Scripture on the screen

A reference is said aloud and the verse appears. Nobody types it.

Saying the reference

"Turn with me to John chapter 4, verse 48" puts John 4:48 on the screen. Spoken numbers, written numbers and the numbered books all work: "First Thessalonians", "1 Thessalonians" and "First Thess" all reach the same place.

When the passage is paraphrased

Aria also recognises a verse from its sense rather than its reference, so a passage described in the speaker's own words is still found. This runs entirely on your own computer.

By default a paraphrase match asks before it goes on the screen. The match arrives in the approval queue and waits. You press the tick to send it, or the cross to drop it, and there is a clear-all when the queue has run ahead of you.

That default is deliberate. A spoken reference is a near-certain thing: the speaker said "John 4:48". A paraphrase is a judgement, and a wrong verse on the screen in front of a congregation is worse than no verse.

What it will not put up, and why that matters

Aria waits for a complete reference. If the speaker says “we are in Genesis chapter one this morning” and stops there, nothing appears — a chapter is not a verse, and guessing at verse one would put the wrong words in front of the room.

The moment they give you enough, it fires. Say “Genesis one verse one” and it appears. Or simply quote it — “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” — and Aria recognises the words themselves and puts the verse up.

This is the difference between software that reacts to a keyword and software that understands what was actually said. A chapter mentioned in passing is the single most common way a naive verse-detector embarrasses a church mid-service.

Finding a passage by what it is about

You do not need the reference. Search for love, forgiveness, patience, fear — a theme rather than an address — and Aria returns the passages that are actually about it, not simply the ones containing the word.

Useful when somebody asks for “that verse about worry” thirty seconds before it is needed, and nobody in the room can remember where it is.

Deciding how much Aria does on its own

Each kind of detection has three settings, in the features panel:

Setting	What happens
Auto	Aria puts the verse straight on the screen.
Suggest	The match waits in the approval queue for you. This is the default for paraphrases.
Off	Aria does not look for that kind at all.

The same panel has master switches for Verses, Images, Lyrics, Captions and Sermon Notes. These stick between services rather than resetting each time you start.

If Aria is too eager, or not eager enough

Settings has a verse detection sensitivity control, set to Balanced by default. Move it towards stricter if verses appear that were not really being quoted; move it towards more eager if Aria is missing passages the speaker is clearly reading.

Sending a verse yourself

Press Ctrl+K.
Type the reference.
Press enter. It goes to the screen.

Translations

28 translations are included and work with no internet, among them KJV, WEB, ASV, BSB, YLT, Spanish (VBL, NBV, PDPT, RV1909) and French (Louis Segond, Darby). You can also import a Bible your church already owns.

NIV, ESV, NLT and The Message are fetched over the internet because of their licences, not because of how Aria is built. If the connection drops mid service, Aria falls back to a bundled translation rather than showing nothing.

Choosing how scripture looks

Six looks ship with Aria, from plain and classical to cinematic. You can also highlight the words that matter inside a verse, and bring the verse that just went up back with one click.

How well it hears the unusual names

Aria is told the names of all 66 books, including the numbered forms, so "Habakkuk" and "Second Corinthians" are expected rather than guessed at.

Pictures behind the verse → Songs and worship →