag across a phrase and only those words are marked, not the whole verse around them. Where the phrase runs past a line break the mark stays one continuous stroke instead of stacked rectangles, rounded at every corner and set on the letters rather than floating above them. - **Search that respects the wording.** The words each translation chooses are not the same, so each one carries its own index rather than searching a shared text. The five free streamed translations build theirs once downloaded. The four licensed translations are never indexed, so a search runs against the public-domain text and shows the licensed wording for each result. - **Favorites and margins.** Save a verse, or write a note that stays with the passage and is searchable in Bible order. - **It remembers where you stopped.** The book grid carries a pill back to the chapter you were last in, so picking the Bible up again is one tap rather than a hunt. ### Four study tools, one tap from the verse The study tools are not in a separate mode you have to go and find. Tap a word, a verse, or the chapter title, and they are already there. Three of the four below need no connection at all. - **Word study.** The Hebrew or Greek behind a tapped word, with the whole verse as an interlinear underneath. When a word cannot be matched with confidence, it says so rather than guessing. - **One sheet, one verse.** Highlight, note, copy, share. Then the study tools: ask about it, open its cross-references, or hold it against another translation. - **Compare translations.** One verse across the English translations at once, with the words that differ from yours picked out. For the moment a verse reads strangely and you want to know whether that is the translator or the text. - **Chapter context.** Where the chapter sits, how long it is, the places named in it, and a brief on the book. None of it is written by an AI. The facts are computed and the prose is written by a person. --- ## Ask **"What does that actually mean?"** Everyone hits a verse they do not understand. Ask, and get an answer drawn from the passage in front of you: cross-references, word studies, historical context. - **Thirty questions, answered in full, free.** Why is there suffering. Did Jesus claim to be God. What happens when we die. No subscription, nothing to unlock. - **Three of your own each month.** Free, and they come back every month rather than running out for good. - **Honest about uncertainty.** "This passage is often interpreted as" rather than "this means." Every answer shows the verses it rests on, so you can read the text yourself. - **Your licensed translations stay private.** Publisher-licensed text is never sent to the model. It reads a public-domain rendering, and only the name of your translation travels. Ask beyond the free monthly questions is part of Cardinal Pro. --- ## Build your own reading path **Describe what you are facing, and have a path built for it.** Curated paths cover the ground most people want. When none of them is the thing you are actually carrying, say what it is in your own words and Cardinal shapes a reading path around it. This is free: there is no subscription and no monthly allowance on it. - **In your own words.** "Walking through grief." "Waiting for news." "A new baby, and no sleep." "The Gospel of John, slowly." Then choose how long, from a week to a year, and how much to read at a sitting. - **You see the whole path before you start.** Every day, its passage and why it is there, listed in full. Swap a day for a different passage, reorder them, or take one out. The days renumber themselves. - **Built on your phone, where it can be.** On an iPhone with Apple Intelligence the whole thing is shaped on the device. Your words and the path they produce never leave it. - **Checked against the text.** The titles and notes are written by AI. Every reference in the path is verified against the Bible itself before you see it. - **It waits for you.** A path moves forward when you finish a reading, never when the calendar does. Put it down for three weeks and you pick it up on the next day, not behind. --- ## Quiet Time **One sitting a day, about fifteen minutes.** Cardinal's Reflect tab holds one Quiet Time a day. You are never handed a chapter and left to it: each day is a curated passage of fifteen to twenty-five verses, the natural scene the text is built around. - **Six steps.** Pause, read, reflect, apply, pray, close. The same shape every day, so you stop having to decide how to begin. - **Nine curated paths.** From the Story of Jesus in John, to thirty days in the Psalms, to the whole Bible in a year. - **An evening sitting.** After seven in the evening a shorter one appears to close the day. It never moves your place in the path. - **A prayer list that remembers.** Add what you prayed for at the close, and mark it answered when God shows up. - **New to reading on your own?** Start here. The whole thing is designed for someone who has never done this alone before. Your archive is searchable, and it is private. Nothing keeps score. --- ## Memorize **Learn it by heart, without a scoreboard.** Two ways to practice, and a deck that quietly works out which verses you are still learning. - **First letters.** The shape of the verse stays on screen. The words go. - **Hidden words.** Blanks out more of the verse on each pass, until you can say it from the reference alone. - **It asks how that went.** Verses you are still learning come back sooner, waiting under "Ready to come back" rather than as a streak you broke. - **More than fifty curated packs.