How to use Toshokan

The three dropdowns at the top are version, book, and chapter. Ten translations ship with Toshokan, all public-domain or freely licensed:

KJV Lite is already inside the app and reads with no connection at all. Every other version — including the full KJV that carries the lexicon — is a download, and each one can be kept on the device for offline use from Settings. See Offline & storage.

The reader does not stop at the end of a chapter. Keep scrolling and the next one loads underneath, so a book reads as one continuous column; when you cross into a new book it announces itself with a title page. Scroll all the way to the end of Revelation and you get a printer’s mark instead.

Going backwards is a deliberate jump rather than an endless upward scroll:

• The Previous button above the chapter title takes you back one chapter, landing you at its end so the text reads continuously.
• On desktop, ← and → turn chapters.
• On a phone, swipe left for the next chapter and right for the previous one.
• Toshokan remembers where you stopped. Opening Study later drops you back on that chapter, at that scroll position — not at John 1.

The Aa button opens the reading panel. It changes the page you are looking at as you touch the controls, so you can judge the result rather than imagine it.

WebMobile

Four dials: text size (four steps), line spacing (compact, normal, relaxed), typeface (serif or sans), and page — default, or sepia for a warmer sheet that is easier on the eyes at night.

WebMobile

WebMobile

Tap any verse — the number or the words — and a small bar appears over it. On desktop, hovering is enough.

WebMobile

• Highlight — marks the verse and keeps it. Highlights are yours across devices and are collected under Saved.
• Copy — the verse text, clean: no Strong’s numbers, no footnote daggers.
• Share — sends the passage out as a typeset card rather than a bare link. See Sharing.
• Add to Study — drops the verse straight into your notes as a formatted scripture block. This is the hinge between the two halves of the app; it is covered in full under Scripture in your notes.

Scroll the panel and the definition gives way to a concordance: every other verse in the Bible using that same original word, with the English rendering highlighted in place. This is what turns a definition into an argument — you can see whether a word means what a preacher says it means by reading the other 300 places it is used.

WebMobile

Tap a result to go straight to that verse in the reader.

1. 1Open Scriptorium. On a phone, your existing studies are behind the menu button in the top-left.
2. 2Hit Start New Study (or the + above the list).
3. 3Give it a title and a one-line description. The description is what people read on the card in the Library, so it is worth a sentence rather than a shrug.
4. 4Write.

It behaves the way a modern editor should. Select text and a formatting bar appears over the selection; on a phone, the same controls ride above the keyboard so they are reachable with a thumb.

• Headings — two levels, for sectioning an argument.
• Bold and italic, for the usual reasons.
• Quotes — a set-in block for someone else’s words.
• Bulleted lists, for when the argument is really a list.
• Scripture blocks — the one thing a normal editor cannot do. Next section.
• Undo / redo, and a live word and character count in the corner.

Import takes text you have already written — a sermon draft, a page of notes from another app — and pours it into the editor rather than making you retype it.

The fastest one, and the one worth learning. On a new line, type a forward slash followed by the reference, then press Enter:

The line dissolves and the passage arrives in its place, fully formatted, pulled from whichever translation you currently have selected. It is forgiving about how you write the reference: abbreviations (Phil, 1 Jn), singular and plural (Psalm or Psalms), spaces around the range dash, even a backwards range like 5-3.

When you know roughly where you are going but not the exact verse, the Scripture button in the toolbar opens a picker: choose book, chapter, and a start and end verse, and read the passage before you commit it. Better for browsing than for speed.

This is the one that changes how you work. You are reading — not writing — and a verse lands. Tap it, hit Add to Study, and it goes into your notes without you leaving the chapter.

On a wide screen the Scriptorium sits in a rail to the right of the text, and the verse visibly flies across into it. Whichever study is open in that rail is the one that receives the verse. On a phone — or when nothing is open yet — you get a chooser: pick the study it belongs to, or start a new one.

There is no save button you have to remember. As you type, the study is written to your device immediately, and pushed to the cloud shortly after. The indicator in the header tells you which has happened:

Cloud Sync forces the push immediately, for when you want to watch it happen. Write on a plane with no signal and the work sits safely on the device; it syncs when you land.

The padlock in the toolbar is the privacy switch, and it starts closed. A draft is visible to you alone. Flip it and the study becomes public: it appears in the Library under your name, and anyone with the link can read it. Flip it back at any point and it withdraws.

Topics — the tag button — files a study under subjects like Prayer or Identity in Christ, which is how readers filter the Library.

Collect adds it to a series: an ordered set of studies meant to be read in sequence. Build one from studies you have already written, or start a series from the study you are in.

Export renders the study — embedded passages and all — as a typeset PDF you can print or hand out. Share gives you a link that unfurls as a proper card wherever you paste it.

Every other translation is a download, taken from Settings → Bible & storage, which lists each version with its size and lets you add or remove it. Most are around 5 MB. Take what you need; delete what you don’t.

Study notes save to the device as you type and sync when a connection returns, so writing offline is not a special mode — it is just what happens when there is no signal. Highlights behave the same way.