The Context Menu

There are quite a few options in the context menu that opens when a spot in a publication that is not a link is double tapped. The first button in the menu is the Display Study Pane button. Listening for VoiceOver to announce that button is the only reliable way of knowing whether your double tap was successful, because occasionally the menu will fail to appear when needed, or will appear when you didn't want it.

Yes, even on an iPad that is already showing the Study Pane the first menu option will be Display Study Pane. If you want to close the Study Pane you can swipe left to where the Display/Hide study Pane button can always be found.

Once the context menu opens you can immediately double tap to open the Study Pane, or swipe right to move through the available options. Double tap whichever button you need.

If you swipe left from the Display Study Pane button you will leave the menu but it may stay on the screen. It will go away if you double tap somewhere on the screen outside the menu.

The last menu item on an iPhone screen will most likely be a "Right Triangle" button, which is used to show more menu options that didn't fit.

After you double tap the Right Triangle VoiceOver focus will be on the last button in the menu. This is often the Play Audio button. You can learn more about that on this page about playing audio.

Since VoiceOver focus will then be on the last button in the menu you will have to swipe left to find all the buttons that are shown.

At the top of the second page of context menu items on an iPhone is a "Left Triangle" button. That can be double tapped to go back to the first page of menu options.

Elsewhere in this guide you can read about the different features available in the Study Pane.

There are some options that only appear in the Context Menu when VoiceOver isn't running. This is because they are for highlighting which isn't possible with VoiceOver in JW Library.

Add a Note:

This option is available to VoiceOver users. If highlighting was possible the note would take the already highlighted text and add it to a new note. Since highlighting isn't possible if you are a VoiceOver user you will have to type, dictate, or copy text in to the note.

When the new note opens VoiceOver should say "Multi-line text field, is editing. Insertion point at start." Unfortunately, when a keyboard is connected you don't get this feedback to tell you when to start typing. This first edit field is for the title of the note. A title is not required.

As usual a 2 finger double tap can be used to start, and end, dictation, and all other normal input methods are available.

When finished with the title field, swipe right and double tap on the Note field to start editing it.

The control immediately after the Note text field is for adding a tag. Tags are used to make categories you want to use to organize your notes. I kept failing to add tags unless I did so using a keyboard, so I started to think they weren't accessible. Thanks to precise directions provided to me by the Blind and Low Vision Bethel Help Desk, I now know adding tags is possible using Voiceover without a hardware keyboard. Just ignore the directions and suggestions given by the system unless using a keyboard. Never mind the "add a Tag" button that doesn't work.

Directions for adding tags:

Double tap the unlabeled field after the Note.
Type in the entire name of the tag you want to use even if it already exists and the system suggests the correct tag.
Double tap Return on the on-screen keyboard.
Double tap Return again.

This method works wether creating a new note or adding a tag to an existing note.

In the Study Bible adding a note creates the edit fields for it right after the existing information for that Bible verse in the Study Pane.

It is extremely easy to accidentally swipe out of the note while creating it. When that happens the note's edit fields become read only. If you were not finished with the note find the More button that is just before the note. When you double tap the More button that is associated with the note in the Study pane it will offer Edit and Delete buttons.

Finding a Note

The following information is no longer correct. In my latest testing I was unable to find images or any other indication of Notes I created.

Notes you have created are indicated by an unlabeled image just in front of the Bible verse or paragraph where you created them.

If you have VoiceOver set to only read labeled images you will not hear anything to indicate the notes' existence. Fortunately, you can always find the note in the text of the Bible or other publication by turning your VoiceOver rotor to Images. Swipe up for previous note and down for the next one. If you are already on the only image in the chapter or ## article VoiceOver will claim no image can be found.

Labeling the images that indicate Notes has never worked for me. The VoiceOver 2 finger double tap and hold gesture works to assign a label, but the label is missing when I find the image again.

Double tapping a Note image will open the Study Pane. It may or may not be hard to find in there. Turning your VoiceOver rotor to Form Fields will allow you to swipe up or down to find all the fields for your notes.

All your Notes can also be found in the Personal Study tab of JW library.

Parallel Translations

The Parallel Translation option is only found when activating the Context Menu in the Bible tab of JW library. A very similar interface is shown in the Study Pane when a scripture link is activated in a publication.

Choosing this option from the context menu displays the Study Pane with the current Bible verse in Every Bible version and language you have downloaded. That is great for being able to compare the wording in different versions, to show someone a verse in another language, or to just read the Verse from the Study Bible without the footnote and marginal reference letters.

I have not found any way to select multiple verses to be shown in Parallel Translations.

To quickly move through the Bible versions available without reading the verse's text you can move by Links. VoiceOver will say the name of the Bible first, then the verse.

Moving by Landmarks will read only the text of the verse from each Bible without saying where it is from.

At the bottom of the Study Pane there will be a Customize button. Double tap it to rearrange the order of the Bibles displayed.

Double tapping on a Bible causes VoiceOver to say it is selected, but selection does not seem to affect anything.

Touch a Bible name and swipe up or down to move through the action menu items for it. Double tap either move up or move down to reorder it.

