iFingerRosary

iFingerRosary lets you pray the Rosary using your thumb instead of beads. You move your thumb across the screen the way you would slide along a finger rosary, and the app keeps count for you. You do not have to keep looking down at it.

It recognizes four simple finger gestures, so you can move through the Hail Marys and the decades by touch. Each mystery comes with a piece of religious art, so the screen shows you which mystery you are praying. The artwork is taken from the Shrine of Our Lady of Torreciudad in northern Spain, used with permission. There is also an Apple Watch version included.

I tried it on a walk, with the phone in my pocket and my thumb doing the counting, and that is where it shines. You can pray with your eyes up and your hands mostly free. For anyone who loses their place on a physical rosary or never has one handy, this solves a real problem.

It works well for praying on a commute, on a walk, or while you wait in line somewhere, any time you want to pray the Rosary but cannot hold beads and watch where you are. It is also a gentle way back into the habit if you have fallen out of it.

What it is not is a replacement for a real rosary in your hand, and some people will always prefer the beads. The gesture counting takes a few minutes to get used to, and if you want a guided, spoken Rosary with full meditations, this is more bare-bones than that.

Free, made by Josemaria Carazo Abolafia. On the App Store: iFingerRosary. A small, clever tool that does one thing and does it well.