Release Notes

This page describes the changes made in each new release of Scripture App Builder. You can download the latest or previous versions on the Download page.

Scripture App Builder 11.4.4

Release date: 17 June 2024

Bugs Fixed:

For some app configurations, the Android app build would fail due to Kotlin library incompatibility errors.

Scripture App Builder 11.4.3

Release date: 11 June 2024

New Features and Improvements:

Using Android Photo picker in Verse on Image
If users choose to select their own background image for Verse on Image, those with Android 11 and above will now see the Photo picker rather than the generic file chooser screen.
Multilingual plan definitions
When defining a plan, you can define the plan title, description and plan headings with translations in multiple languages.
Use this syntax: \title [en] Title in English.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

Audio files were not downloaded from the FCBH server if the book name contained speech mark characters (affects some West African languages).
Handle book tabs which contain only an image (\fig).
Stability issues in GeckoView causing blank screens when moving back to Contents menus.
Audio and Lock icons were not shown properly on the Contents screen when using GeckoView.

In the PWA:

Improve startup build and startup time when including many book collections.
Add “Scripture Logs” setting to assist with debugging issues with Scripture view. Logs are written to the browser console.
Display a message when the audio play mode changes.
Display a message when text is copied to the clipboard.
Display the book footer instead of the book collection footer if defined.
Hide the book group titles if configured.
Make switching projects safer when using “Run PWA” with multiple projects. You may still need to clear the cache for the website so things like styles are updated.
Show illustrations in full screen when tapped, if configured.
Display annotations and history in the text body font size and show the width of the Scripture text on wide screens.

In the app builder:

Use a newer reCAPTCHA library when using Firebase to respond to rejections of apps on Google Play due to security vulnerabilities found in the reCAPTCHA library used by the current Firebase.
On macOS 14.5, when executing “Run PWA”, it couldn’t find the npm program.
For Book Tab books, do not show the ‘Show in Book Selector’ feature.
The Contents menu viewer did not display audio and lock icons in the right place.

Scripture App Builder 11.4.2

Release date: 28 May 2024

New Features and Improvements:

Quiz books can now be hidden in the book selector.
See “Show in book selector” in Book > Book Features.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

When in the song book index page, selecting a song from the chapter selector could cause the app to crash.

In the app builder:

On the Interface > Languages page, some of the languages in the table were shown without names.
Image filenames in picture story books needed to be encoded for XML in the configuration file.
When a book tab was selected in the tree view, the title in the heading bar should show the book name as well as the tab name.
Internal improvements and bug fixes.

Scripture App Builder 11.4.1

Release date: 21 May 2024

Internal improvements and bug fixes.

Scripture App Builder 11.4

Release date: 17 May 2024

New Features and Improvements:

Contents Menu audio (Android app)
You can now assign an audio clip to Contents menu items. This can be a help to less literate users and where it would be helpful to give an audio description of what will happen when the item is selected.
When the menu is displayed, a speaker icon is shown at the bottom right corner of each menu item with audio. When the user taps this icon, the audio clip is played.
Hiding books from book selector (Android app)
You can now hide a book from appearing in the book selector.
This could be useful if you only want it to show from a Contents menu item or from a link in the text.
See “Show in book selector” in Book > Book Features.
Note that users will still be able to swipe into the book, unless you disable swiping between books.
Bottom navigation improvements
Added support for the bottom navigation bar in iOS apps.
Added a checkbox in the app builder to allow turning on or off the bottom navigation buttons feature.
See Navigation > Bottom Navigation.
Bloom Player library updated to version 2.2.36.
More interface translations in Russian and Vietnamese.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

Back navigation to contents menus and submenus sometimes caused the app to close.
Headings in Plans were not working properly (#1581).

In the iOS app:

Fixes for privacy manifest requirements.
Fix for playing downloaded video files.
Contents menu items for targets other than references did not work.

In the PWA:

Allow dash and space characters in book collection ID.
Use the specified numeral system for Scripture and chapter/verse display.
Support figures that do not have a caption.
Allow the c-drop direction to be based on the current direction.
Invert menu items when in dark mode.
Allow book collector list/grid setting to use config if no user option.
Navigate to chapter 1 if there is only one chapter.
Handle footers configured at book level.
Handle videos without titles.
Tap on the note icon to view or edit.
Get the correct font display name for the text layout dropdown.
Display a message when no history is available when History is selected.

In the app builder:

Special characters were often shown in the tree view, heading panel, book name and book abbreviation fields as square boxes.
Bottom navigation buttons should be limited to a maximum of 5.

Scripture App Builder 11.3

Release date: 29 April 2024

New Features and Improvements:

Bottom Navigation Buttons (Android only so far)
You can choose which bottom navigation buttons (if any) to show, e.g. “Contents”, “Books”, “Plans”, “About”.
Separate buttons can point to different Contents screens.
A “Books” or “Bible” button can point to the current book and chapter, and you can also add a button to point to a specific book (such as a song book).
Go to Navigation > Bottom Navigation, and click “Add Button” to add a button.
You can add up to five buttons.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are already using bottom navigation buttons (which had been hardcoded in the previous version), you might need to add them manually.
Allow turning off verse numbers at the book level (#1548).
See Book > Features > Show verse numbers.
Include iOS Privacy Manifest in apps
Starting May 1, 2024, Apple App Store will require new or updated apps to contain privacy manifests. See Apple’s privacy requirements for details.
Updated version of Android SDK Tools
The latest version of Android SDK Tools is downloaded in the Install Android SDK wizard.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

Pressing the phone’s back button did not always result in going back to the previous page in the app as expected. Improvements were also needed in the way the back arrow at the top left of the screen worked.
Pressing the back audio button at the start of a book caused the app to crash (#1544).
Pressing the forward audio button at the end of a picture story book caused the app to crash (#1562).
The History screen was blank when there was no history. It should contain a “No history yet” message, otherwise apps were getting rejected when submitted to Google Play.
Plans screens needed better exception handling.