** Grouped by what you are carrying: grief, anxiety, wisdom, thanksgiving. Or build a pack from your own verses. --- ## Threads **Someone in Scripture has already been where you are.** Twenty-four lives from Scripture, each told as the handful of moments that actually made it. You find them by what they are about rather than by name, because you usually arrive carrying a situation and not a person. - **Filed under what you are carrying.** "The room you are afraid to walk into" is how you find Esther. "Burned out under a tree" is how you find Elijah. "Four days too late" is Martha. - **The whole Bible, drawn to scale.** Each life is flown across a strip of the entire canon, all 31,102 verses of it, with every moment plotted where it truly falls. Nothing is squashed to look tidy: Obadiah is the sliver it really is, and the Psalms are a slab. - **Including the moments that land centuries later.** Abraham's last beat is in Hebrews, written some two thousand years after the rest of his life. The strip shows you that distance instead of tucking it away. - **Every moment opens the text.** A few lines of writing, then one to three verses with a reason each is there. The writing never quotes them, because its job is to send you to the passage rather than to stand in for it. - **A hundred and forty moments, free.** Written for Cardinal, checked against the Bible reference by reference, and on your phone whether or not you have a signal. Eight themes in all, and every life sits under two or three of them: fear, loneliness, grief, shame, waiting, purpose, belonging, mercy. David is under shame, mercy and purpose. The twenty-four are Abraham, Daniel, David, Elijah, Esther, Gideon, Hagar, Hannah, Hosea, Jacob, Jeremiah, Job, Jonah, Joseph, Martha, Mary, Moses, Naomi, Nehemiah, Paul, Peter, Rahab, Ruth and Solomon. Each one, with its arc in a sentence and the books to read it in, is listed at https://cardinalbible.app/bible-characters/ The written moments are in English for every interface language; unlike Journeys, localized versions have not shipped. --- ## Journeys **Seventeen journeys, over the ground they happened on.** Paul's voyages, Abraham's road, the Exodus, Passion Week. Each one flies stop to stop across real 3D satellite terrain, so the distance between two places is the distance it was. - **The actual ground.** Not an illustrated map. Lystra is the hill Lystra sits on, seen from above, with the route drawn across it. - **Every stop says what happened there.** A short piece of writing, then the verses it rests on, which open straight into the reader. - **Or have it read to you.** Each stop's narration can be spoken aloud while the camera flies, for the times you would rather watch than read. - **Keep a place.** Any stop shares as a card of the place itself, which is a better thing to send someone than a screenshot. - **All seventeen, for everyone.** No subscription. The journeys themselves ship inside the app; only the satellite imagery needs a connection. --- ## Notes: built for the person preaching on Sunday Cardinal keeps three kinds of notes apart, because they are three different jobs. A study is what you build when you are the one teaching. A sermon note is what you take when someone else is. A verse note is a thought you had while reading, and it stays on the passage. - **Sermon notes shaped like sermons.** A new note opens with Scripture and a running notes field. Big idea, main points with their own verses, Living It Out, action steps and tags are added when you want them, and reordered by dragging; that order drives the editor, the read view and the export. So you are never imposing a structure on a blank page while someone is still talking. Group them into a series and each one knows it is Part 2. Tapping a point opens an AI reflection on it (Pro). - **A week of gathering, in one place.** A study collects what you find as you read onto seven shelves: passages and their cross-references, original-language words, people, places, illustrations, quotes, and the questions you have not answered yet. The card tells you how much of what you gathered actually made it into the sermon. - **An outline with room to write.** Every point holds two things: the line you say out loud, and the prose underneath it, as long as it needs to be. The whole study exports as Markdown. - **Podium mode.** What you preach from on Sunday. Read-only, because the one place you must not accidentally edit a sermon is while you are giving it. Type size is set for the distance to a lectern rather than the size you read at. - **It fails in the vestry, not at the lectern.** Every passage is fetched when podium mode opens, not when you reach it, so a weak signal shows itself while there is still time to pick up paper. - **Gather material.** Name the passage, say what you are teaching in your own words, and Cardinal proposes the cross-references, places, key verses and original-language words it already holds, each with a line on why it belongs. Three properties, all structural rather than promised: retrieval is deterministic and runs on the device against bundled data, so no model finds anything; the model only ranks and captions, and any identifier it returns that retrieval did not issue is discarded, so it cannot cite a reference the app cannot point at; and nothing is added until the teacher accepts it. With no signal the candidates still appear, captioned from the corpus instead. - **Cardinal will not write your sermon.