Bible Widget

A transparent desktop widget that displays Bible verses on your screen. It sits on your desktop, stays out of the way, and gives you a new verse every hour (or daily if you prefer). You can drag it anywhere, customize its colors, and it'll snap to the nearest screen corner when you let go.

Pick from 25 translations	Menu in 14 languages

Prayers	Custom colors

Features

• Transparent overlay — blends into your desktop, just shows the verse
• Drag anywhere — click and drag to move it; release and it snaps to the nearest screen corner
• Smart corner snap — the widget smoothly animates to the closest corner (top-left, top-right, bottom-left, or bottom-right) with a 20px margin
• Snap toggle — turn corner snapping on or off from the tray menu
• Stays on your chosen corner — the widget reopens in the same spot every launch, even on the same monitor if you have more than one
• Bottom corners respect the taskbar — the widget won't get hidden behind the taskbar
• Color customization — pick your own colors for the verse text, background, and separator line. Right-click the tray icon → "Customize Colors..."
• Reset to defaults — restore the original dark style with one click in the color settings
• Show Widget button — if the widget ever goes missing, right-click the tray icon → "Show Widget" to bring it back
• Card shadow — a soft drop shadow makes it look like a floating card on your desktop
• Smart text fit: the widget keeps a constant size and the font shrinks to fit long verses. If a passage is still too long, it is shortened by a verse or two; a single very long verse makes the widget slightly taller just for that verse
• 25 Bible translations — 14 languages: Arabic, Chinese (×2), German, Greek, English (×8), Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish (×2), French, Korean, Portuguese (×3), Romanian, Russian, Vietnamese
• Menu Language picker — right-click the tray icon to change the tray menu text to any of 14 languages, independent from your Bible translation
• Prayers — right-click the tray icon → Prayers → choose from 6 prayers (The Lord's Prayer, Jonah's Prayer, Mary's Magnificat, Job's Prayer, Acts 4:24-26, Solomon's Prayer) with prev/next navigation, scrollable text, and Amen button (arrow keys switch prayers, Esc closes)
• Hourly mode — shows a random passage every hour
• Daily mode — shows the same verse all day (changes at midnight)
• Random mode: a new random passage every 15 minutes
• Native book names: references use the book names of the translation's language
• Copy Verse — right-click the tray icon → Copy Verse to copy the current reference and text to your clipboard
• Stats — right-click the tray icon → Stats to see the current translation, uptime, verse count, mode, and next refresh in a popup (no terminal needed)
• Change Quote — instantly get a new verse from the tray menu
• Run on Startup: choose Off, Silent, or With console (shows live stats) in the tray menu. Survives folder renames, no broken paths.
• One copy at a time: launching it again just brings the running widget forward
• Error log: if anything goes wrong it is written to widget.log
• Settings save automatically — your Bible translation, menu language, refresh mode, colors, corner, and snap preference are all remembered between launches
• Works offline — all Bible data bundled locally, no internet needed after setup

Requirements

• Windows (10 or 11)
• Python 3.8+ installed with "Add Python to PATH" checked
• PySide6 (run dependencies.bat to install it automatically)

Quick Start

1. Run dependencies.bat — this installs PySide6 if you don't have it
2. Double-click start_widget.vbs to launch the widget (no terminal window)
3. The widget appears in the top-right corner of your screen
4. Right-click the cross icon in your system tray to access all options (change verse, pick translation, change menu language, open prayers, customize colors, toggle snap, view stats, bring the widget back, or exit)

Alternative launch

• stop_widget.bat — kills the widget if needed

Files

File	What it does
dependencies.bat	Check/install PySide6
start_widget.vbs	Launch widget silently (no terminal)
stop_widget.bat	Stop the widget
widget_window.py	The main widget code
prayer_window.py	Prayer overlay window — scrollable, cycle through 6 prayers
menu_strings.py	Tray menu text translations (14 languages)
bible_loader.py	Loads Bible data and picks verses
colors.py	Color customization storage (reads/writes colors.txt)
bibles/	All 25 Bible JSON files + index.json (~100 MB)
prayers/	6 prayers in all 25 translations (prayers.json)
translation.txt	Saved Bible translation preference
language.txt	Saved menu language preference
colors.txt	Saved color preferences
corner.txt	Saved screen corner and monitor
mode.txt	Saved refresh mode (hourly, daily, random)
widget.log	Error and status log
bibles/book_names.json	Native book names per language

Known Issues

• New Chinese Version section headings: some verses in zh_ncv start with a section heading glued onto the verse text (this is in the source data).

How It Works

The widget loads only the translation it needs, keeping a few recent ones cached, so memory use stays low even with all 25 installed. Each time a new verse is requested, it picks a random book, chapter, and starting verse, then grabs 1-5 consecutive verses. The font automatically shrinks to keep the widget at a fixed size — long verses get smaller text, short verses get larger text.

When you drag the widget and release, it calculates which of the four screen corners is closest and animates to that corner with a 200ms ease-out animation. The corner choice is saved so the widget reopens in the same spot every time. If you have multiple monitors, the specific monitor is also saved — if you disconnect that monitor, the widget falls back to your primary monitor.

The widget sits at the bottom of the window stack like a desktop gadget. When the desktop itself is in focus (for example after Win+D), it rises above it so it stays visible.

In daily mode, the verse is seeded by the current date so everyone gets the same verse on the same day.

The tray menu can be displayed in any of 14 languages, independent from which Bible translation you're reading.

Adding a New Translation

Place a Bible JSON file in the bibles/ folder. The widget auto-discovers it on next launch. The file should follow one of these formats:

Standard format (most Bibles):

{
  "Genesis": {
    "1": {
      "1": "In the beginning...",
      "2": "And the earth..."
    }
  }
}

Array format (like the Arabic Bible):

[
  {
    "name": "Genesis",
    "chapters": [
      ["In the beginning...", "And the earth..."],
      [...]
    ]
  }
]

If you add a new file, also add its info to bibles/index.json for proper display names:

{
  "language": "English",
  "versions": [
    { "name": "My Translation", "abbreviation": "my_trans" }
  ]
}

Adding a New Menu Language

Add a new entry to LANGUAGES in menu_strings.py with the 2-letter language code and all translated menu strings.

License

Bible Widget by Pure Tech is marked CC0 1.0 Universal

All Bible texts are public domain. JSON data sourced from thiagobodruk/bible (CC0).