In the iOS app:

Allow the “Show Glossary Words” setting to appear in the settings list.
If the border image file was not found, the app would crash.
Added search index bar back into search results display.

In the PWA:

Handle additional book names in footnotes.
Fix crash on selecting introduction from book selector.
Fix crash on handling figure that was not followed by a paragraph marker.
Fix crash when fig referenced missing illustration.
Fix crash when video did not have placement information.
Fix crash when font choices for a collection referenced fonts not in font list (not visible in the SAB user interface, but existed in the appDef file).
Fix footnotes displaying on book collections where they were not configured.
Fix about page styles.
Glossary entry footnotes now display.
Use configuration for verse numbers at the book level.
The initial value for the show verse number setting was not working.

In the app builder:

Finding python on Linux for Aeneas was causing a lot of errors in the error log.
Audio File Source could have an invalid URL. Added a check for this during the build.
It was not easy to use the latest source for the PWA. Added a separate option.
Images were not included in the about page for the PWA.
Display markdown syntax for images on the about page.
Specifying an increment (+) to the version number in command line arguments did not work as expected.
In the Tab Type configuration, the choice of Name/Icon was not saved (#1421).

Scripture App Builder 11.2

Release date: 28 March 2024

New Features and Improvements:

New Progressive Web App (PWA)
The first version of the new progressive web app (PWA) is available for use. It has a look and feel more similar to the Android app and supports highlights, notes and bookmarks.
To build a PWA, click ‘Build PWA’ from the toolbar.
To build and preview a PWA by running it on your computer, click ‘Run PWA’ on the toolbar.
To configure the PWA, see Publishing > Web App (PWA).
Bible Reading plans – additional features
When starting a plan, you will be asked some configuration questions (whether you want to assign dates, the start date, the days of the week to do the plan, and up to two daily reminders).
To change the dates of a plan after starting it, go to the configuration tab and tap ‘Change Dates’.
To set up the daily reminder times, go to the configuration tab and tap ‘Set Up Reminders’.
You can add headings in the daily readings using the heading marker in the plan definition file.
iOS app improvements:
Bible Reading Plans
In-App Messaging
Quiz improvements – access types
You can choose to restrict access to a quiz by (i) requiring the user to enter a 4-6 digit code, or (ii) requiring them to complete another quiz successfully first.
See the ‘Quiz’ tab for a book to configure this feature.
If the code option is chosen, a numeric keypad will be shown when the user selects a quiz.
If the required quizzes option is chosen, a message will be displayed telling the user which quizzes they need to complete before starting the currently selected quiz.
If quizzes are listed in the Contents menu, a lock symbol will appear to the right of quizzes that are locked.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

After returning from the Settings screen, the content in the current book tabs was not displayed correctly (#1506).
If the items in Bible plans were consecutive chapters in the same book, e.g. Genesis 4, Genesis 5, Genesis 6, the plan progress information would not be displayed in the second chapter (#1496).
The list of readings for a day in Bible plans was not well formatted; the text was not aligned next to the checkboxes.
The notification popup on newer versions of Android was displaying the IDs instead of the localised reason strings.
In the long press menu on Android, add a search icon.

In the iOS app:

App launch turns off background audio of other apps (issue #1490).
On iPad, the book collection and chapter selectors were cut off on the right (issue #1502).
The font selector for the 2nd and 3rd book collections did not work (issue #1514).
Pressing Play from the selection toolbar did not immediately scroll to the verse (issue #1515).
Rewrite of search results display to be compatible with the Android version.
Reduce time required for search to complete.

In the app builder:

The Data Safety CSV file was missing a setting when not using User Accounts.
Images needed to be cached in the table of plans to improve the speed of display.
Names of File Sources were not being retrieved correctly.
Creating a new Keystore on Mac failed if the JDK was not installed. It now uses bundled JDK.
On Windows, when synchronising files with Scriptoria, sometimes it would get confused (e.g. a books.zip file next to the books folder would confuse the sorting).
On Mac, restoring the integrated menu bar after crashes on Sonoma 14.1.2 was fixed in Sonoma 14.2.

Scripture App Builder 11.1.1

Release date: 19 December 2023

New Features and Improvements:

Added some app interface translations in Thai and Burmese.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

If you were building an app with web radio without any other features that required internet access, the internet permission would not be included.
If you locked the device screen when playing a web radio station, the audio would stop playing.

In the app builder:

If the name of a Change contained angle bracket characters, the app project would not be saved correctly.

Scripture App Builder 11.1

Release date: 06 December 2023

New Features and Improvements:

