YouVersion Suggest for Alfred

Copyright 2014-2024 Caleb Evans
Released under the MIT license

YouVersion Suggest is an Alfred workflow which allows you to search the online YouVersion Bible quickly and conveniently.

The workflow will be solely supporting Alfred 5.5 going forward, but the latest releases for Alfred 4 and earlier will remain available here for your convenience.

Disclaimer

This project is not affiliated with YouVersion, and all Bible content is copyright of the respective publishers.

This tool also retrieves Bible content directly from YouVersion for personal use. However, please be aware that this functionality does not fully comply with YouVersion's Terms of Use.

Installation

To download the workflow, simply click one of the download links below. Please note that only the Alfred 5 version has all the latest features.

Download YouVersion Suggest (Alfred 5)

Download YouVersion Suggest (Alfred 4)

Command Line Tools

If you are installing the workflow for the first time, you may be prompted to install Apple's Command Line Tools. These developer tools are required for the workflow to function, and fortunately, they have a much smaller size footprint than full-blown Xcode.

Usage

Filtering by reference

The yvfilter keyword allows you to filter the YouVersion Bible by reference, meaning you can jump to a particular Bible reference (book, chapter, verse, or range of verses) with just a few keystrokes.

Pro Tip: Type yvf and press the tab key to quickly filter by reference (as this will expand to yvfilter).

Example queries

• yvfilter luke => Luke
• yvfilter eph 3 => Ephesians 3
• yvfilter 1t3es => 1 Thessalonians 3 (ESV), 1 Timothy 3 (ESV)
• yvfilter mat 6:34 nlt => Matthew 6:34 (NLT)
• yvfilter 1 co 13.4-7 => 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Actions

• Choosing a result will open the Bible reference on the YouVersion website

• Choosing a result while pressing command will copy the contents of the Bible reference to the clipboard

• Choosing a result while pressing ctrl will open a Google search for the Bible reference.

• Choosing a result while pressing shift will preview the contents of the Bible reference; hitting the Escape key will return you to the results

• Choosing a result while pressing option will copy the URL of the Bible reference to the clipboard

• Pressing command-c while a result is selected will copy to the clipboard the full Bible reference address, such as 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (ESV)

• Pressing command-l while a result is selected will show the full Bible reference address as Large Type

Searching by content

You can also search the YouVersion Bible by content using the yvsearch keyword. As you type, YouVersion Suggest will display Bible verses whose content contains your given keywords.

Note that when using the yvsearch filter, YouVersion Suggest will only search for verses in your preferred version. To learn more about setting your preferred version in YouVersion Suggest, see Setting your preferred version.

Example queries

• yvsearch without faith => Hebrews 11:6
• yvsearch do not worry => Matthew 6:34

Actions

You can perform all the same actions on a result with yvsearch as you can with yvfilter.

Setting your preferred language

YouVersion Suggest allows you to change the languages used for Bible references and versions. To do so, type yvset language into Alfred, and the list of supported languages will then appear. You may then choose another language to be your preferred language.

Currently, YouVersion Suggest supports the following languages:

• Arabic (arb)
• Bulgarian (bul)
• Dutch (nld)
• Chinese - Simplified (zho)
• Chinese - Traditional (zho-TW)
• English (eng)
• Finnish (fin)
• French (fra)
• German (deu)
• Hindi (hin)
• Indonesian (ind)
• Italian (ita)
• Japanese (jpn)
• Khmer (khm)
• Korean (kor)
• Persian (pes)
• Polish (pol)
• Portuguese (por)
• Portuguese - Portugal (por-PT)
• Romanian (ron)
• Russian (rus)
• Spanish (spa)
• Spanish - Spain (spa-ES)
• Swahili (swh)
• Swedish (swe)
• Ukrainian (ukr)
• Vietnamese (vie)

Setting your preferred version

You may also set your preferred version (translation) used for Bible references (where you have not explicitly specified the version in the query). To do so, type yvset version into Alfred, and the list of supported versions (for the currently-set language) will appear.

Pro Tip: Type yvset v and press the tab key to quickly see the list of available versions to set (as this will expand to yvset version).

To select a version from the list of versions more quickly, you may optionally type a query after yvset version to filter the list of versions.

Example queries

• yvset version esv => ESV
• yvset version a => AMP

Setting your preferred search engine

You may also set your preferred search engine used for searching selected Bible references. To do so, open the YouVersion Suggest workflow in Alfred Preferences and double-click the Default Web Search object. You can then choose a search engine to set as your preferred for YouVersion Suggest.

Showing verse numbers in copied Bible content

You can choose whether or not to include verse numbers in copied Bible verses by typing yvset versenumbers yes.

Stripping line breaks in copied Bible content

You can choose whether or not to strip line breaks from copied Bible content, so that the verses you copy appear all on one line (even if it's from a psalm, for example). To do this, type yvset linebreaks no.

Making "Copy to Clipboard" the default action

If you would prefer to just press Enter (without holding down the command key) to copy the content of a Bible reference, type yvset copybydefault yes. When this is enabled, you can still open the selected reference on the YouVersion website by holding down the command key.

Universal Actions

Version 15 of the workflow brings integration with Alfred's Universal Actions feature, enabling you to pass any arbitrary text to the workflow when you select it within an app or on a webpage.

To use this, you must enable the Workflow Universal Actions checkbox in Alfred Preferences, under Features > Universal Actions > Actions.

In particularly, there are two universal actions available:

1. Look up Bible address
2. Search phrase in Bible