Eight translations are inside the app already
Cardinal ships the complete text of eight translations in the app bundle. All sixty-six books, installed the first time you open it, before you have tapped anything or agreed to anything. There is no download step and no account, because there is nothing to fetch and nobody to be.
- King James Version
- Berean Standard Bible, the one Cardinal opens on, in plain modern English
- World English Bible
- Majority Standard Bible
- Reina-Valera 1909, in Spanish
- Louis Segond 1910, in French
- Almeida 1911, in Portuguese
- 和合本 (简体), the Chinese Union Version in simplified characters
Those eight read and search with no connection at all. Search matters more than people expect: an app can hold the text offline and still send every search to a server. Each of these carries its own index on the device, so looking for a half-remembered phrase works on a plane.
Five more you can download in full
Another five translations are free but not bundled, because shipping thirteen complete Bibles inside one app would make the download enormous for the twelve you do not read. They stream a chapter at a time by default and keep what they fetch, and you can pull any of them down in full from the translation picker, which also builds that translation's search index.
- Luther 1912, Elberfelder 1871 and the Menge-Bibel, in German
- Синодальный перевод, the Russian Synodal translation
- 和合本 (繁體), the Chinese Union Version in traditional characters
So thirteen of the seventeen translations in Cardinal can live entirely on your phone. Every one of those thirteen is free, and reading them always will be.
Four translations that never work offline, and why
The New King James, New American Standard, Christian Standard and New Living Translation are licensed from their publishers, and those licenses do not permit an app to store the text on a device. Cardinal fetches them one chapter at a time and keeps nothing: not a cache, not a search index, nothing on disk.
That means those four need a connection every single time, and they cannot be searched offline. It is a real limitation rather than a setting you have missed, and it is worth knowing before you subscribe rather than after. If offline reading is the reason you are looking, the thirteen free translations are the ones to plan around.
The short version
| Translations | Offline? |
|---|---|
| Eight bundled | Yes, from first launch. Read and search. |
| Five free streamed | Yes, once downloaded. Read and search. |
| Four Cardinal Pro | No. Licensed stream-only, every time. |
What else keeps working
Reading is not the only thing that stops when a connection does. In Cardinal the rest of the day's work is local too:
- Highlighting. Long-press and drag across a phrase and only those words are marked, not the whole verse around them.
- Notes. Verse notes stay on the passage and are searchable in Bible order. Sermon notes and studies are yours on the device.
- Memorizing. Both practice modes, the whole deck, and all fifty-plus verse packs.
- Quiet Time. The guided sitting, the curated paths, and the prayer list.
- Widgets. The verse on your home screen does not go blank in a tunnel.
Two things genuinely need a signal, and both are obvious about it: the narrated audio, which streams, and Ask, which sends your question to be answered. Everything else is on the phone in your hand.
Where your reading is kept
Offline is partly a privacy question, because an app that needs a server for everything has all of it on a server. Cardinal has no account, no name and no email. What you underline, write and pray about stays on your device, and with iCloud turned on, in your own private iCloud rather than anywhere the developer can read it.
That is also why losing signal changes so little: there was never a round trip to lose.