Bible Reading Plans (Android app)
You can add a collection of Bible reading plans to your app. Each day within a plan can include one or more passages for users to read or listen to.
Plans are defined in text files, using standard format markers. For details about the required file format, see the ‘Bible Plans’ section in the ‘Building Apps’ documentation.
There is a new bottom navigation bar in the app, allowing users to navigate between the main Bible view, Plans, and the Contents menu (if there is one).
To add plans to the app, go to Engagement > Plans.
You can add pre-prepared plans from the Plans Gallery, by clicking the ‘Add Plan from Gallery…’ button.
More features are planned for the coming releases, including: daily reminder, settings/changing the start date, cancelling plans, choosing the days of the week on which to read, and devotional notes.
Web Radio Stations (Android app)
You can include streaming web radio (internet radio) stations in your app.
To add a radio station, go to Media > Radio and click Add Station.
For more details, see the ‘Radio’ section in the ‘Building Apps’ documentation.
In-App Messaging (Android app)
You can now use Firebase for in-app messaging. These are messages that users will see when they are inside the app.
To enable in-app messaging, go to Data & Analytics > Firebase > Firebase Features.
To send in-app messages, go to Data & Analytics > Firebase > In-App Messaging.
Push Notifications tab
It is now easier to find the page in the Firebase console to send push notifications.
Go to Data & Analytics > Firebase > Push Notifications.
Contents menu item targets (Android app)
In addition to pointing to book chapters and other contents menu screens, a contents menu item can now point to the following: About screen, Language and Layout screen, Settings screen, Plans chooser, a Web radio station or any website.
Go to Navigation > Contents Menu, click the Add Item button, and select ‘Elsewhere’.
Build multiple Android App Bundles
When building multiple apps, you can now choose between building Android APK files and Android App Bundles (AAB).
See Build > Build Multiple Apps
Prevent screenshots when using the Android app
In some cases, you might want to prevent users taking screenshots when they are using your app, for example, to make it more difficult to copy illustrations.
To do this, there is a new setting on App > Security, ‘Prevent the user from taking screenshots in the app’.
More app interface translations:
Added Farsi [fa] translations
Added Zulu [zu] translations
Added missing Chinese translations
Font updates:
Updated Annapurna SIL font to version 2.000 (8 Nov 2023)
Updated Awami Nastaliq font to version 3.200 (23 Oct 2023)
Bloom Player updated to version 2.1.31.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

If no bookmarks, notes or highlights were defined, the corresponding screen from the navigation drawer menu was completely blank. A message has been added, telling the user that there are none, and giving some information on how to add one. The absence of such a message was causing Google Play to reject apps due to poor user experience.
If no search results were found, after tapping the Search button, two search fields were displayed instead of one. This would happen when using embedded Keyman keyboards.
If using Firebase but not Branch deep linking, disable the use of the Advertising ID.

In the iOS app:

The Image pop-up would not close.
The Audio bar in a tab was not displaying correctly.

In the app builder:

On the Illustrations page, resizing settings were not saved for an image. This happened when image placements were not being used.
If the name of a Change was modified, the new name was not saved (#1461).
When sorting apps in the tree on the left of the app builder screen, they would be sorted using the group name whether or not the group was being shown (#1450).
Correct the Google Play Language for Khmer (km-HK to km-KH). If you used this language for a Google Play Listing, you will need to rename the folder under {project name}_data/publish/play-listing folder before opening the project in SAB 11.1+.
If URLs in the app were the same except for case, then both were included in the Android app metadata and the app would crash on startup on newer versions of Android.
Require the iOS signing identity to start with “Apple Distribution” or “Apple Development”. “iPhone Distribution” used to work but is now causing app uploading errors.

Scripture App Builder 11.0.4

Release date: 12 October 2023

New Features and Improvements:

Custom resizing of Illustrations
When the app is built, illustration file sizes can be reduced differently for each image, or turned off altogether for certain images.
Go to Media > Illustrations, double-click on the illustration and adjust the settings on the Resizing tab.
For example, you can set maps to not be resized, in order to maintain their full details when they are zoomed in, whereas other picture files can be reduced in size.
Audio file discovery improvements
After an audio file has been downloaded and located on the device, its location will be saved to the app’s database to make it quicker to find the next time it is needed.
Keyman 16
Keyman Engine library updated to version 16.0.142.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

In Android 13, the app needs to ask for different permissions to read audio, video and image files.
In Android 13, the app would ask for permission to show notifications even when it would never need them.
When asking for permission to show notifications, the message could refer to “verse of the day” or “daily reminders” when neither were enabled.

In the app builder:

When not using Verse on Image, the compiler would fail to complete, warning about a missing BlurTransformation class.
The Tools > Setting dialog would not close when clicking the OK button.
When adding an audio file to a new audio book, the audio files would be added to the first book in the book collection rather than to the new book that you are adding.

Scripture App Builder 11.0.3

Release date: 03 October 2023

New Features and Improvements:

Contents Menu improvements
You can now choose to link a menu item to the About, Settings or Language and Layout screens.
When opening an app, the tree nodes on the left of the app builder screen are expanded to the first level instead of fully expanding every node.
Updated to the latest Android Gradle Plugin build tools, which now require a minimum Android SDK Build Tools version 33.0.1.
If you receive a warning about an older version of Build Tools, you can use the Tools > Install Android SDK wizard to install an updated version of the Android SDK.
Added Data Deletion URL for User Accounts data. See User Accounts > Data Deletion.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

If an app was used to download an audio file, then uninstalled then reinstalled, it would fail to locate the previously downloaded audio file and would not successfully download and play another one.
It should be possible to configure introductions to have no border around the text, while other chapters have borders.
The Verse on Image editor was failing in some situations.
If a book collection was empty, switching to the book collection would crash the app.

In the iOS app:

Fixes to notification setup for Verse of Day.
Cache border images to improve performance when borders are present.
Verse on Image screens should be locked to portrait mode.
Adjust the size of the Share Media Type dialog to fit the text.

In the app builder:

Markdown links in footnotes would not work where there was no current book collection selected.
If a modified image was added, e.g. to the contents menu, with the same filename as the previous version of the image, the thumbnail would not be updated on the screen.
During app building, a check has been added to ensure that all book collections contain books.
For quiz books, if a question did not contain text, the Character Inventory screen would fail to load.
The Convert Audio Files feature required Aeneas to be installed, when this should not have been necessary.
Could not add iOS icons or iOS splash screen images.
On macOS, trying to import the app store listing information from Google Play would fail.

Scripture App Builder 11.0.1

Release date: 03 August 2023

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

When using book tabs, if a border was shown on the first tab, the other tabs would also be shown with a border around the text, even if borders were turned off for these tabs.
When using an Android 13 device, the verse of the day and daily notifications were not shown. The app should ask permission to post notifications.
When using an Android 13 device, it was not possible to save or share a verse on image because of permissions issues.
When using an Android 13 device, there could be problems saving files to device storage.

