Electric Prayer

He is truly risen, alleluia!

We are heartened to see how helpful Universalis has been to you all at this time. Some of you have taken to the Hours more seriously, and often you are listening to the spoken versions through our apps. Other people use Universalis to follow one or other of the streamed online Masses. It will be interesting to see how daily Mass-going takes off once the churches are open again. Meanwhile, we are happy to continue being of help.

Votive Mass in Time of Pandemic

This is now included in the latest versions for Windows, Android, and iOS (for iOS, it is in Universalis only, not in Catholic Calendar). To get the readings and prayers for this Mass, open the calendar listing, press the “More” or “Special” button, and before the list of Commons (Common of the Dead, etc) you will see the Votive Mass.

New e-books

Those of you who use e-books (usually on the Amazon Kindle) rather than apps know that each e-book lasts only for a fixed time, and when it has finished you have to get an e-book for the next period. In this way an e-book is like a printed book –  it covers only the period it is designed for, whereas an app lasts for ever.

The “ready-made” Liturgy of the Hours e-books from Amazon cover half a year each. The current one covers Advent 2019 to Pentecost 2020, and Pentecost is approaching rapidly. The next e-book from Amazon goes from Pentecost 2020 to just before Advent, and it is available now. You can find the catalogue here.

You can also create your own e-books, which is cheaper because you only need to pay once and also more flexible because you can choose your own local calendar and the exact Hours you want. If this is something you have been doing, nothing has changed in the way you do it – but as a reminder, the links at the bottom of this page give you the instructions.

A springtime of bugs

Out on the roses in the garden, there are greenfly. On your devices, there have been a couple of bugs as well. I only mention them here because sometimes people suffer in silence instead of writing and telling us; and if we don’t hear from you, we can’t help.

Older iPads and iPhones: Apple added a bug to their App Store systems in the middle of April, which made apps for older devices unusable. Apple then installed the unusable apps on your devices, so suddenly your Universalis would stop working. We were able to rescue everyone at once – or at least, everyone who told us they had the trouble.

Everything is now back to normal. Thanks to advice from Apple’s Technical Support people, we have worked round the bug in their App Store systems. Version 3.41 of Universalis is now in the App Store and can be installed on all devices, both old and new. By the time you read this, you will probably have received the update.

Android: A “bad update” was sent to the Amazon Appstore and the Google Play Store on Saturday 2 May, and found its way onto many of your devices. A corrected “good update” was sent to the stores on Monday 4 May and most people’s devices have already had it installed, so the problem is over. If you still have a strange-looking display in your Android Universalis or Catholic Calendar, please see this blog post for help.

We hope that this bug section will not become a regular part of this newsletter!