** In the app's own words on the gather screen: "It gathers. It never writes your message." Ask it to dig deeper and it answers with cross-references, context and word studies. It does not draft. The study, the structure and the words stay yours. Editing a study is part of Cardinal Pro. Reading one, exporting one and preaching from one never are, so a lapsed subscription leaves years of preparation readable rather than locked away. For a full walk through a week of sermon preparation, including what to look for in a sermon notes app and what happens to an archive when a subscription lapses, see https://cardinalbible.app/sermon-notes/ ## Everything else in the app All of it is included for everyone, with no subscription. Where one part of something needs Pro, it says so below. - **Listen.** Scripture read aloud, with the words lighting up in time with the narration and the page following on its own. Six narrators, a sleep timer, adjustable pace, AirPlay, and it keeps playing on the lock screen. - **Scan a page.** Photograph a sermon slide or a bulletin and Cardinal pulls the references out of it, reading the picture on your device. Every one is checked against the Bible first, so a verse that does not exist never appears. Pick the ones you want and they go into your question in Ask. - **Widgets.** A Verse of the Day, today's Quiet Time passage, or your Memorize progress, pinned to the home and lock screen. - **Apple Watch.** Four glances: the verse, the next passage, what is playing, and a recall drill. It works cold, with your phone nowhere nearby. The complication is just the verse, not a number telling you how you are doing. - **iPad.** The same app, laid out for the larger screen. Good for a long sitting at a desk, or for reading two translations side by side. - **Works offline.** The eight bundled translations read and search with no connection at all, and the five other free ones do the same once you download them in full. Memorizing, highlighting and note-taking work anywhere. Audio and Ask need a signal, and so do the four Pro translations, which their licenses keep stream-only. A promise kept in the source code: **Cardinal will not write your sermon. The study, the structure, and the words stay yours.** --- ## Reviews Every rating Cardinal has on the App Store is a five: 5.0 out of 5 from 13 ratings. - **"The best bible app"**, swlkr, 5 stars. "This thing is 3.6MB runs entirely on device, no cloud, no sub. This is the bible app for you, it will really help you memorize scripture, finally." - **"This app is amazing"**, HanzJames, 5 stars. "Very well designed and makes studying and memorizing scripture very easy. Would love to be able to add my own verses someday." - **"It's an amazing app"**, 5 stars. "Personally, sometimes I just need something quick while I'm on the go. The practice verse challenge is the best, I just learned how to flip back and forth with the simple button layout when a hard one comes up!" --- ## Translations Seventeen in total. Thirteen of them are free, and they always will be. Reading Scripture never requires a subscription. **Free, and read fully offline (8):** King James, Berean Standard, World English, Majority Standard, Reina-Valera 1909, Louis Segond 1910, Almeida 1911, 和合本 (简体). **Free, streamed or downloaded (5):** Luther 1912, Elberfelder 1871, Menge-Bibel, Синодальный перевод, 和合本 (繁體). **With Cardinal Pro (4):** New King James, New American Standard, Christian Standard, New Living Translation. Licensed from their publishers. Each one comes with a free day to try, once, so you can read it before deciding. Read two side by side and see where they differ. These four are the only translations that always need a connection: their licenses do not allow Cardinal to store the text, so they cannot be downloaded or searched offline. --- ## Languages Nine interface languages: English, Español, Português, Français, Deutsch, Русский, 한국어, 简体中文, 繁體中文. Every menu, book name and answer follows the language your phone is set to. Eight of the nine also read a Bible in that language. A Korean translation is not licensed yet, so Korean currently reads with an English text. --- ## Privacy **Nobody is watching you read.** What you underline, what you pray about, and what you ask are some of the most private things a person has. Cardinal is built so that they stay that way. 1. **No account.** No name, no email, no sign-in. Nothing to create before you can read. 2. **No ads, and no cross-app tracking.** No advertising identifiers, and no permission prompt asking to follow you elsewhere. 3. **Your writing is yours.** Sittings, notes, prayers and highlights stay on your device, and with iCloud on, in your own private iCloud. They are not on a server anyone here can read. 4. **Nothing sent that does not need to be.** Photos you scan are read on your device and never uploaded. Payment is handled entirely by Apple. There is anonymous, aggregate product analytics and Apple Search Ads install attribution. Neither identifies a person and neither follows anyone across apps, which is why the app never shows the App Tracking Transparency prompt. Full policy: https://cardinalbible.app/privacy-policy.html --- ## Free, and what Pro adds Cardinal is free to download and free to use. Reading the Bible is free and stays free. A subscription covers the two things that cost money to run: the translations licensed from their publishers, and the AI behind Ask. **Cardinal, free:** - The whole Bible in thirteen translations - Quiet Time, and every curated path - Describe your own reading path and have it built for you - Memorize, and every verse pack - Threads, all twenty-four lives and a hundred and forty moments - All seventeen Journeys - Sermon notes, verse notes and the prayer list - Audio, widgets and the Apple Watch app - Thirty questions answered in full, plus three of your own each month **Cardinal Pro, a subscription. Everything in the free version, plus:** - Ask, beyond the free monthly questions - The NKJV, NASB, CSB and NLT - Two translations side by side - A deeper reflection on any sermon point - Build and edit your own studies The App Store shows what Cardinal Pro costs where you are. A study you have already written stays readable and exportable even if a subscription lapses. --- ## Questions people ask first **Is Cardinal free?