The Mac app

Lamp Bible for Mac is in beta, as a direct download for macOS 15 Sequoia or later. It reads the same bundled library, installs the same .lamp modules, and syncs with your other devices. Most of the rest of these docs apply to it as written; this page covers where the Mac differs, and what it adds. Slide Studio and AI chat have pages of their own: Slides & presenting and AI chat & agents.

Finding your way

The sidebar holds everything:

• Study — Today, Reader, Books, Reading Plans, Writing, Quizzes and Search.
• Library — Modules, and Import or Create… at the bottom.

A Lamp Bible item in the menu bar shows today’s readings from the plans you follow; click one to open it in the reader. Settings has its own window, grouped into Reading, Content and Services; its Reader pane shows a few verses set as you choose the typeface, size and spacing.

The reader

The capsule in the middle of the toolbar shows where you are, with arrows either side for the previous and next chapter and, further out, the previous and next book. Click it, or press ⌘L, to go somewhere else: type a reference such as John 3:16 and press Return, or choose a translation and a book and click a chapter in the grid. To land on a verse, hold or force click a chapter, or press Space, and pick from its verses. Words that are not a reference offer a search instead, and a Strong’s number offers its analysis. Tab moves between the field, the books and the chapters, and the arrow keys move within them.

Go to Anything… (⌘K) reaches further: a passage, a Strong’s number to look up or analyse, a book, writing, deck, plan or quiz by name, matches across your library, a command, a section of the app or a setting. Return opens a passage in the tab you are in, ⌘Return in a new tab and ⌥Return in a new window.

Tabs

The reader keeps tabs, in a bar beneath the toolbar. ⌘T, or the + at the end of the bar, opens a new tab on a page that chooses its passage: type a reference, pick a translation, book and chapter, or click one of the chapters under Recently Read. Drag a tab to move it, and press ⌃Tab or ⌃⇧Tab to step through them; a tab’s close button shows when you point at it. A tab is named after its chapter until you right-click it and choose Rename Tab…, and then keeps that name as you read on; the same menu duplicates or closes it.

Each tab keeps its own study column — open or shut, on the tool it was showing — and its own Reader Chat. Choosing a tab shows it as you left it, scrolled to the same verse, and tabs come back as they were when you relaunch. Reading History keeps the last hundred places you have been, across launches.

New Reader Window (⌥⌘N) opens another reader. Each window has its own place in scripture, its own tabs and its own back and forward, so two windows can sit on different chapters, and each comes back with its own tabs. Notes and highlights are shared: one made in either window shows in both at once.

Layout and text

The Reader Appearance menu chooses how a chapter is laid out — Continuous Paragraph Flow, Verse per Line, or Side by Side — along with typeface, text size and line spacing. The text keeps to a comfortable line length, which grows with the text size.

Side by Side reads up to three other translations verse by verse beside the one you are reading. Turn it on with the Side by Side button in the toolbar, or with the + beside a chapter’s opening, which lists the other translations to read beside it, grouped by language with the Hebrew and Greek last, and marks those tagged with Strong’s numbers. Each column’s title is a menu that changes its translation, makes it the one you are reading, or removes its column; the + beside the titles adds another. Verses are paired through each translation’s own numbering, so a verse that two translations number differently still sits beside its match. Each column shows its own highlights and translator’s notes. Where the columns would be too narrow — with the study column open, say — the other translations move beneath each verse, labelled with their short names.

Marks in the margin

Verses and words

Click a verse number to select the verse and open its notes in the study column. Right-click a verse to Copy as Citation or highlight it. In a Strong’s-tagged translation, hovering over a word shows its Strong’s number at the foot of the window, and clicking opens it in the Dictionary tab.

Read aloud

The toolbar’s Read Aloud button reads the current chapter with the system voices, from the beginning or from the selected verse, and can follow the verse being spoken. Choose the voice and speed in Settings → Reader; Automatic uses the best voice installed. The same pane’s Greek Words chooses how the speaker beside a Strong’s word says Greek: Classroom (Erasmian) or Modern Greek, which needs a Greek voice installed.

Keyboard

The study column

Study Tools (⇧⌘I) opens a column beside the text, which you can widen by dragging. It has four tabs, which become a pop-up menu when the column is narrow:

Commentary and notes follow the reader as you scroll, unless you turn off Link Study Tool Scrolling; to read another translation beside the text, use Side by Side. A scripture reference anywhere in the column opens a preview, with buttons to open it in the current tab or a new one.

Notes and highlights

A note has an optional title and formatted text, saved as markdown, and can cover a range of verses within the chapter. Attach Image in its format bar adds a picture, which syncs with the note. Save with ⌘S; saving an empty note deletes it. To highlight part of a verse, use Highlight Words…: choose the set, a style and a colour, or apply a theme — and save a new theme from there. It also lists what the verse is already highlighted with, each with a Remove button, and Delete Set… removes one of your sets and every highlight in it, in every translation. Remove Highlight in a verse’s menu clears all of your own highlights from that verse; a module’s highlights stay.

The Study Data menu at the foot of the Notes tab exports a book’s notes or a translation’s highlights as JSON or a .lamp module, and imports study data back. Imported notes merge with yours, the newer copy of each winning.