In the app builder:

There were problems finding Python used by Aeneas when synchronising audio and text.
On Mac computers, the download path was wrong for installing JDK 17.

Scripture App Builder 11.0

Release date: 27 July 2023

New Features and Improvements:

Reorganised app configuration pages
In the tree on the left of the app builder screen, the pages have been organised into categories: Appearance, Data & Analytics, Publishing, Navigation, and Engagement.
The Appearance category contains pages for Icons, Graphics, Interface, Colors, Fonts, Styles, Formatting and Changes.
The Data & Analytics category contains pages for Analytics, Firebase and User Accounts.
The Publishing category contains pages for App Store, E-books (EPUB), and will also be where PWAs are configured in future versions.
The Navigation category contains pages for the Contents Menu, the Navigation Drawer, Book Navigation, Deep Linking and Tab Types.
The Engagement category contains pages for Annotations, Notifications and Verse on Image.
The Media category contains pages for Audio, Video and Illustrations.
The Firebase tab has been moved to its own page, with two tabs: Firebase Features and Firebase Configuration.
Building apps for Android 13
Apps are now compiled using Android 13 (API 33) libraries, which is required by Google Play for new apps from 31 August 2023.
Before building an app, you will need to install a new version of the JDK (version 17). Use the Install JDK wizard (from Tools > Install JDK…)
You will also need to update the Android SDK to install the latest libraries. Use the Install Android SDK wizard (from Tools > Install Android SDK…)
Apps can still be installed on older versions of Android, down to Android 4.1 (API 16), although this will be Android 4.4 (API 19) if using Firebase, or Android 5.0 (API 21) if using Branch deep linking, because of the requirements of the latest versions of these libraries.
More background images
18 images with decorative borders have been added to the image gallery for Verse on Image backgrounds.
See Engagement > Verse on Image > Backgrounds.
Data Safety information for Google Play
The Data Safety CSV export has been updated with the latest questions and answers.
It will be generated automatically in the APK Output folder when building an Android App Bundle (AAB), or when selecting Build > Export Data Safety to CSV.
Updated libraries used in compiling Android apps:
Gradle compiler version updated to 8.2.
Android Gradle plugin updated to 7.4.2.
Android AppCompat version 1.6.1.
Android Material components library 1.9.0.
Firebase Bill of Materials: 32.2.0.
Google Play Services library 4.3.15.
Branch deep linking SDK: 5.6.1.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

When signing in to a user account or signing up to use a new user account, in some situations the existing annotations were not synced to the server.
When deleting a user account, the corresponding user data in the Firebase database needed to be deleted too.
When deleting a user account, the confirmation message box followed by the password entry screen could be confusing to users. These have been replaced by a combined confirmation and password entry screen.

In the iOS app:

When deleting a user account, the corresponding user data in the Firebase database needed to be deleted too.
When deleting a user account, the confirmation message box followed by the password entry screen could be confusing to users. These have been replaced by a combined confirmation and password entry screen.
The app could crash on start if it was displaying a contents menu without an interface language.
The Search entry text font was not being set, which could result in characters not being displayed correctly.

In the app builder:

USFM tables were being parsed for Scripture references, leading to numbers in table cells being interpreted as references.
SFM files were treated as empty if all content appeared on lines without markers.
When switching between apps, the Scripture References page was not refreshed if no Bible books were found in the currently selected app.
The SIL logo in the About box needed to be updated.
Inconsistent left and top margins were being used in several App Builder configuration pages.
On Linux, the Books > Book > Viewer tab was being hidden due to missing dependencies. These dependencies are now installed and the Viewer tab is available.

Scripture App Builder 10.4

Release date: 28 June 2023

New Features and Improvements:

Better handling of audio-only books:
You can choose to add audio books in the New App wizard and the Add Books wizard.
You can choose to add selected Bible audio-only books or a non-Scripture audio-only book.
Audio files for a non-Scripture book can be added on the new ‘Audio Files’ page of the wizard.
If you want to specify selected chapters for an audio book, you now do this in the Portions section on the Book tab, rather than on the ‘Audio Only’ tab.
The ‘Audio Only’ tab now contains just the album image and has been renamed ‘Image’.
Default fonts and choice of fonts
In the New App wizard, the default font will now be based on the script used within the first book, i.e. Latin, Arabic, Devanagari, etc.
On the Font Choice page, the fonts displayed will be based on this script.
Improved keystore creation:
Changed the layout and descriptions on the Signing page of the New App wizard, making it clear that the choice is between creating a new keystore file and using an existing one.
Instead of a hyperlink, there is now a ‘Create Keystore’ button.
In the Create Keystore wizard, the Browse button is now connected to the choice of folder rather than the filename.
When adding Certificate Issuer information, there is now a country code selector dialog. You can search for a country and find its two-letter code.
GIF images:
You can now include illustrations in GIF image format, including animated GIFs (#1350).
Contents Menu headings
You can now add heading items to the contents menu. These are not selectable but allow you to provide more information to the user and divide up the contents menu into sections.
Use the ‘Add Heading…’ button on the right of the Contents Menu page.
Registration screen: improvements to Skip functionality
If you are using a registration screen, you can choose to add a Skip button. If a user presses Skip, you can now choose if and when the user gets asked again to fill in the form: every time they launch the app, never again, or after a certain number of days.
See App > Security > Configure Registration > Skip Registration.
Registration screen: database path
If you are using a registration screen, you can choose where you want the data to be stored in your Firebase database: either at the top level (as before), or at an app-specific level (which allows you to use the same database for different apps).
There is a new ‘Database Rules’ dialog which gives you the rules you need to copy to configure your Firebase realtime database.
See App > Security > Configure Registration > Database.
Website addresses in tooltips
Where the App Builder provides links to external websites, a tooltip is now displayed showing the web address when the user hovers their mouse over the link.
Updated library versions:
GeckoView updated to version 114.0.
Bloom Player updated to version 2.1.28.
Keyman upgraded to version 16 (in the iOS app).
Additional fonts:
Noto Naskh Arabic
Noto Sans Devanagari, Noto Serif Devanagari
Noto Sans Ethiopic, Noto Serif Ethiopic
Noto Sans Malayalam, Noto Serif Malayalam
Noto Sans Telugu, Noto Serif Telugu
Noto Serif Tibetan