As the dialog says, you will have to close the Study Pane and find the Language button if you want to download or delete translations. Remember that the language button may be either at the top of the screen to the left of the More button, or inside the More menu on smaller screen devices.

Reference Works

Reference Works is the option you will want to choose if you want to do extensive research on a Bible verse. It will open the Study Pane with a number of relevant articles, or excerpts from publications about that Bible verse. There can be a lot of information.

The material is presented in order of publication date from most recent to oldest. Each excerpt from a publication is a separate Article, meaning the HTML element or tag called article.

If your iPhone or iPad is running iOS 16 or earlier Voiceover will say "Article" at the beginning of each excerpt, and you can navigate through them using either Articles or Landmarks on your Voiceover Rotor.

Voiceover on iOS 17 as done away with the announcement of articles, but Articles is still an option you can add to the Voiceover Rotor. You will need to use the Article Rotor item instead of Landmarks from now on.

Unfortunately, moving by Article doesn't simplify finding what you are looking for as much as you might hope. That is because the excerpts displayed bring with them their own unique formatting. there are Article tags within articles in many publications, so there can be article tags after headings, boxes and other features that mark different sections. It is still probably easier to find things in the Reference works material using VoiceOver than it is to find anything visually.

The title of the article or section will naturally be at the top of the Article if the material referenced is an entire chapter, article, or section, but many times the material in the article tag will just start at a certain paragraph.

. The title of the publication the material came from will not be within the article tag, so from the Article landmark swipe left a couple times to see where the information is taken from. If interested in it start reading by swiping down with 2 fingers. If not interested in that particular source swipe down twice to skip to the next excerpt, and repeat the process.

The title of the publication and the lesson / article / chapter name the reference material came from will both be links. Double tapping one of those links will open the publication. If it is not yet downloaded JW Library will display a dialog with the name and size of the publication with Cancel and Download buttons. When the publication is downloaded it will open.

Bookmark

This will add a bookmark to the specific spot you are at in the current publication. However, Just double tapping the bookmark button in the context menu won't complete the job.

The Bookmarks dialog will open and all the existing bookmarks you have already created in this publication will be shown.

Swipe right until you find a silent spot. Silent spots are empty slots where you can add the bookmark.

Double tap on any silent spot to drop in the new bookmark location.

It is extremely important to know that replacing or deleting bookmarks is totally inaccessible for VoiceOver users!

This means using Bookmarks has to be done extremely conservatively. They simply don't do the job you usually use bookmarks for, which is saving your current spot in a publication and moving it as you move through it. For VoiceOver users bookmarks are more like permanent marks you put in a publication to find that place over and over again in the future. Of course they work as they should for sighted people, so if you are desperate to clear any of your bookmarks you may be able to get one of them to do it for you.

I suggest using a note or link to save specific spots in publications as described in other sections of this page about the context menu.

Using an existing bookmark

To open a Bookmark double tap the Bookmarks button at the top of the screen to the left of the More button.

Swipe through the bookmarks until you hear the one you want, then double tap it.

The bookmarked spot in the publication will be shown on the screen. I suggest touching about 1/3 of the way up from the bottom of the screen to find the spot. Of course, there is a chance the likely position is different on your device. There is no way to automatically force VoiceOver focus to the position of a bookmark.

The Share button in the Context Menu can be used to send a link to the exact spot in the current publication from where you activated the context menu. It definitely works for specific Bible verses no matter which translation, a particular heading in the Enjoy Life book, and a specific paragraph in the Watchtower Study.

If JW library is installed on the receiver's device the link opens the publication in it. If the publication isn't downloaded it will ask if they want to download it. Once the download is accepted the publication pops open with the correct spot shown on the screen.

The link should open on jw.org if the receiver doesn't have JW Library installed.

The standard iOS Share Sheet is used to pick where you will send the link. Since it can be customized and depends on the apps installed everyone's ShareSheet is a little different. The possibility to send to Messages, Mail, notes, Airdrop, and copy to clipboard should be available for everyone.

This feature isn't only useful for sharing something with others. You may find it useful to Airdrop your place in a publication on one of your Apple devices to open that spot on another Apple device. Touching about 1/3 of the way up from the bottom of my screen just about always hits the right spot. I find the efficiency of doing this strangely satisfying.

It can also be extremely useful to add one of these Shared links to a document or a note in Apple Notes. Sometimes it is honestly more efficient to do that than to use the built-in Note feature of JW Library, since you can create something with a lot of info in one place and have multiple reference links included. That document or note can then easily be shared with others if necessary. Of course doing that may cause you to want to use the next option in the context menu.

Copy

When you double tap the Copy button in the Context Menu the entire paragraph or verse will be put in the clipboard. If a single paragraph or Bible verse is what you want, this is much easier than using the selection and editing features on the VoiceOver rotor.

The context menu isn't available in the Study Pane. In there you will have to use VoiceOver's selection and editing features on the rotor, or use Copy Speech to Clipboard.

Now if only Apple would add an append to clipboard feature, so it wasn't necessary to use notes or a Shortcut you'd have to build yourself to put everything you want to copy together.

Play Audio

This feature is discussed on the [Play Audio](/JWLibrary/audio/( section of this guide.