i-Rosary

i-Rosary is a free rosary app from an indie developer named Dmitry Kotov. It walks you bead by bead through the Rosary, in either English or Latin, with the mysteries of the day pre-selected for you.

The app shows the current prayer text on screen, advances to the next bead when you tap or when the autoplay timer reaches it, and shows a picture of the mystery you are praying along with a short reading on the related fruit. There are four color themes, an option for sound or vibration on bead transitions, and a text-to-speech mode that will read the prayers aloud if your hands are busy or your eyes are tired.

What I appreciate is the Latin option. There are not many rosary apps that give you the actual Latin prayers — Pater Noster, Ave Maria, Gloria Patri — alongside the English. For Catholics who want to learn the traditional prayers in their original language, or who pray with a community that still uses Latin, this is useful. The autoplay-with-voice mode is also rare and handy in the car.

Good for daily rosary prayers, for people learning the Latin prayers, for parents praying with children who cannot read along yet, and for anyone who wants a hands-free rosary while driving or walking. The mystery-of-the-day auto-select keeps you from having to remember whether Monday is Joyful or Sorrowful.

It is not flashy. The graphics are basic, the developer is one person, and updates come slowly. The text-to-speech voice is a stock system voice, not a recorded narrator — fine in practice, but not the rich audio you get from a professional rosary app like Hallow or Click to Pray.

Free, by Dmitry Kotov. Available on the App Store: i-Rosary. A small, capable rosary app with one feature — Latin prayers — that the bigger apps tend to skip.