What's New

4 weeks, countless tweakssay when, and stay after

A month of small work, and two bigger things: you can say when a Group Rosary starts, and it no longer ends the second the prayer does.

Most of what went in this month is the sort of thing you feel rather than see. The app moves faster and holds still where it should. Two changes are not like that.

New

Also fixed and refined

• The button that opens a Group Rosary now shows who is praying right now, and starting your own is one tap away in the same place.
• Opening someone's invitation link shows you who is praying and what they are praying, before you sign in.
• Moving between the Rosary, the community, and your account is quicker, and tapping again while a page is still moving now works.
• The Rosary remembers how far you got today, marked on each section as you go.
• The sign in buttons are easier to see and read, in light and in dark.
• On phones, the intentions you write are visibly larger.
• In a Group Rosary it is clearer who is speaking and what the host can do.
• And a lot of small fixes not worth their own line.

Most of this month was maintenance. The two things above are the ones I wanted to build. Scheduling, because I kept opening rooms and sitting in them alone. The Narthex, because a room used to shut the moment the prayer ended, with no mingling after. — Teo

Week 6you can hear each other now

Two weeks on one thing. Group Rosaries can be prayed out loud.

They have been silent since I built them. You could see who was in the room and roughly where they were in the prayer, and that was it. Nobody could hear anybody.

There is a switch now when you open a room. Turn it on and you lead in your own voice, and everyone who joins hears you say the decades. They answer. You hear that too.

Six people can speak at once. Four hundred can listen.

You never arrive with your microphone open, and it stays off until you tap it. If you are listening and want a turn, you raise a hand and the host either gives you a place or does not. Whoever is speaking lights up gold above the prayer so nobody has to guess who has the floor. Hosts can close a microphone if a room gets noisy, and when that happens the button says so, and says they can open it again.

The waiting screen got rebuilt while I was in there. The room code is the invite button now, and the settings say what they do in a sentence instead of sitting in a row of switches.

Also fixed and refined

• Swiping between views snaps properly now, in every browser.
• The bottom bar, the room settings, the mark beside your Fellows, who is speaking, and the labels and counts across the app all got tidied up.
• And the usual small fixes to spacing and contrast.

This was the most requested thing by a long way, and it took real sweat to get it somewhere I would happily show anyone. It is also expensive to keep running. I hope more of you step up so we can grow it and let more people hear each other while they pray. — Teo

Ad Perfectiothe morning after

Mostly fixes, though two of them refused to stay small.

Shipping quickly and shipping well are two different things. This is the bill for the first. The rest of the month went to spacing and visual detail throughout.

New

Week 2step by step, ferociously

Last week these prayers learned to be read in seven new languages. This week, you can also listen to five of them!

Second update, and the pace has not let up. This time, nailing what the first one only started: the words you could read, you can now hear, each one lit as the voice speaks it. The rest went to the people you pray with, a simpler way to share your Rosary, and a few small graces besides.

New

Also fixed and refined

• On your phone, the top of the screen is quieter now, leaving more room for the prayer itself.
• The read-along is smoother, and now follows you when you open a prayer to full screen.
• Prayer titles stay put as you move between them.
• Menus and cards open cleanly the very first time.
• New intentions settle smoothly into the feed as they arrive.
• Your name now shows the same way everywhere in the community.
• And a lot of small type and spacing work throughout.

The First Updateone week after launch

Orabimus opened its doors one week ago. This is the first of what I hope will be a long line of updates. It is also a standing record, for the people who support this work, of exactly where their help goes.

I am writing on the Fourth of July, the morning this country I love so much marks two hundred and fifty years. It felt like the right day to send the first update, though it is meant for the whole Church, not one corner of it. The largest change of this first week is that the Rosary now prays in far more of the world's languages.

New

Also fixed and refined

• Light mode now holds even when your device is set to dark.
• Signing in inside the installed iPhone app is seamless now, with no more getting stranded on the Google screen.
• The community feed is gentler about shared links, so far fewer honest intentions are held back by mistake.
• The intention box reads more clearly, and the live feed now shows more of the community at a glance.
• The small encouragements in your first days of praying appear right on cue.
• You can see the exact version your app is running, quietly noted at the bottom of your account.
• And a scattering of small visual fixes throughout.

A week in, the plainest thing I can say is thank you. Every improvement here was paid for by people who chose to give to something that costs nothing to use, and every one was made with the care I would want for my own family's prayer. This page will keep growing, one entry at a time, so you can always see your support at work. Keep Orabimus in your prayers, and I will keep it worthy of them. — Teo