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

Tapping the Text Appearance button when viewing the Contents menu caused the app to crash if there was a choice of fonts (#1309).
For picture story books, if the motion duration was set to less than the duration of the audio for the page, the position of the slider would not be set correctly (#1295).
In quizzes, the audio clip sound was not found if the app contained audio from a non-assets source (such as internet download).
In quizzes, explanations containing single quote marks were not displayed.
When failing to add data to the database in a registration screen, the error message was untranslated.
When using a registration screen and GeckoView, the submit button cleared the form rather than attempting to add the data to the database.
When using GeckoView, video thumbnail images were not shown, and nor was the arrow in quiz questions.

In the iOS app:

Repeat mode buttons were displayed on the audio toolbar when configured to be off.
Text on Image font size could not be expanded as much as it should be on an iPad.
Contents Menu language was not changing immediately after the interface language was changed.
Line spacer control was not appearing correctly after the latest changes.
Special characters were displayed on the search screen in the wrong font.

In the app builder:

The Build folder and App Projects folders were not created when first running the app builder program.
Creating a keystore failed if you had not already installed the JDK (#1353)
When using a chapter-verse separator other than a colon, and when making use of USFM3 style attributes in xt codes, the Scripture links would not be created correctly (#1302).
When compiling apps in Windows, a ‘ÿ’ character would appear instead of a non-breaking space when displaying the APK file size.
The output and error logs displayed in Tools > View Logs did not handle UTF-8 encoding in Windows.
In the Contents Menu Add Menu Item wizard, some of the controls on the first page were not being disabled according to the selected radio button.
The compilation dialog was not being placed in the centre of the program window. It would appear on screen 1 even if the App Builder program was being displayed on screen 2.
Additional compilation warnings needed to be hidden from the user.
The recommended EPUB 3 readers linked to on the EPUB page were no longer available and needed to be updated.
Deleted custom styles reappeared after saving (#1326).
You could not change the name of a Change added from the gallery (#1348).
For picture story books, more space is needed for the story book image filename label on the Story Pages tab.
On the Book tab, the Portions text field was visible at first when it should have been hidden.
The title of the Google Account dialog appeared in Russian when the app builder interface was in English.
In the JDK wizard, use the Next button to start the download, rather than a separate Download button. It was confusing to users, who are used to pressing Next to progress to the next step.
The ‘Using aeneas for text-audio synchronisation’ documentation included expired links to the aeneasweb service, which is no longer available (#1352).
Replace the dependency on the JCenter repository which is no longer being updated.
Some of the statements used in the Gradle build configuration files were deprecated.
Sorting apps into alphabetical order did not take into account project group names. The sort should also be case insensitive.
Do not show the ‘Features’ page in the New App wizard if there are no Bible books selected.

Scripture App Builder 10.3.2

Release date: 17 May 2023

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

If an image had placements, it could not be edited.
The most recently used video folder should be saved separately from the most recently used image folder.
org.sil should be allowed in package names.
In the New Keystore wizard, the Browse button should select the folder rather than the filename.

Scripture App Builder 10.3.1

Release date: 03 May 2023

New Features and Improvements:

Study Bibles: allow turning off the Study Bible explanatory text box (now turned off by default).
Fonts
Updated Scheherazade New (4.000), Harmattan (4.000) and Lateef (4.000).

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

When Bible Brain audio source is set to allow download, the setting for how to download was not visible.

In the iOS app:

When Bible Brain audio source is set to allow download, the setting for how to download was not visible.

In the app builder:

After running a build, the color picker would not display.
A build would fail if a video didn’t have a valid URL. It will now display a warning and not try to build.
Data Safety: incorrect answers were given when using deep linking, and in some other situations.

Scripture App Builder 10.3

Release date: 30 March 2023

New Features and Improvements:

Font Chooser
The app user can now choose the text font in the Text Appearance dialog.
In Two Pane and Verse-by-Verse layouts, a font can be chosen for each book collection.
Choice of Fonts
The New App wizard now has an additional page ‘Choice of Fonts’ which allows you to select some additional fonts from which the user can choose in the font chooser.
For each book and book collection, you can choose which fonts the app user will be able to choose from. See the new ‘Fonts’ tab at both book collection and book levels.
Changes at a book level
Changes can now be specified at a book level, as well as being available at book collection and app levels.
See the ‘Changes’ tab for each book.
Footnote and Cross Reference links at a book collection level
The Features > Links tab has now been moved to each book collection, so you can configure these settings differently according to the book collection.
If the ‘Default’ caller option is selected, you can now choose to replace ‘-’ callers with the automatic ‘+’ caller symbol.
Collapsible Study Bible notes
Study Bible notes in chapters and sidebars can be displayed as collapsible blocks which the user can expand to view the content.
See the new ‘Study Bible’ tab for each book collection.
Media Player in notifications
When the audio player is active, a media toolbar will be displayed in the Android device notifications, with a seekbar and play/pause button.
Control over zooming into illustrations
In the past, all illustrations could be tapped on to see them full screen, with the possibility to zoom in and out. Since you might want to disable this feature for some illustrations, this can now be done on the Illustrations tab.
Double-click the illustration you want to modify and adjust the setting on the ‘Zoom’ tab.
To change this setting at an app level, use the checkbox ‘Allow users to view images full screen and zoom in to see the details’, which is checked by default.
Responses to Data Safety questions
When publishing an Android app on Google Play, you need to answer a set of Data Safety questions, telling your users which data is collected and why. To help you answer these questions correctly, on the menu select ‘Build’ > ‘Export Data Safety to CSV’ to create a CSV file which can be imported into the Google Play developer console for the app.
Allow the Play/Pause button on the app’s audio toolbar to be colored differently from the other audio toolbar buttons.
Fonts
Added: Akatab, Doulos SIL, Noto Serif, Nunito Sans, Roboto Mono, Roboto Serif, Ruwudu, Source Sans Pro.
Updated: Charis SIL (6.200), Alkalami (3.000), Andika (6.200), Gentium Plus (6.200).
Hide or Show Font subsets
Since the font subsets of Andika, Charis and Gentium are no longer updated, they are not shown by default. There is a new checkbox under the font chooser to allow the showing of font subsets, for example on the ‘Font’ page of the New App wizard.
Documentation updates
Updated ‘Building Apps’ with more information about inserting pictures, GeckoView and a section about Footers.
Updated Bloom Player to version 2.1.25.
Removed Facebook Analytics since it is no longer available.
Stability improvements.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

