Gospel Library

Review by eFreeware

If you are a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or you are studying its teachings, this is probably the app you want on your phone. Gospel Library is the Church's own study app, and it puts the scriptures, general conference addresses, music, manuals, magazines, videos, audio recordings and gospel art into a single place. It is free, it carries no ads, and there are no in-app purchases to work around.

What appeals to me is the scope. Rather than being a scripture reader with a few extras bolted on, it is built as a library: the material you would otherwise spread across printed volumes, a hymnbook and several websites sits together and can be searched, marked and shared. The app has been available since May 2010 and has been installed more than ten million times, with a 4.7 average from over 231,000 ratings. For a study tool that people return to constantly, that is a meaningful signal of how well it fits the routine it was made for.

Reading, searching and marking the collection

At its core the app is a reader. You open a text, move through it, and use the same tools across everything in the library, so a passage in the scriptures is handled the same way as a page from a teaching manual or an article in a Church magazine. Search runs across the collection rather than a single book, which matters when you half-remember a phrase but not where it came from.

Marking and sharing are the features I would expect most people to lean on. Notes and highlights let you keep your own thread through the material, and sharing lets you pass a passage to someone else. The developer describes the library as vast, and that is fair: the value here is less in any single title than in having the whole set searchable and personal in one place.

Conference talks and study aids

General conference has received particular attention. You can build playlists of talks by speaker or by topic, which turns a large archive into something you can work through deliberately rather than browsing at random. Paragraph numbers now appear in the margin of every conference talk, not only the most recent ones, so a reference someone gives you can be found precisely.

Featured playlists give a starting point when you do not have a specific talk in mind. Between the two, the app supports both planned study and the more common case of wanting something to listen to or read without hunting for it first.

Music, hymns and accompanist tools

Music is treated as a first-class part of the library rather than an appendix. You can browse all of the music by topic, and the sheet music display includes an option to show or hide guitar chord labels, which is a small setting but a useful one if you play an instrument and do not want the chords in the way. Hymns for sacrament meeting can now be used at stake conference too.

For anyone accompanying singing, accompanist mode includes a metronome, which addresses the practical side of keeping a group together. Taken with the audio recordings and videos elsewhere in the library, this is more than a text reader: it is a study and preparation tool that covers listening, reading and playing.

What it asks of you, and who it fits

The trade-offs here are mostly about scope rather than cost. This is the study app of one church, built around its scriptures, its conference addresses, its manuals and its music. If that is the material you study, the narrowness is the point, because everything in it is relevant and nothing needs filtering. It is rated for Everyone.

The other thing to weigh is size. A library holding scriptures, magazines, manuals, videos, audio recordings and art is a substantial collection, and the app is designed to be lived in rather than dipped into once. The marking, playlists and search tools reward regular use; someone who only wants to look up a single verse occasionally will still find it, but will not get much from the rest. It is free, with no ads and no purchases, so the only real commitment is attention.

My sense is that this suits members who want their study material in one place and are willing to organize it, along with anyone preparing lessons, talks or music. The steady updates, most recently in September 2026, suggest the app is being tended rather than left as it was.

What's new in version 7.8.0-(780060.3399138)

• Updated the sacrament meeting hymns feature to support stake conference. • Added the ability to add general conference talks to a playlist by speaker or topic. • Added paragraph numbers in the margin for all general conference talks, not just the latest. • Added a display option to show or hide guitar chord labels in responsive sheet music. • Added featured playlists in the Playlists section of Home. • Added the ability to browse all music by topic. • Added a metronome in accompanist mode.