Writing

On the Mac, devotionals are called Writing, and open in their own editor window. Beyond what the iPhone and iPad editor does, the Mac adds:

• Visual and Markdown editing, switchable at any time, with a word count and silent and read-aloud reading times in the status bar.
• Find and replace — ⌘F, ⌥⌘F — in either mode. Aa and ab in the find field turn on Match Case and Whole Words, and are filled in while they are on.
• Details: title, subtitle, author, date, tags, category, series and order, key scriptures, a summary, and footnotes kept in a field of their own.
• The Insert menu in the format bar: Scripture Link, for the verse selected in the reader; Footnote, each edited in a small panel beside its marker, with Remove taking the marker and note together; and Image or Audio File… and Record Audio….
• Revision History, to undo a change or restore an earlier version.
• Companion files — an outline, research notes — made with New Markdown File… in the toolbar’s Workspace menu. They open as tabs beside the main text; the tab bar appears once there is one.

Writing saves itself shortly after you stop typing; ⌘S saves at once. The Writing list sorts, groups and filters your collection, and ⌘F finds in the preview of the piece selected in it. Above the preview, a strip steps to the previous or next writing, opens the piece to edit, shares it as markdown and sets the text’s appearance; the Hide Writing List button gives the preview the whole window. Its Present button shows the selected piece full screen for reading from. Export a piece as a .lamp file from its menu, or a collection as markdown from Modules. Deleting a piece also deletes the decks built from it, and the Mac names them before it does.

Books

Books read in three resizable columns — your books, grouped by genre unless you choose otherwise from Group Books, the contents, and the text — with search within the book, bookmarks, and your own typeface, size and spacing. Your place, down to the paragraph, and your bookmarks sync between Macs. Open in Book Reader moves a book into a window of its own, and Share Section copies a link straight to the section.

Search

The Mac’s search covers everything Search describes in one list, grouped by kind with Scripture first, and previews the selected result beside it in the reader’s own type. Each kind gets a share of the list, and one with more to show offers More in it beside its heading. Scripture comes from the translation you are reading, noting how many others also match, or from another translation when yours has none. A dictionary result shows the whole entry, with Look Up and Analyse. Typing a reference puts a row to go straight to it above the results, and typing a Strong’s number one to analyse it. The filter bar under the toolbar narrows the results by kind of content, by module, to the Old or New Testament, by Strong’s key or highlight colour, and — for writing — by date, tag and category.

Search keeps tabs too, in the same bar as the reader’s, each named after its words. A search started from the reader goes to a tab already showing it, or to an empty one, before it opens another. Search tabs come back when you relaunch.

Today and reading plans

Today is the day’s page. It shows each plan you follow with that day’s readings, how many are done, and Start Reading, Continue Reading or Read Again; a strip showing how the week stands; and, under Pick Up Where You Left Off, the passage open in the reader, the quiz on the day’s readings and the writing you last worked on. The arrows and the calendar at the top show another day. Each reading shows its estimated time and can be marked complete, opened in the reader, or — from its context menu — opened in an external Bible app.

Reading Plans chooses which plans appear in Today, and New Plan… makes one from the passages you want to read — see Reading plans. Opening a plan enters plan reading: only the day’s passages, a bar to move between readings and mark them complete, and the day’s quiz in a panel. Settings → Reading Plans sets the reading speed and a daily reminder. The plans you follow and the readings you tick sync with your iPhone and iPad.

Modules, importing and building

Modules in the sidebar shelves everything installed: your own My Writing, My Notes and My Highlights first, then a shelf for each kind of module. A module you installed or made has a menu on its card to export or remove it — as a .lamp, or as markdown for books, writing and notes — and one that came with Lamp says Built In. Import or Create Content (⇧⌘M) gathers every way in:

• Install Module — one or more .lamp files.
• Import a Bible — a USFM, OSIS, Zefania or XML Bible, or a SWORD module, you own. See Importing a Bible.
• Create Module — drop module JSON in, and the app identifies its type, validates it against the schema and lists any problems. Build .lamp compiles it, checks the result’s integrity and shows its SHA-256, ready to show in Finder or install. Every module type can be built, books included. See Authoring modules.
• Import Personal Content — notes or writing from markdown, or notes and highlights from JSON or .lamp.

Double-clicking a .lamp or .lampdeck file in Finder opens it in Lamp Bible too.

Sync on the Mac

Settings → Sync chooses iCloud Drive or Folder or WebDAV, and connects to the same library as your iPhone and iPad. The Mac syncs when it opens, sends your changes a few seconds after you make them, and checks every half-minute for changes from your other devices while it is open; Sync Now forces a pass. When a note or a piece of writing changed on two devices, the Sync pane shows it under Needs Your Decision, where you compare the versions and keep one.

Turning sync Off pauses it but keeps the folder, server address, username and password, so you can turn it back on without entering them again. To disconnect for good — leaving a server, or handing over a shared Mac — choose Forget Sync Details…, which removes them and turns sync off. Neither deletes anything already synced, on the Mac or on the server.

The Mac also syncs what only it makes: slide decks and their pictures, and each writing’s agent workspace — companion files, context, skills, revisions and agent conversations. Reader tabs, history and Reader Chat conversations stay on each Mac.

Updates

The Mac app updates itself. It asks before checking automatically; change that, or check by hand, in Settings → Updates or with Check for Updates… in the app menu. A check downloads a small feed from this website and sends nothing about you or your library — see the app privacy declaration.