Footnote and cross-reference callers were being shown with an underline link.
USFM markers for tables, e.g. tr, tc1, were showing up in the app search results.
The ‘font-family’ setting was not always respected for user interface elements, such as chapter and introduction buttons in the chapter selector.
Book tabs were not working correctly where the main tab was displaying a Bloom book or a picture story book.
If the user started to select a book and a chapter but then tapped out of the selector, the app bar book and chapter would not return to their original settings.
Downloading audio for a picture story book caused the app to crash.
Downloading audio before sharing audio clips or making videos caused the app to crash, especially if the audio mode was set to streaming.

In the iOS app:

Added support for audio repeat buttons.
Fixed issue with the way the shadow view appeared when opening and closing the navigation menu.
Fixed crash that could occur if the URL for download or streaming source was not set.
Fixed problem with pane colors not following book styles when set at the book level.

In the app builder:

Scripture references with commas and books like “1Pe” were not being parsed correctly.
Scripture references should allow multiple-character range separators (#1238).
Scripture references with chapter numbers on their own were not being handled, e.g. chapter 6 was not linked in “Matthew 3:1-4; 6;”
If you used USFM 3 attributes within cross references in footnotes, these were not handled correctly.
In footers, the following HTML tags were not handled correctly: <img>, <span> and <div>.
In the HTML ‘Page Number’ dialog, the default button should be the OK button.
In the ‘Change Book Collection Id’ dialog, the default button should be the OK button.
On the HTML files page, href attributes starting with # were being interpreted as if they were HTML files.
Scripture apps could not be created with org.sil package names (this restriction is no longer necessary).
If Changes were added or modified at a book collection level, the Viewer was not refreshed to reflect these changes.
If any Change contained a regular expression with an ‘Index Out of Bounds’ error, app builds would fail.
‘Browse…’ buttons were missing from the Build Folders and Export Folder tabs in Settings.
In Export to HTML, fonts were not being copied if the ‘fonts’ folder already existed.
Importing a set of books in USX format failed when a book had no chapters.
If you changed the Build folder (in Settings) to a folder which already contained files, these were deleted the next time you compiled an app. Since this could have unintended consequences, if a non-empty folder is specified, the ‘build’ sub-folder is used instead, or a warning message is displayed to the user.
The description of min/max dimensions for 10-inch Android tablet screenshots was incorrect.
The width of the Source column in the Audio Files table needed to be resized wider to see a longer name.

Scripture App Builder 10.2

Release date: 02 December 2022

New Features and Improvements:

Repeat Audio (in the Android app)
There is now an optional ‘Repeat Mode’ button on the audio toolbar. The user can tap it to toggle between four modes: continue playing to the next chapter, stop at the end of this chapter, repeat chapter, and repeat selected text or verse.
An easy way to repeat the audio for a verse or multiple verses is to tap on the verse(s) and then tap the ‘Repeat Selection’ button on the selected text toolbar.
A text hint is displayed above the audio toolbar to indicate the currently selected repeat mode.
To enable/disable these features, go to Audio > Audio Toolbar, and check/uncheck the checkboxes at the bottom of the page.
Book Tabs (in the Android app)
It is now possible to create an app which displays books with two or more tabs, for example:
a “Text” tab in which you display the Scripture text, and a corresponding “Questions” tab which contains Bible study questions.
a “Text” tab in which you display the Scripture text, and a “Commentary” tab which contains an explanation and application of the text.
a “Song” tab in which you display the words of a song, and a corresponding “Music” tab which contains the music score or guitar chords.
Tabs can be labeled with a title or an icon, and you can associate audio files with a tab.
For instructions, see the section on ‘Book Tabs’ in the ‘Building Apps’ documentation.
App Builder Compiler window
When compiling an app, instead of using the standard command/terminal window, the app builder now uses its own window.
This allows us to hide some of the distracting compiler warnings that were not problems but which might have given the impression that there was an issue with the app compilation.
The window also allows app compilation using macOS Ventura, which otherwise was not working.
Added ‘Close compiler window on build success’ option for Mac and Linux.
Scripture Reference improvements
The book collection ‘Features’ tab has been split into two tabs: ‘Scripture References’ and ‘Book Order’.
You can now specify ‘Verse Range’ and ‘Chapter Range’ Scripture reference settings.
Example reference labels illustrate each reference setting.
You can now turn on/off parsing of introductions and glossaries for unmarked Scripture references in the text. The default is now “off”.
Fonts: Updated Abyssinica font to version 2.200 (17 Nov 2022)
Bloom Player: updated to version 2.1.19.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

When using GeckoView, the About page was not being displayed correctly. An external browser would be opened instead.
The book selector in the app toolbar could not be disabled when using GeckoView.
The separator grip handle between two panes was not positioned correctly when in landscape orientation with a right-to-left app layout (#1198).

