Two years ago I finally listened to my friends advice. I bought a copy of Logos. I had played with a free version of logos for a few years but with my part time bible studies and the arrival of logos 9, I decided to commit. It was an investment that really paid off and has helped me with my studies and service in my church. So when the kind people of Faithlife reached out to me with a review copy of Logos 10 in exchange for a review, I jumped at the chance!
It’s packed full of features so I decided to focus on the 10 features that stood out to me from my time using the update.
Speed
It doesn’t take long to notice the speed boost of logos 10 compared to logos 9. I don’t know how the clever people at Faithlife pulled this off exactly but they credit optimising for Apple silicon (my computer is an M1 MacBook Air) bringing somewhere between 10-40% boost. While on Windows, the support for .net should bring a similar boost.
Moving around the app feels far more responsive and waiting times are definitely reduced.
New UI
Faithlife call this a modern UI shift and it’s the second most obvious change in Logos.
The top menu has moved to the left sidebar and can expand and collapse to reveal/hide data. This is more like most modern apps plus it helps reveal more context for each item when expanded. But, if you don’t like it, you can change back to the top nav in application preferences.
Search your physical books in Logos
The Print Library Catalog brings for Gold and higher packages brings your physical books into Logos. What this means is you can run a search and you’ll get results from your physical books too (plus even a short preview of the section). A nice touch is that you can scan in from the mobile app (or manually add in the desktop library) to speed up adding your resources.
Bye bye Community tags, hello Factbook Tags
Community tags are now Factbook tags.
When turned on, Logos will offer prompts about key information such as people and places. It’s a bit like the kindle x-ray feature but using Logos’ knowledge base.
You can turn it on and off with the click of a button in the nav.
Simpler search
Learning a strange language just to search for a question is annoying.
And while the new search improvements aren’t natural language searches yet, the new syntax is a lot simpler and quicker to type. Gone are the strange brackets, and now you can use colons to define types. You can explore all the search options by clicking the search button in the main nav.
Import Sermons to Sermon Manager
Sermon builder is a great tool, but you might have older sermons you want to import or you might prefer to write in a different app.
So now you can import a sermon (or other document like an academic paper if you want) into sermon manager by simply uploading a docx file. You may need to do some cleaning up, but you’ll get 90% done in a click.
Popular quotes
Sticking with sermons, the new popular quotes tools helps you find a pithy saying fast.
Just open the tab in sermon manager and type in your topic. Soon you’ll have a list of popular quotes that might match your theme and help focus attention.
Machine translation with Deepl
Some languages just don’t have as many resources as others. And there might be a particular resource you can’t get in your language. Now, Logos Gold and higher package owners can use inbuilt machine translation of resources.
As someone who serves in a bilingual English – Polish church this is a really exciting feature. While not perfect, it could help our translators get a document they just need to polish (pun not intended but welcome) up.
As this service does come with a running cost to Faithlife, there may be some fair use details to come later, so bear that in mind.
9. Advanced timeline & Church History in factbook
To help fit my features limit, I combined two related features in one.
The timeline has been refreshed with new filters and perspectives including the Church History view. This ties in to the Church History Factbook which provides a deep summary of a key event in church history. Each record includes a summary, the key people, key events, key places, key concepts and recommended reading to go deeper.
It’s a great way to get an overview of an event to start your research as well as a way to explore topics further.
10. iPad Drawing features
Maybe no one else is as excited about this, but I am.
I am a visual thinker and using the iPad to highlight pages as well as create free form notes is a big deal to me.
Well now the iPad app is gaining draw on screen and the canvas feature from the desktop app. That means you can mark up a page of the bible or resource with your highlights or marginalia (and then share or save as a note) and you can use canvas to make a free form display of information using stock made elements from Logos or adding your own drawings.
But wait, there’s more!
That’s just a taste of the new features in Logos 10.
There’s more iPad (including improved highlighting and an easier to explore UI) and desktop features as well as an updated resources that come with packages. One resource to note is that the Thompson chain reference library now come with many resource packages.
If you are looking to get your first Logos package, you can get 15% during the launch campaign.
And if you are upgrading from a previous version of Logos, you can get 30% off.
Conclusion: Is Logos 10 Worth it?
When I first tried Logos, I found it very confusing.
That’s because it’s a real power user app. There are so many features that can provide you with great insights if you know how to use them. These latest enhancements should make Logos more accessible to new users and put some real power in the hands of pro users.
The biggest barrier for most is the price, and I get it. Logos isn’t cheap.
But it is an investment and can be a highly valuable one if you learn to maximise your usage.
Here’s a final pro tip: If you are unsure about logos, try either the foundation package for free (you may have to wait for Logos 10’s) or Faithlife connect. This monthly subscription plan gives you all of Logos’ features for as little as $10 as well as access to course materials for half a year. It’s the perfect way to explore Logos.
Speak your mind...