Free & Essential Android Apps for Worship Leaders

Here in India, buying an iPhone is more or less like buying a Rolls Royce. That’s why Nokia smart-phones used to sell like hot cakes – before the advent of Android that is. Android became a game changer and is quickly conquering the mobile OS space just about everywhere. Even at my blog, posts on Android apps have eventually been the most popular ones.

Worship Leaders can do quite a lot on an Android device – from Bible reading to songwriting to socializing and more.

Here’s a look at some of the most useful Android apps (many are also available for iPhone) for worship leaders that I’ve come across:

Bible Reading & Study

 YouVersion is the most popular Android Bible app out there and I am not complaining! With a plethora of translations/versions, reading plans, sharing options, notes and groups, it’s a fantastic app to access the Bible while on the move. But it doesn’t mean that YouVersion is the only game in Android town.

 Bible.is has its own Android app that provides the Bible in a whopping 600+ languages apart from reading programs, bookmarks, annotations, sharing features and syncing across devices. A stand-out feature of Bible.is is its integration with the Jesus Film – so we get to watch the Bible too apart from reading and hearing it!

Book Reader

 Kindle‘s app provides an elegant book reading experience on Android devices. Using Whispersync, you can access your Kindle library and sync upto the last page read, bookmarks and annotations. Books bought using the Android app can be accessed on other devices like Kindle, Computer, Tablet or any other Kindle compatible device.

 Kobo eBooks reader is a snazzy alternative app crammed with cool features. Browse, search & download of books (lots of free titles available), adjustable reading interface (text style, night mode, screen brightness etc.), library sync are some of its notable features.

Feed Reader

 Google Currents provides a viable alternative to the Flipboard app that is popular in the iOS universe. Oozing with coolness, the app can deliver text and multimedia content apart from RSS feeds in a glossy and modern interface. There’s a platform available for online content publishers like bloggers to customize their content for Google Currents while integrating nicely with Google Analytics too.

Guitarist Assistant

 Gibson’s Learn & Master Guitar app is an all-in-one tool for guitarists that comes with a tuner (with standard and alternative tunings), metronome (with tap tempo), chords dictionary, guitar lessons (including video content) and more.

Chords

 Guitar TabApp Pro is a cool free app to search and store chords/tabs to most popular worship songs used in contemporary worship services. The app’s interface provides search by artist or song name. Lyrics, chords and tabs can be viewed online and saved for offline access also.

Contact & Socializing Assistant

 While Evernote Hello is not available for Android yet, Charm takes contacts management to another level. You can enrich your database by recording details like the type of relationship & status, preferred mode of contact (call, text, mail), frequency etc. And that’s not all – you can set event reminders for birthdays, anniversaries etc., get gift suggestions within preset price ranges and interests, create message templates and more making this a fantastic app to help socialize and maintain relationships!

Music Player

 I’ve tried many music players on my Android phone, but always keep coming back to Winamp – it’s easy to use and packed. When it’s combined with Jays Headset Control app, it gets even better when you need a hands-free experience. The only feature I keep missing in the free version is the equalizer.

 PLAY by AOL Music is another cool app to listen, discover and share music. Nice eye-candy, frequently updated music database, listening parties, SHOUTcast radio access and easy commenting and social sharing on Facebook and Twitter are some of the reasons that make this a great addition to my app collection.

Other handy alternative music player apps that I have used are InstaMusic, TTPod and Double Twist.

Office

 Kingston Office is a feature packed office suite for viewing and editing office documents including support for presentations and spreadsheets apart from viewing PDFs. The app facilitates direct mailing of files after viewing/editing them and also integrates well with Dropbox and Google docs making this the Office app of choice for Android devices.

Cloud Storage

 It’s tough to look beyond Dropbox when looking for a reliable app for storing, accessing and sharing files on the go. It’s a definite winner when you consider its awesome syncing features and the slew of 3rd party add-ons and services that extend its usefulness.

 However, if you’re looking for off-the-shelf encryption features for your cloud storage, then SpiderOak‘s official android app is an effective tool. SpiderOak backs up your files and synchronizes them seamlessly apart from being a zero-knowledge application i.e. no one can read your files except you.

Note Taking

 Catch Notes is a wonderful note taking app including rich-text editing, voice recording etc. Apart from clipping notes through browser extensions/plug-ins, you can also email notes to Catch. Files sync seamlessly over multiple devices providing a comfortable user experience.

 The most popular app in this space is of course Evernote, which can do all of what Catch does and then some more. The feature-rich desktop application clearly sets it apart from other services like Catch, SpringPad etc. The only other service, which can be considered as a close alternative to Evernote is Windows OneNote. Incidentally, OneNote has recently come out with an Android app too, but it will take a few more versions before it can be compared with the apps provided by Evernote, Catch or SpringPad.

Both Catch and Evernote can also double up as a songwriting tool to quickly jot down lyrics and record melody ideas.

Worship Planning

 Probably the only worship planning android app in existence at the moment, the Planning Center Online (PLO) app facilitates PLO users to access their account on mobile devices. Personally, I am not a big fan of PLO’s user interface (it’s just too user-unfriendly and unintuitive for my liking). But like I said, it’s the only one out there…for now at least.

Have I missed any useful Android app that you know of?

Gangai Victor

A worship leader / musician / trainer / songwriter and technology enthusiast from India. Author of The Worship Kenbook. Blogs at Worship Blog