In the iOS app:

In the container app, the cancel command showed in the app bar on the first launch even though there was nothing to cancel.
In the container app, the browser window during package selection continued into the safe area at the bottom of the screen.

In the app builder:

Bridging material between verses, using the iex marker, was not being handled correctly.
Extended study content sidebars, marked by esb, were not visible in the app.
If app project paths contained an ‘&’ character, the list of open apps would not be saved and restored properly between launches of the app builder.
If there were multiple book collections, audio files should not be able to be added on the top level ‘Audio Files’ tab.
If punctuation characters were used in book names, such as hyphens, Scripture references would not be parsed correctly.
If Scripture references were of the form “Matthew 2:3, 5:6”, separated by a comma, the second reference would not be linked correctly.
In the ‘Add Translation’ dialog, i.e. when adding an app name, you could not specify a language code like ‘pt-BR’ with a hyphen and uppercase letters (#1124).
If the welcome page was showing, changing the interface language using the button at the top-right of the screen made the welcome screen disappear, rather than redisplaying it in the selected language.
Allow the book Viewer to display introduction chapters when the chapter number is set to 0.
Introduction main title marker styles, imt and imt2, needed to be smaller with more top spacing.
The documentation for downloading audio files from FCBH was out of date.

Scripture App Builder 10.1.1

Release date: 30 September 2022

New Features and Improvements:

Error Log Viewer
To view the log files created while running the app builder, select Tools > View Logs.
Up to five previous logs are kept in case they are needed to identify problems.
Removed Crosswalk libraries
The Crosswalk libraries, which are no longer used, have been removed from the release. This reduces the size of the app builder installation file.
JDK install version updated to: zulu11.58.23-ca-fx-jdk11.0.16.1
Gradle compiler version updated to 7.5.1.
Bloom Player version updated to 2.1.10.
Font updates: Awami Nastaliq (3.000) (20 Sept 2022)
Stability improvements.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

The audio player would crash when trying to play WebM audio files.
In picture story books, when playing audio on a page with background music, sometimes the background audio would not play until the app moved to the next page.
After searching for a video file on the device, if it was not found, the app would not go on to show an online video (if specified).
If a video file was not found on the device and no online option was available, a message should be shown.
The Play/Pause button animation would not show in some cases when searching for a file or when looking for the path to use for audio streaming or downloads.
Reduced stroke width of Play/Pause button animation circle when using the smaller Play button.
When using Branch deep linking, updated Android Advertising ID library to 17.1.0, which sets the required app permission.

In the iOS app:

Verse on Image hung if a large amount of text was selected.
The Next and Previous buttons needed to be updated on the audio toolbar to use the latest image. The other images on the toolbar were updated with the latest version used by Android to get consistent shading.
The Settings screen needed to get font, color, and text size from the Text Settings.
The layout configuration icon and menu drawer were not appearing consistently with configuration.

In the app builder:

When selecting portions of a Bible book, the chapter number should still be shown, tailing section headings should be removed, and it should be possible to define multiple ranges in a single chapter (#1092).
In the Video dialog, if an offline MP4 file was not found in the project data folder, it would not be shown.
The Link tab should not be shown on the menu item dialog for Rate the App.

Scripture App Builder 10.1

Release date: 09 September 2022

New Features and Improvements:

GeckoView for Graphite font rendering of complex scripts (Android)
Some scripts cannot be rendered correctly using the standard Android web viewer component. Instead we need to replace the viewer with a Graphite-enabled viewer, such as Crosswalk.
In Android 11 and 12, the Crosswalk component no longer worked and only displayed a black screen. To resolve this, Crosswalk has been replaced by Mozilla’s GeckoView component, which is the web viewer used in Firefox. GeckoView includes SIL’s Graphite font rendering libraries.
Using GeckoView adds at least 55 MB to your app size, so you will only want to use it if you really need to.
See Fonts > Font Handling, or the Font Handling page in the New App wizard.
Slideshow Videos
The new documentation ‘Creating Slideshow Videos’ (accessible from the Help menu) explains how to create videos using Bible text and synchronized audio, together with predefined video templates. The process is automated using the Create Slideshow Wizard.
Download the Slideshow Video Templates from Tools > Settings > Slideshows.
The Illustrated Scripture video templates from SIL International Media Services are currently available.
The Gospel of John video templates are being revised and will be available in the near future.
Search by Reference
You can enter a Scripture reference in the search field to navigate to a book, chapter or verse.
Font updates:
Added Dai Banna SIL font (23 Aug 2022)
Added Payap Lanna font (26 Aug 2022)
App translations:
Updated Arabic translations in the app.
Updated library versions:
Bloom Player updated to version 2.1.7.
Android library versions updated (material components, preferences, AppCompat support).
In iOS App:
If user taps the screen during splash screen delay, the delay is canceled and the app starts
Add support for share video from Text on Image
Add support for share video to share video with audio of selected text
The minimum deployment level was changed to 12.2, which reduces the size of the app that needs to be uploaded to the app store by about 80MB.
Added Branch Native Link option support. Note: To make use of this feature for your app, you need to go to the Branch.io configuration for your app and enable Native Link there.
For Scriptoria:
When publishing a PWA, you can add the publishing property BUILD_PWA_AUDIO_RELATIVE_URL so that the audio URL used will be a protocol relative URL so that the PWA will work when accessed from https (on a webserver) or http (from a wifi box).

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

In older versions of Android, the app could crash when preparing an audio file, while animating the Play/Pause button.
When streaming audio, it was possible to hear the same audio track played twice, one of which was impossible to stop without exiting the app.

