# Matu: Prayer lock & Bible — Christian focus & bible buddy > Christian focus & bible buddy (iPhone/iPad app by HENRIK JOESALU.) - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/matu-prayer-lock-and-bible/id6780226782 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`) - Developer: [HENRIK JOESALU](https://appshunter.io/developer/6780226784) - Category: Lifestyle - Price: Free with in-app purchases - Age rating: 4+ - Requires: iOS 17.0 · 69 MB - Languages: American English - Released: 2026-06-26 - Data updated: 2026-09-08 - User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/matu-prayer-lock-and-bible/id6780226782/reviews.md ## What is Matu? This app helps you study the Bible while blocking digital noise, so that you can spend more time with God. The world wants you to be distracted and draw you away from God. This app was built to do the opposite: to encourage you to pray, and to help you avoid the days when your focus gets drawn into the world and you forget, or can't find the time, to read the Word or pray. 3 WAYS TO HELP YOU SPEND MORE TIME WITH GOD: • PRAYER LOCK: Choose a prayer time - usually early in the morning or in the evening. After the set time, when you try to open any app, it won't open. Complete a 12-second calming exercise and then your prayer with God, to be able to continue. • FOCUS MODE: Need to concentrate for a set period, such as during a church service? Lock your phone for a continuous stretch of time. • ACCOUNTABILITY LOCK: If you haven't ticked off reading the Bible and praying, your phone locks automatically until you do. THE BIBLE • 17 translations across 14 languages: English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Finnish, Swedish, Swahili, Indonesian, Filipino and Estonian • Read in zen mode • Tightly integrated with the Journal, Notes and AI chat, with backlinks for quick navigation between all of them • Verse explanations directly inside the reader • Highlight, note or love a verse and it appears in your Journal • Connect related verses across the Bible using tags, such as Wisdom, Jesus or Temptation TRACK YOUR PROGRESS • How often you've prayed and read the Word • How far you are through the Old and New Testament, and how many chapters you get through each day • Your favourite books and verses • A consistency heatmap showing your activity day by day, and which chapters you read on each one MATU, THE DOVE - AI CHAT • Ask about a verse's context or meaning straight from the Bible reader • Brainstorm conversation starters with the idea picker, so you never run out of topics, with 100+ suggested questions • Connect your existing notes and get feedback and ideas for what to write next NOTES • Integrated with the Bible reader, so you can write a verse inside a note, tap it, and go straight to that verse in the Bible • Import and export your notes • Markdown fully supported, so you can bring your notes over from Notion or Obsidian • Every word is indexed, so anything you wrote is easy to find months later JOURNAL • Everything you save in the Bible reader lives here: highlights, verse notes and loves, each with a quick link back to where the verse sits in the Bible, plus Ask integration • See all your verse connections through tags • Use the Journal calendar to see when you saved which verses • Filter your saved verses by book ALSO • Dark mode, with an automatic evening schedule Support: joesalulabs@gmail.com Terms of Use (EULA): https://getmatu.app/terms Privacy Policy: https://getmatu.app/privacy ## Pricing and in-app purchases Base price: Free. **Subscriptions** | Subscription | Price | Period | | --- | --- | --- | | Matu Premium Monthly | $6.99 | per month | | Matu Yearly | $59.99 | per year | ## Version history (last 5 releases) ### 2.2.0 — 2026-09-01 NEW — THE BIBLE, OFFLINE • Read the Bible with no connection. Pick a translation, see how big it is, download it once, and every chapter opens offline — including the chapters you read and the habits you tick, which are saved and land on the day you actually read them. • Getting a Bible onto your phone now takes 2–3 MB instead of 20–34 MB. It takes a little longer, shows how many chapters are left, and picks up where it stopped if you interrupt it. MOVED • Journal is now on the bottom bar. Every verse you highlight, love or note collects there, one tap from anywhere. Notes moved into the Bible menu, where you reach for it while reading. FIXES • Poetry reads properly again. Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Isaiah and Lamentations had their lines running together — nearly every verse in Psalms was affected. • Highlights, loved verses and notes no longer look saved when they weren't. If something can't be saved, you're told once, and it's undone in front of you. • Verse references Matu sends now open in the Bible reader in every language. Portuguese and Estonian were showing them as plain text. • Matu no longer sends you to another Bible app or to Google to read Scripture, and no longer implies that reading the Bible in Matu costs money. It's free, and always has been. • Ask Matu for a verse, a reading list or a plan and you get one. It used to answer some of those with a question instead. • The "Welcome to Matu" note is now in your language. Spanish, Estonian and French readers were being given the English one. • Setting up is one screen shorter. Matu asks about notifications after showing you around, rather than mid-signup. ### 2.1.0 — 2026-08-26 • Search the entire Bible — find any word instantly, in any translation • Personalized daily verse with verse history • New iPhone widgets: today's verse + habit progress • Portuguese language support • Language and localization fixes ### 2.0.0 — 2026-08-17 Introducing Matu 2.0.0. It comes with major new changes: NOTES • Notes have caught up with Notion and Obsidian. You can now add images and videos (YouTube links work), and Markdown support has been extended. • Everything you write is searchable. Type "Paul" and you get back every note that mentions Paul. It doesn't matter if you have tens of thousands of words across hundreds of notes - you'll find the line you're thinking of in seconds. • NEW - Tags. Link verses using your own categories: Gospels, Romans, Jesus, Stress, Money & Finances, whatever fits how you think. • Back-links between the Bible reader and the Journal. Tap a verse in the Journal and the Bible opens on it, with a link back to exactly where you started. • In the Bible reader you can now see which verses you've mentioned in your notes. • Export any note and share it outside Matu - Gmail, Discord, Drive, Dropbox, whatever you have installed. You can also export everything locally to your phone. • Already using Notion or another note app? Bring your notes into Matu. AI CHAT • 120+ theological and open questions the AI can answer. • The AI suggests conversation starters, and they follow what you told us during onboarding. Pick "just curious" and you'll mostly see questions like "Is Christianity really true"; pick "lifelong" and you'll get prayer, purpose and similar. Examples: "Tell me a good story from the Bible", "Why did Jesus wait so long before going to Lazarus". • Chats now stay visible forever, instead of being deleted after 24 hours. • Every chat can be deleted. YOUR PROGRESS • Spiritual health meter. Each day you can mark prayer and Bible reading as done. Skip a few days in the week and your spiritual health drops, and you'll see it. THE BIBLE • Full language support for French and Spanish - throughout onboarding and inside the app • The Estonian language now has full New Testament book support • The Bible translation is picked for you automatically based on your region. German, French, Spanish, Swedish and 10+ other languages are available. ONBOARDING • Onboarding asks fewer questions about user privacy - no more gender, age, or how long you've been a believer. FIXES • Email sign-in now works. • After sending the AI a message you can leave the app and come back to it, finished. • Fixed the layout on narrow screens (iPhone 8 and similar). ### 1.2 — 2026-07-08 MAYOR changes - NEW Focus mode: keep your apps blocked until timer runs off - Recommended questions bar inside AI Chat - Import & Export your existing Notes - Search your notes and their content across whole library. Categorize, tag them - Onboarding flow improvements - Bug fixes ### 1.1.1 — 2026-06-30 Fixed a bug in prayer lock, where the lock did not activate multiple times per day ## Apps similar to Matu | App | Rating | Price | Category | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | [CityLife Church Inc](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/citylife-church-inc/id1294761284) | — | Free | Lifestyle | | [Woodland Hills Church](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/woodland-hills-church/id1474103454) | 4.9 (15) | Free | Lifestyle | | [Island ECC App](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/island-ecc-app/id1434739241) | 4.7 (13) | Free | Lifestyle | | [Elan Church](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/elan-church/id6497331643) | 5.0 (4) | Free | Lifestyle | | [Kartezmo Life](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/kartezmo-life/id6758643211) | 5.0 (1) | Free | Lifestyle | | [OneChurch.to](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/onechurchto/id1513987187) | — | Free | Lifestyle | --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-09-08.*