Frequently Asked Questions

What is Praisenter?

Praisenter is an application that provides display of Bible verses, songs, and notifications (among other things) to a secondary display, typically a projector, monitor or television for use in a church service or event.

What Praisenter is not

Church media departments require many tools to enhance their services.  Praisenter is just one of those tools.  While offering a large set of features, it’s not a replacement for everything.

Why use Praisenter?

Praisenter allows display of verses from numerous bible translations (provided by The Unbound Bible) with standard graphics for each verse.  This removes the effort required to copy & paste verse text into an application like PowerPoint for each verse.  The same goes for songs and notifications.  Praisenter is perfect for these tasks.

Did we mention it’s free?

What features does Praisenter include?

Praisenter is packed with features.  See the highlighted Features page for an overview.

Is it really free?

Yes.  No registration, no gimicks, no gotchas, just free.  Download it and try it out today!

Praisenter is offered under the GPL v3 license.  The majority of the code used to make Praisenter is offered under the New BSD license.  These licenses allow use and even modifications for free.  To see more about the license here.

Why?

Being frustrated with the current software we were using, we decided to make an alternative that did things better and had more features.  Naturally we can’t offer all features right away, but our goal is to make Praisenter the best at what it does.

In addition, we just really enjoy programming.  What better way to give back than to improve the worship and services with easy to use tools.

Why free? Because, in our opinion, a number of congregations do not have the money to spend on this type of thing (and really shouldn’t).  A better use of their money would be within their community, their organization, missions, or some other out reach program.

What are the system requirements?

See the Download page.

How do I install Praisenter

See the Download page for instructions on installing Praisenter.

Where can I download other Bible translations?

Praisenter uses The Unbound Bible format for its default Bible translation import.  You can go to their downloads page and choose the desired one and click download.

The translations offered there may or may not be Copyrighted.  For example, the English KJV Bible is in the Public Domain in most countries, but not the UK.  Please make sure you read the copyright of the translation carefully so that you do not violate the copyright holder’s rights.  DISCLAIMER: We are NOT responsible for any action you take with Praisenter.  If you violate any copyright, trademark, or other legal right, you are wholly responsible.

What? The translation you want is not offered?  This goes back to the copyright held on the translation most likely. You are more than welcome to help us gain permission for any translation.  If it’s not a copyright issue, please direct us to the resource where we can obtain the translation and we will gladly add another import function for that source.

I want to switch to Praisenter but I don’t want lose my songs

This all depends on the previous software you were using.  If it offers an export feature for your songs, then you are in luck. Send that exported file to us and we can add an import option to Praisenter for that file type.  This will not work in all cases, as some applications offer more or less features and may have a proprietary export format.

Currently we offer a song import feature for ChurchView and OpenLyrics.

Hey man: feature “X” is missing

If Praisenter is missing a feature that you want or need, please contact us via the support forum or directly at support@praisenter.org and let us know.  Our desire is to make Praisenter the best tool available (and all for free!).

Better yet, go grab the Java source code and add the feature yourself and submit it as an enhancement.

I need help!!!111!!1!!!11!

If you need help, check the Download page for anything you may have missed.  Some platforms have some special instructions or notes that should be read.

If all else fails, the contact us directly at support@praisenter.org.