In the iOS app:

If the Audio file download feature is not selected and the user selects Automatic download, the option is not saved.

In the app builder:

When communication with BibleBrain to get information about Gospel Films didn’t work, it would silently fail.
In the Publishing > Google Play Listing page, when doing Import From Google Play on Windows, the results were not displayed.
When attempting to build and the Build Folder in Tools > Settings > Build Folders was not a valid folder, it would fail to start the build – but not report any error.
In the Audio Source dialog, the FCBH Fileset ID was not being checked for a valid format.
When migrating from an App Builder prior to version 10, the checking of the automatic JDK Location was not looking for Java 11. On Linux, Java 11 is an install requirement and was already present and it should have automatically switched to the new JDK.
On Linux, when manually installing the JDK, it was using the Windows JDK install zip.
The ‘Audio Not Found’ message on the Audio > Audio Settings page is no longer used. The localizable translation ‘Audio_File_Not_Found’, defined at Interface > Translations is used instead.

Scripture App Builder 10.0.1

Release date: 13 July 2022

New Features and Improvements:

In the iOS app:

Support added for new audio sound bar play/pause buttons and button sizes.

Bugs Fixed:

In the iOS app:

App was crashing on startup because Keyman was being initialized even if not used.
App was crashing on startup if Keyman keyboards were used.
Only display notes, bookmarks, and highlights in slide menu if text has verses, to match Android

In the app builder:

Downloads of JDK and Android SDK as well as other network communications including with Scriptoria and Scripture Earth were not working on Mac.
When uploading to Scriptoria, video stills in the videos folder were not uploaded and deleted remotely.
When installing a new version on Windows, the old versions of Bloom JavaScript files were left and all were included in the app.
Changed “bloomd” to “bloompub” in user interface.

Scripture App Builder 10.0

Release date: 29 June 2022

New Features and Improvements:

Building apps for Android 12 (API 31)
Android apps are now compiled for Android 12.
Apps continue to work on Android versions 4.1 and above.
You will need to use the Install Android SDK wizard to download and install a new version of the Android SDK before you build an app.
See Tools > Install Android SDK.
JDK 11
Android apps are now compiled using Java Development Kit (JDK) version 11, rather than version 8 which has been used until now.
You will need to use the Install JDK wizard to download a new version of the JDK before you build an app.
See Tools > Install JDK.
Automated Bible story slideshow video creation
Previously you needed to purchase and use the PhotoStage video editing software to create slideshow videos after using the Create Slideshow Wizard. Now this final step is automated and videos are created without needing to use PhotoStage.
Thank you to the students of Gordon College for the development of the Story Builder tool which has made this possible.
Audio toolbar styles
While preparing an audio file for playback, the play/pause button becomes an animated circle to indicate a waiting state.
The Play/Pause button can be displayed larger than the other buttons on the toolbar, as a simple arrow, a filled circle or an outline circle.
See Audio > Audio Toolbar.
FCBH Bible Brain
Apps connect to Faith Comes By Hearing’s Bible Brain server (DBP4) for audio file downloads and streaming. Previously we used Digital Bible Platform version 2 (DBP2).
Updates for Bloom books
Bloom books can include HTML5 activity widgets and these pages are now displayed correctly in the app. See Bloom’s library of books with widgets for examples.
Bloom books are now recognised as .bloomPUB as well as .bloomd.
Updated Bloom Player to version 2.0.120.
Improved Keyman keyboard support
Updated to use Keyman version 15 (Android and iOS).
Updated iOS minimum version to 12.1
Handling USFM for sidebar content
Recognises the esb codes for specifying extended study notes as sidebars.
Added more app translations in German.
Font updates
Updated Alkalami font to version 1.300 (27 April 2022).
Updated Padauk font to version 5.001 (8 June 2022).
Updated Gradle compiler to version 7.4.2.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

Background audio files in picture story books would cause the app to crash (#992)
Downloaded videos could not be found in Android 10+ devices.
Changing the colour theme (e.g. from normal to dark) would show words of Jesus in red even when Red Letters is turned off (#1018).
Fixed various stability issues.

In the iOS app:

Fix whole word match delimiters for search to match Android.
Handle window opens from within the container app HTML.
Handle email and telephone links from within book text.
Use standard background color for single pane view.
Fix issue with FCBH download or streaming by using new DBP4 protocol.
Fix crash in audio controls on lock screen.
Support 3GP files.
Verse on Image: Apostrophe in reference not handled properly.
Link pressed in YouTube video did not go to link.
Adjust verse on image text to initially fit on screen.
Fixed quiz book sometimes selecting the wrong answer for the first question.
Fixed issues with swiping in and out of a quiz book.
Fixed issues with HTML source quiz book displaying the font at the wrong size.
Fixed crash in container app with Firebase Analytics.
Fixed crash in container app that was not configured with a Firebase database and the asset package was configured to have user login. User login option is ignored in this case and the user login is not shown.

In the PWA app:

When using .3gp or .webm audio file, fall back to .caf or .mp3 audio file. The .3gp and .webm audio file format is not supported by Safari on iOS or macOS. You can provide alternate audio files in .caf audio file format (native to iOS and macOS) or .mp3 audio file format.

In the app builder:

If the Python 3 version of Aeneas was installed, Python might not be found and Aeneas could not run.
Double-clicking a book after reordering books viewed the wrong book.
Do not allow changing book types to/from the ‘Audio Only book’ type.
Do not allow HTML books to have a book type other than ‘Default’.
When uploading or downloading a project to Scriptoria, you can choose how to handle video as well as audio.
The duration of 3GP files are now correctly determined.

Release Notes v8.0.1 – v9.3
Release Notes v4.1 – v8.0
Release Notes v1.0 – v4.0