Holiday Bells

December 8, 2020

Now with Christmas widgets for your home screen! Countdown the days til Christmas, show holiday song lyrics, or display today's date. Also updated for iOS14 and all screen sizes. Holiday Bells has been ringing in the holidays since 2008!

December 8, 2016

Now with Auto-Play: the app can now play the songs for you! Also: a new song (Pat-A-Pan), and a new holiday sticker pack for your iMessages! Also new this year: * Auto-Play! Choose a song, then either follow the snowflakes to tap along, or press the Auto-Play button to have the app play it for you! * Beautiful new bell sounds! These were professionally recorded with the Gloria Dei Lutheran Church Celebration Ringers' handbell set. These new bells sound sweeter, mellower, and more in tune. Many thanks to Keith Chuvala at Gloria Dei for ringing and recording the new bells! * New song: Pat-A-Pan! This French Christmas Carol was originally written for flute and drums, but it sounds great on the bells! * New holiday sticker pack for your messages app! (Activate it in the "Manage" tab in the iMessage App Store.) * Updated for iOS10 and all screen sizes. * Bugs fixed in 3.1: • The iPhone/iPad now stays awake while you're auto-playing songs. • Fixed a bug with snowflakes not getting cleared. • Corrected the layout of musical notes on the scale in the iPhone handbell view. • Fixed the auto-play timing on Jingle Bells. Holiday bells is also available for the new Apple TV! Look for it in the App Store on your Apple TV. Happy holidays! -- Kira Matrejek, app developer

November 28, 2016

Now with Auto-Play! Choose a song, then either follow the snowflakes to tap along, or press the Auto-Play button to have the app play it for you! Also new this year: * Beautiful new bell sounds! Holiday Bells has *always* used real bell sounds, but I wanted to update the bells so they would sound good on larger speakers. The new bell sounds were professionally recorded with the Gloria Dei Lutheran Church Celebration Ringers' handbell set. These new bells sound sweeter, mellower, and more in tune. Many thanks to Keith Chuvala at Gloria Dei for ringing and recording the bells! * Updated for iOS10 and all screen sizes. Holiday bells is also available for the Apple TV! Look for it in the App Store on your Apple TV. Happy holidays! -- Kira Matrejek, app developer

November 21, 2013

Three new songs! * I Saw Three Ships (come sailing in on Christmas day) * O Holy Night - I love this song and have wanted to include it for a while, though it's more complex than most of the other songs. It spans more than a single octave, so some of the notes drop down into what the app can play. I think it still works though, and hope you enjoy it! * Auld Lang Syne (Ok, this isn't a Christmas tune, but now you can ring in the New Year with Holiday Bells.) :) I've also updated the icon to look nice on iOS7, and made a few other minor fixes and improvements. Have a great Christmas!

November 28, 2012

New Stuff: • Graphics updated for iPhone 5! • 4 new songs: . . . The 12 Days of Christmas . . . We Three Kings Of Orient Are . . . Silent Night . . . The First Noel • Added a "More" tab, with more info and goodies: . . . Tips on how to get the sound working, if you're not getting bell sounds . . . Lyrics for all of the songs . . . A set of Christmas wallpapers for the iPhone Other Changes: • Removed rotate-lock buttons from the iPad version (use your iPad's rotate-lock button to achieve the same thing) • Removed "shake to clear" from iPhone handbell set, because it was causing many people to accidentally clear the song in the middle of playing it. There's now an "End Song" button on the bell set screen and the songs screen. • Moved to the Music category

November 17, 2010

Version 2.0 is a universal app with more bells and tap-along Christmas songs! * More bells! A complete octave (including sharps!), plus one bell above and below the octave... for those songs where you need just one more note! * Tap-along songs! Twelve Christmas songs you can tap along to! (Scroll the songs list to see them all.) * Universal app - runs native on the iPad! Plus, the iPad version includes a full-screen bell board with full lyrics to all the songs! * Autorotate-lock button on the iPad screens The tap-along songs are great fun for all ages! Impress your friends and family by playing Christmas carols on the bells!

November 3, 2010

• New high-res graphics for retina display • Now uses app volume instead of ringer volume

December 18, 2008