Berea is a Bible app for iPhone that listens along in church and turns to every passage as it is preached — named outright, quoted in passing, or only alluded to. When the service ends it keeps the whole message: transcript, outline, questions. Offline, with no account.
iPhone · iOS 26 · Free during beta · No account · No waitlist
“His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness.
Berea hears the reference inside the sentence — including older phrasing, so a King James quotation still lands while you read a modern translation — and turns the page before you could have found it.
Tap any one of them to open it. Nothing flashes, nothing buzzes.
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One tap when the preaching begins. Berea recognises what is being read, whether the reference is announced or buried in a sentence, and turns the reader to it in time with the message. Your eyes stay on the page instead of a search field.
| What the preacher says | What Berea does |
|---|---|
| “Turn with me to the eighth chapter of Romans” | Opens Romans 8 |
| Quotes the verse without naming it | Matches the wording, opens it anyway |
| Quotes the King James while you read WEB | Recognises the older phrasing |
| Alludes to a passage in passing | Lists it so you can decide |
| Preaches for fifty minutes | Keeps every reference in order |
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When the service ends, the message becomes a document you would actually re-read: a transcript set in sections, the big idea, the main points, every passage cited, and questions to carry into the week. Berea titles it and attributes it for you.
No Condemnation
Pastor James Okonkwo · Sunday
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Search the sermons you have actually sat under. Look up how your church has taught on suffering, or what was said about Romans last month, and you get the preacher's own words from the transcript — the moment itself, not a summary of it, and never something a model made up.
You ask
What has our church taught about suffering this year?
Answered from your library
Three messages touched it directly. In “No Condemnation” the point was that suffering is no longer evidence of a verdict against you — Romans 8:1 was the anchor.
Drawn from 3 of your sermons · nothing left the phone
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Poetry set as poetry, the words of Jesus in red, section headings where the translators put them. Choose your typeface and your paper, then mark what matters in five inks and three pen styles. Notes and bookmarks sit beside the text, and all of it works with the phone in airplane mode.
Free, no waitlist, about a minute to set up.
iPhone · iOS 26 · Nothing to cancel
Smart Bible apps exist now, and the good ones are genuinely good. Berea’s bet is different: a sermon is your pastor’s voice and your own notes on it, so by default the listening and the transcript stay on the phone in your pocket — not on a server with your name on it.
| What is being compared | Berea | The typical smart Bible app |
|---|---|---|
| The listening runs | On your iPhone by default | On a server |
| Account | None required | Sign-up and profile |
| Sermon audio | Never stored, anywhere | Uploaded for processing |
| No signal in the pews | Reading, Follow Along and search still work | Needs a connection |
| Price | Free — Premium only for three optional cloud features | Subscription |
The Berea column is what you get out of the box; the optional cloud features are off until you turn them on. “Typical” means cloud-first apps in this category generally; check any app’s own privacy policy — includingours.
“Now these were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.”
The Bereans listened to the preaching with open Bibles, then went and checked it for themselves. That is the whole idea, and the reason this app carries their name.
Not yet. Berea is in open testing, so you install it through TestFlight, Apple’s own app for beta software: install TestFlight, open the invite, tap Accept and then Install. No waitlist, no invite code, nothing to pay.
TestFlight builds expire ninety days after they are posted, so you will be offered a fresh one from time to time. When Berea reaches the App Store you install the release straight over the test build and keep everything you have saved.
No. The microphone is live only while Follow Along is running, and speech becomes text as it goes — no audio file is ever created, on your phone or anywhere else. What remains afterwards is the transcript, in local storage. Even so, record only where your church is happy for you to, and respect any local rules about recording.
Yes. The whole Bible is bundled inside the app, transcription runs on your device, and searching Scripture and your own sermons works with no signal at all. A church basement with no bars is exactly what it was built for. Asking a question and getting a written answer needs a connection, as do the other optional cloud features — and syncing to your other devices, if you signed in, which catches up once you have signal again.
No. There is no sign-up and no profile, and without one nothing you create ever leaves your phone — delete the app and everything it held is gone.
Signing in is there for one reason: so your library shows up on a second device. It is free, it asks for no email, and you can delete the account and everything it holds from inside Settings.
The app is free: following along, sermon capture, the reader, sync across your devices, and searching Scripture and every sermon you have kept. Premium covers the three features that use the cloud — Deeper Answers, Better sermon notes, and Enhanced accuracy.
Written answers about Scripture are the Premium half deliberately. They come from Gloo, a faith-aligned service, rather than a small model on the phone that can be confidently wrong about the faith — so we would rather charge for the good one than ship a free one we don’t trust.
While Berea is in TestFlight, purchases run in Apple’s sandbox, so both are free to try and no card is charged. Sandbox subscriptions also run on an accelerated clock, so don’t be surprised if one renews or lapses while you are testing.
The audio never does — it becomes text as it goes and is never stored or sent, on any setting. The transcript stays local too, unless you turn something on.
Four things can send text out, each off until you choose it: sync, if you signed in, copies your library to your other devices; Enhanced accuracy streams live audio for transcription and returns text; Better sermon notes sends a transcript to write the study outline; and Spot allusions sends single sentences to catch passages the preacher echoed without naming. Theprivacy policy spells out each one. Cloud chat deliberately cannot reach your sermon library at all.
The World English Bible, the King James Version, and the Berean Standard Bible, all three bundled for offline reading, with poetry, section headings, and the words of Jesus properly typeset. More can be downloaded from inside the app.
No. Reading, Follow Along, sermon capture, search, and sync work on any iPhone running iOS 26, whatever its hardware. Written answers and sermon notes come from Gloo over a connection, so they don’t depend on Apple Intelligence either.
Above all, a passage Follow Along should have caught and missed, or one it turned to wrongly. Tell me the church, the phrasing the preacher used, and roughly when it happened. Rough edges in the reader and anything that drains the battery through a service are worth hearing about too.
Take a screenshot and choose Share Beta Feedback, or open TestFlight and tap Send Beta Feedback. It comes straight to me.
Still unanswered? The full privacy policy spells out optional sync and the four optional features that use the network, and what each of them sends.
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Apple’s own free app for beta software. Skip this if you already have it.
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Tap the button below, then Accept and Install. No code to enter, no waitlist.
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One tap when the preaching begins. That is all the testing I need.
iPhone · iOS 26 · Free during beta · About a minute to set up
If Follow Along misses a passage your preacher clearly quoted, that is the single most useful thing you can send me. Screenshot it and choose Share Beta Feedback.