A project by John Tibell

Offline.BibleThe Bible, without the internet.

32 free Bibles in 12 languages that work fully offline. No account, no tracking, no ads. Download it once and keep it for life. In Tonga, that turned out to matter more than I could have imagined.

Open offline.bible ↗ What happened in Tonga ↓

32Bibles

12languages

0connection needed

0ads, ever

offline.bible: The Word, offline. Forever. — offline.bible. Every translation is free and in the public domain.

Tonga, 2022

When Tonga went offline

Spring 2020Launched

The whole Bible, in Tongan

Ko e Tohi Tapu Kātoa, the complete Bible in Tongan, came to Google Play in the spring of 2020. Like all my Bibles, you download it once and after that it needs nothing: no connection, no account, no ads.

15 Jan 2022Hunga

The eruption

The Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai volcano erupted, one of the most powerful eruptions ever recorded. It cut the undersea cable that carried Tonga's internet, and for weeks the islands were almost completely offline.

0:04

One of the bangs, as it was heard in Vava'u. Recorded on a phone, January 2022. It's loud.

Every other Tongan Bible app needed some kind of internet connection. This one didn't. For those weeks it was the only Tongan Bible app that still worked, and it was used more than ever.

Active devicesKo e Tohi Tapu Kātoa on Google Play, 2020 to June 2022

The dip isn't people leaving: with Tonga offline, Google couldn't count the phones.

The numbers

Month	Active devices, about

Redrawn from the Google Play Console chart of June 2022. Values are traced from that chart and approximate, except the last.

June 20227,085 devices

One in ten

By June 2022 more than one in ten adults in Tonga were using it. Adjusted for population, that's like 23 million users in the United States.

On Google Play's chart of top free apps in Tonga, it stood at number 17, right after WhatsApp, rated 4.8: higher than any app around it.

Google Play · Top free apps · Tonga · June 2022

13
NetflixEntertainment
4.3★
14
Digicel PlayGoEntertainment
3.7★
15
InstagramSocial
4.2★
16
WhatsApp MessengerCommunication
4.2★
17
Ko e Tohi Tapu KātoaBooks & Reference
4.8★
18
Smart BoosterPersonalization
4.0★

Today47,000 installs

47,000 installs

Today it has about 47,000 installs, in a country of about 100,000 people.

Ko e ʻOtua ko hotau hūfanga mo e mālohi, ko e tokoni lahi pea ofi ʻi he mamahi. Ko ia ʻe ʻikai ai te tau manavahē, ʻo kapau ʻe hiki ʻa māmani, pea kapau ʻe hiki ʻae ngaahi moʻunga ki he loto tahi; kapau ʻe ʻuʻulu pea hou ʻa hono ngaahi vai, pea ngalulu ʻae ngaahi moʻunga ʻi heʻene mahakehake.

Saame 46:1–3 · Lea faka-Tonga

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.

Psalm 46:1–3 · King James Bible

The whole shelf

32 Bibles, 12 languages

All free, all in the public domain, all readable without a connection.

English 16

King James Version, KJV with Apocrypha, American Standard (1901), Bible in Basic English, Darby, Douay-Rheims (1899), English Revised, Free Bible Version, Noah Webster, Plain English, Tyndale New Testament, Unlocked Literal Bible, World English Bible, World Messianic Bible, Wycliffe (modern spelling), Young's Literal

Deutsch 4

Luther 1912, Schlachter 1951, Textbibel (Kautzsch–Weizsäcker), Elberfelder (Darby)

Українська 2

Ukrainian Bible, New Testament (P. Kulish)

Tagalog 2

Ang Dating Biblia (1905), Banal na Bibliya

Lea faka-Tonga 1

Ko e Tohi Tapu Kātoa

Tangoa 1

New Testament, for a language of Vanuatu

Español 1

Reina-Valera 1909

Français 1

Louis Segond 1910

Português 1

Bíblia Livre

Русский 1

Synodal Translation

Kiswahili 1

Biblia Takatifu

ไทย 1

Thai King James Version

A Bible that works anywhere.Download it once. Read it forever, with or without a connection.

Open offline.bible ↗