** Yes. Cardinal is free to download and free to use, with no account and no sign-in. Reading the Bible is free in thirteen translations and always will be. Quiet Time, Memorize, Threads, Journeys, audio, notes, widgets and the Apple Watch app are all included for everyone. Cardinal Pro is an optional subscription covering the four translations licensed from their publishers, unlimited use of Ask, side-by-side reading, and editing your own studies. The App Store shows what it costs where you are. **Can I study the people in the Bible?** Yes, and it is free. Threads tells twenty-four lives of Scripture as the handful of moments that made them, browsed by what they are about rather than by name: fear, loneliness, grief, shame, waiting, purpose, belonging and mercy. Esther is under "the room you are afraid to walk into," Elijah under "burned out under a tree." Each life is flown across a strip of the whole Bible with its moments plotted where they actually fall, and every moment offers the verses it rests on. **Do I have to make an account?** No. There is no name, no email, no password and no sign-in anywhere in Cardinal. You open the app and you are reading. Your sittings, notes, prayers and highlights live on your device, and with iCloud turned on, in your own private iCloud. **Does Cardinal work offline?** Yes, in thirteen of the seventeen translations. Eight are bundled with the app and read and search with no connection at all: the King James, Berean Standard, World English and Majority Standard Bibles, Reina-Valera 1909, Louis Segond 1910, Almeida 1911, and 和合本 (简体). The five other free translations stream a chapter at a time and keep it, and any of them can be downloaded in full from the translation picker. The four Pro translations are the exception: their publishers do not permit storing the text, so those read from a connection every time and are never searchable offline. Highlighting, notes and memorizing work anywhere. **Are there streaks, badges or a feed?** None of them. No feed, no comments, no profiles, no streaks, no badges, and no notification telling you that you missed a day. Nothing in Cardinal keeps score, because nothing in it is performed for anyone else. **Which translations are included?** Seventeen. Eight are free and fully offline, five more are free and streamed (Luther 1912, Elberfelder 1871, Menge-Bibel, Синодальный перевод and 和合本 (繁體)), and four come with Cardinal Pro: the New King James, New American Standard, Christian Standard and New Living Translation. Each Pro translation includes one free day to try it, once. **Can I build my own reading plan?** Yes, and it is free. Describe what you are facing in your own words, choose a length from a week to a year, and choose how much to read at a sitting. Cardinal builds a day-by-day path and shows you the whole thing before you begin, so you can swap a passage, reorder the days or remove one. On an iPhone with Apple Intelligence the path is built entirely on the device. A path advances when you finish a reading rather than when the calendar does, so a gap never leaves you behind. **Does Cardinal track me or show ads?** There are no ads, no advertising identifiers and no tracking across other apps, which is why Cardinal never shows you the permission prompt asking to follow you. What you underline, pray about and ask is not on a server anyone here can read. Photos you scan for a verse are read on your device and never uploaded, and payment is handled entirely by Apple. There is anonymous, aggregate product analytics and Apple Search Ads install attribution; neither identifies you. **Which devices does it run on?** iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, on iOS 17 or later. The iPad layout uses the larger screen, including reading two translations side by side. The Watch app has four glances and works with your phone nowhere nearby. Cardinal is not on Android today. **Is what I read sent to an AI company?** Only what you deliberately ask. When you use Ask, your question and the surrounding passage are sent to be answered. Text licensed from a publisher is never sent: the model reads a public-domain rendering, and only the name of your translation travels with the question. Your notes, prayers, highlights and reading history are not part of it. --- ## In closing Read Scripture, sit with it, and talk to God. That is the whole app. Everything else was left out on purpose. Download: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6758185643 Support: https://cardinalbible.app/support.html Offline reading: https://cardinalbible.app/offline-bible-app/ No ads, no account: https://cardinalbible.app/bible-app-no-ads/ Quiet time guide: https://cardinalbible.app/quiet-time/ Privacy policy: https://cardinalbible.app/privacy-policy.html Terms of use: https://cardinalbible.app/terms-of-use.html