# PocketTorah — user reviews > 90 indexed App Store user reviews of PocketTorah by Russel Neiss, rated 4.00/5 from 174 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/pockettorah/id515833985/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/pockettorah/id515833985.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 93 · 4★ 35 · 3★ 18 · 2★ 10 · 1★ 18 ## What do users think of PocketTorah? Overall sentiment: mixed **Pros** - 👍 Easy to use and navigate - 🎓 Excellent learning tool for Torah reading preparation - 🎵 Audio recordings with word-by-word highlighting - 📱 Free and accessible to all users - 🔤 Multiple font options and text display modes (vowels, tikkun, translation) - 🌍 Helpful for non-Hebrew speakers and those without yeshiva background - ⏱️ Adjustable playback speeds for learning - 🎯 Ability to tap individual words to hear pronunciation - 📖 Comprehensive Torah portion coverage **Cons** - 🐛 Frequent app crashes when opening weekly readings - 🐛 Pause button unresponsive or too small/insensitive - 🐛 Highlighting out of sync with audio playback - 🐛 App freezes and requires frequent restarts - ❌ Settings don't save between sessions - ❌ No search functionality to find portions quickly - ❌ Limited content (missing holiday readings, special portions) - ❌ Compatibility issues with newer iOS versions - 🔊 Audio quality could be crisper - 📊 App takes up excessive storage space **Commonly reported bugs** - App crashes when selecting 'This Week's Torah Readings' - Pause button doesn't work or is delayed - Yellow highlighting becomes out of sync with audio after multiple plays - App requires restart every 4-5 readings to function properly - Blank white screen on app launch - Incompatible with iOS 14.3 and newer versions - Settings (speed, font size) reset on each app launch - Highlighting skips words or highlights wrong words - Audio continues playing after pause button is pressed - App crashes on specific iPad models (iPad Air 4) - Incorrect Haftarah text/audio (Vayera shows 1 Kings instead of 2 Kings) - Typos in parashat text - Highlighting flashes and shows partial page when returning from other apps - Words mispronounced or completely wrong in recordings - Laggy performance and occasional freezing **Most requested features** - Dark mode option - Ability to bookmark or save favorite portions - Search bar to quickly find Torah portions - Practice reminder notifications - Auto-repeat/loop functionality for verses - Save user preferences (font size, speed) permanently - Add holiday and special Shabbat readings (Yom Kippur, Zachor, etc.) - Multiple cantor/voice options - Sephardic and Mizrachi pronunciation options - English-only option for non-Hebrew readers - Triennial reading cycle option - Ability to set custom start/stop points within verses - Android/Google Play compatibility - Chapter and verse reference numbers in portion list - Transliteration toggle option - Two-portion and special Haftarah combinations ## Newest reviews (18 of 90) ### 4/5 — Please fix *2024-11-13, version 4.0.0* This week’s Haftarah, Vaeyrah, the chanting does not match the text, which should be Kings 4: 1-37. ### 2/5 — Good in theory but way too glitchy *2024-10-12, version 4.0.0* I got this app as a way to learn my Torah portion better, and this seemed to be the one most recommended, And yeah, for the first minute of opening the app it works great. You can click on words if you want to hear it repeated and it’s chanted slowly enough that you can easily pick it up. However, if you’re trying to play it again, it begins to glitch A LOT. Sometimes the pause button doesn’t work or is super delayed. Or the highlighting will be out of sync with the chanting. Either way, it’s immensely frustrating and it’s super hard to learn on it because you have to exit or close the window every time. Honestly, you might be better just learning on YouTube. It’s too bad, because this app would have been great without the bugs… ### 3/5 — Missing Haftorah *2024-07-11, version 4.0.0* My daughter has Zachor as her haftorah and it is not in the app. Please add the special portions! ### 4/5 — Extremely Useful *2024-05-07, version 4.0.0* A great, great help in preparing to read. One demerit: crashes on my iPad Air 4 (but not on my iPad Air 2) when I select “This Week’s Torah Readings”. ### 3/5 — ….. bro- *2024-04-09, version 4.0.0* CHECK YALLS SPEELEN YA GOT ZEN TYPOS IN MA PARASHAT BOI!!!!! ### 4/5 — It is good *2024-01-10, version 4.0.0* This is a really great app but the only downside is not being able to search