iBreviary TS Plus

iBreviary TS Plus is the longest-running Catholic Liturgy of the Hours app on iPhone. Built by Italian priest Don Paolo Padrini in partnership with the Custody of the Holy Land, it gives you the full Breviary, Missal, and Lectionary on your phone, free.

The texts are complete and updated daily. Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, Office of Readings, Night Prayer, and the daytime hours are all here. The Missal includes both the Ordinary Form and the Vetus Ordo in Latin. Translations cover ten languages — English, Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Romanian, Arabic, Turkish, Latin, and Galician — so if you travel or you pray with a community in another language, you can switch. There is also a Rituale section with rites for baptism, marriage, and the sacrament of the sick, which priests will recognize as useful in pastoral work.

What I keep coming back to is how steady this app has been. It has been on the App Store since 2010, and it still works the way it always has. No login, no subscription pitch, no clutter. Open it after Mass on the bus, pray Vespers, close it. Father Padrini has kept it going for fifteen years as a labor of love, and you can feel it.

iBreviary is the right app for anyone who prays the Hours — seminarians, religious, clergy, third-order Franciscans and Dominicans, or laypeople who picked up the Christian Prayer book years ago and want it in their pocket. It is also a good companion for pilgrims to the Holy Land, since the partnership with the Custody surfaces the local liturgical calendar of the Holy Places.

The interface looks like an app from a decade ago, because in many ways it is. Type sizing is fine but the typography is plain, and the navigation takes a minute to learn. It is not as polished as Universalis or the Hallow prayer feature, and there is no audio. For some, that simplicity is a feature; for others it will feel dated.

iBreviary TS Plus is free from Paolo Padrini on the App Store at apps.apple.com. If you pray the Liturgy of the Hours, this app is a quiet workhorse worth installing.