Build
Can Jonathan build and ship a private, offline iOS app?
Building a free, offline-first Catholic prayer and Bible app for iOS with React Native, Expo, and custom native modules.
In progressStage: Preparing for launch
This is a personal journey shared honestly as my own experience, not professional, medical, legal, or religious advice. Please consult a qualified person where it matters.
The projectPrayer ExplorerA free, offline-first Catholic prayer and Scripture app for iOS. Traditional prayers, the Rosary, three Bible translations, the liturgical calendar, and private on-device Pray Along.See the project →The goal
Ship Prayer Explorer 1.0: a free, offline Catholic prayer and Bible app for iPhone and iPad, with no account, no ads, and no tracking.
Why I'm doing it
Prayer Explorer sits at the intersection of two things I care about: learning how to build useful technology and exploring faith more deeply.
Challenges
- Lock-screen text-to-speech playback needed a custom native iOS module
- Following spoken prayer required on-device speech recognition with fuzzy matching
- Scripture licensing shaped which Bible translations could ship offline
- Cutting planned features so version 1 stayed focused and complete
Lessons so far
- Deciding what not to copy matters: public-domain translations keep Scripture offline without licensing conflicts
- A smaller, dependable version 1 beats a longer feature list
- Privacy is simplest when the architecture has no backend to begin with
The log
Updates
No updates yet, this journey is just getting started.
Next step
Finish launch preparation and submit to the App Store.