for your portion and it not letting you save it as your portion ### 4/5 — Another bug *2023-12-06, version 4.0.0* The pause button rarely works. I tried re-downloading and that did not help. ### 4/5 — Please fix bugs! *2023-11-16, version 4.0.0* Pocket Torah is my most favorite app, I use it whenever I’m reading if I need to make sure I’m reading my trope right or anything else. But I have to close the app every 4 or 5 times I read a section or verse because the yellow highlight stops being in sync with the words being chanted. And then the pause button or back button don’t work either. You can only have so much time practicing before you have to reboot everything. It’s quite frustrating to have to close and reload the app every time, on top of having to re-find my portion. PLEASE fix the bugs!!!! But otherwise, a really great app. ### 2/5 — Highlighted word is not what is being spoken in some text *2023-11-04* Highlighted word is not what is being spoken in the Hebrew highlighted text. After all highlights are done, it keeps going on with more words. Some Hebrew words are completely missed in pronunciation. While, these are small bugs on the surface, they are going to be a nightmare to fix. So far I noticed the most mistakes in. Parashas Vayeira maftir alyiah ### 4/5 — Crashes sometimes *2023-09-15, version 4.0.0* Nice app but kind of buggy. Needs an update ### 4/5 — It’s great! But fix the freezing please! *2023-06-20, version 4.0.0* My friend is having her bat mitzvah and this app really helped with mine, so I showed it to her and right now, she says it’s freezing up every so often and that makes focused studying really difficult. Please fix this!!! ### 2/5 — Glitchy and doesn’t save settings *2023-05-20, version 4.0.0* I needed this app to learn a Torah portion for a service. It was handy but…. I put the setting on “slow” and it doesn’t save it. Every single time I sign in I have to go into settings and reset it to slow. Also, it’s glitchy. I’ll hit pause and it won’t pause. Then, when it does pause eventually, I can’t get it to play again. They need to work out some bugs with this. ### 3/5 — Fix the Pause button *2023-04-16, version 4.0.0* A potentially useful app ruined by poor execution. If I’m reviewing a pasuk for learning, then I need the app to stop playing when I hit Pause. Is that so difficult to understand? But this thing just runs on and on as I flail away at the tiny box on the corner of my phone. ### 5/5 — Amazing free torah *2023-03-27, version 4.0.0* i would 100% recommend this to anyone who wants to read the torah for free, i love how simple this is, even in march 2023 on ios 16 it runs amazing and everything is simple and compact, thank you so much for making this!!! ### 4/5 — Great app *2023-02-13, version 4.0.0* I love the app, and the different voices. I really like getting to practice with the translations on or off. The thing I hate is that the pause button is either too small or too insensitive. It’s frustrating not to be able to start and stop more fluidly ### 5/5 — Makes it easy to read Torah *2022-12-31, version 4.0.0* This app is easy to use and makes learning tirah readings easy. The parshas are read in a way that a normal person can learn from. ### 4/5 — Really great app *2022-06-29, version 4.0.0* This is a really great app, and I totally love it. I especially love the way I can change the font size so as to make the margins fall in different places; this way I don’t rely on the placement of the text when it differs in the Torah from the Tikkun. However, I had to take off one star because the verse numbers are in your Tikkun. Why did you do that? It’s a cheat, and that’s a problem. There aren’t numbers for us to follow when we’re looking in Torah. LOL That’s a significant oversight in this training app. Otherwise, it’s a super helpful app; 21st Century Torah! Todah! ### 4/5 — Highlight *2022-03-22, version 4.0.0* I was reading Shemot. The yellow highlight was not in sync with the reading. It was a word or two ahead of the reading. It is very distracting to a veteran with PTSD. ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — It’s not working. *2021-09-01, version 3.0.1* The screen is blank ### 1/5 — Blank screen *2021-08-30, version 3.0.1* App used to work ok but now opens to a blank white screen so useless. ### 1/5 — Not compatible with iOS 14.3 *2021-01-24, version 3.0.1* I updated my phone to iOS 14.3 and the app no longer works. Please make this app compatible with the new iPhone software! ### 1/5 — Another “app” that shouldnt even be an app *2020-12-16, version 3.0.1* It is very frustrating to come across “apps” that provide almost no extra functionality over that of a simple webpage, but this software is just one “app”. Just a bunch of labels that leads to other labels. ### 1/5 — Lovely app when it works *2017-11-11, version 3.0.1* Lovely app when it works which is rarely 😂😂👅💤 ### 1/5 — Crashes every time. *2017-09-10, version 3.0.1* Crashes every time you try to open to the current Parshah. ### 1/5 — CRASHING! *2017-07-18, version 3.0.1* Everytime I want to read or stay current it crashes. Please fix asap. I want to stay with this app. ### 1/5 — Pocket Torah *2017-07-16, version 3.0.1* Crashes. What happened? ### 2/5 — Recordings are Wrong *2025-11-07, version 4.0.0* This app is a great concept, but the recordings get a LOT of things very wrong. In some cases things are said completely incorrectly, and sometimes a completely different word is said instead of the correct one. I strongly suggest to anyone who created this app to redo all the recordings because I actively get annoyed when it gets 1/5 of the words wrong, and sometimes even gets the trup wrong. If the point of recordings is to teach people how to lein properly, the recordings should not be completely incorrect. ### 2/5 — Weekly Reading *2025-04-30, version 4.0.0* I’m only giving this a low rating because every time I open the app and click on weekly reading, the app just automatically closes. ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Easy to use, I wish the play/pause button was bigger *2026-06-16, version 4.0.0* So easy to use! I’m just having trouble with accessing the play/pause. It’s so small. I hit it over and over again to pause the chanting so I can review it but it takes several times hitting it to actually pause it. Please make it 2-3 times bigger. ### 5/5 — Excellent tool *2026-02-01, version 4.0.0* Very good tool for checking myself on a few things when I think I may be a bit off tune. No substitute for knowing trope but otherwise extremely helpful. ### 5/5 — Leon *2026-01-15, version 4.0.0* This app has allowed me to read and learn the Torah while listening and appreciating the trope. For someone whose first language is not Hebrew, and was not brought up in a Yeshiva, this is a fantastic tool. ### 5/5 — This app is really good *2024-12-30, version 4.0.0* This app is really good. It’s really helped me practicing for my bat mitzvah. The only problem is it can be laggy at sometimes and crash but if you just exit out of the app and delete the tab that can easily be fixed. ### 5/5 — Very good *2024-08-25, version 4.0.0* It’s a first time for me reading the Torah and this app is great for me as a beginner. I would however suggest that there is an option to play it in English and other languages perhaps also. ### 5/5 — Thank you so much. *2023-11-29, version 4.0.0* I was Bar Mitzvah in 2022 at age 68. I have read Torah a few times since then, and it has been difficult. Several months ago a friend recommended Pocket Torah. Your app made all the difference. The recording and the ability to switch between the prayer book font with vowels and the script in the Torah scroll make preparation so much easier. On Giving Tuesday I donated to AJWS to pay it forward. You’re the best. ### 5/5 — Great app, wrong haftorah? *2023-10-16, version 4.0.0* The app itself is great shower two things I noticed. The app gives no way to provide feedback to the developer when a mistake is found. And I found a big mistake - for parshah vayera (fourth parshah in the first of the five books of the Torah) the wrong haftorah is provided both in words and chanting - you have it as 1 kings 4:1-37 but it should actually be 2 kings 4:1-37 ### 5/5 — Timely Request *2023-07-21, version 4.0.0* This is a fantastic app. Truly helpful. That said, i wonder if they might consider re-recording the Haftarah for this week, Shabbat Chazon (parshat Devarim) to incorporate the Eicha trope switches that are traditionally used in chanting it. I think it would be a great help. ### 5/5 — Very helpful *2023-07-16, version 4.0.0* Wonderful app, except maybe consider a dark mode? ### 5/5 — Indispensable *2023-07-13, version 4.0.0* The upgrade has made this Pocket Torah absolutely indispensable. Thank you all very much. Now all I want is the addition of readings when there are two portions and the special Haphtorat. Please check problem with this week's portion.-The app closes! The above bug is back. --- *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 2026-07-27.*