Sometimes you want to use the full power of Logos to pull together a lot of related information as you explore a particular passage or topic. And sometimes you just want to focus on the text you're reading – to read it without distraction while still having easy access to tools that help you engage with it fully.
The Dynamic Toolbar on the web app provides this functionality with single-click access to key tools and capabilities that will enhance your reading and studying without getting in the way. With it you can toggle displaying notes & highlights on or off, navigate to a particular place in the book, search things of interest in the book, change how the book displays information, compare the book with other similar texts, get a quick summary of a section, and more.
While the toolbar is useful with all types of books, Bibles make the most of its functionality, so this article will focus on using the toolbar with a Bible. Towards the end, it will address additional functionality only available in other types of books.
Note: This capability is available to all users on the web app.
Skip ahead to:
- Overview of the Toolbar
- The Home Menu
- The Search Menu
- The Notes Menu
- The View Menu
- The Tools Menu
- The Share Menu
- Additional Functionality with Non-Bible Books
Overview of the Toolbar
You'll find the Dynamic Toolbar near the top of the panel, just to the right of the range selector. It provides navigation features on the left and access to six menus and a button with a link to a forum thread for providing feedback on the right.
Navigation Features on the Toolbar
Click the arrows on the left of the toolbar to cycle through previous locations in the book.
Right-click an arrow to open a dropdown menu containing previous locations in the book which you can click to go back to that place:
Click the book cover icon to open a dropdown menu allowing you to quickly switch to a different book of the same type (Bible to Bible, Commentary to Commentary, etc):
Click the active location to change this to another location in the book:
Menus on the Toolbar
The six menu headings on the right provide access to a set of capabilities:
- The Home menu provides navigation options
- The Search menu provides the ability to search the current book
- The Notes menu enables you to toggle notes / highlights on or off, or to just show a subset of these as well as the ability to add new notes or highlights
- The View menu offers different formatting and presentation options
- The Tools menu provides access to a focused set of tools
- The Share menu provides different ways to export what you are reading or studying
Note: To collapse the sub-menu items, simply click the menu button again
The New button provides a link to a forum post that can be used to provide feedback on the toolbar.
The Home Menu
Click Home to open this menu:
Note: This has functions on both the left and right sides of the panel.
The Contents button opens the Table of Contents for the book making it easy to navigate to different chapters:
The History button shows where you have been reading in the book in the current session and provides single-click access to get back to any of those places:
The navigation arrows enable easy navigation to the previous or next article - or whatever options are available in the dropdown menu.
The Link set button provides access to a menu so that the book can be added to a link set, so it will scroll with others books with the same indices (such as verses).
The Insights and Info
buttons on the right provides access to the Insights Sidebar and information about the book.
The Insights Sidebar provides quick lookup capability for Study Bibles, Commentaries, and Related Passages.
Note: You can adjust the width of this sidebar by dragging it as required.
The Search Menu
Click the Search button to open this menu:
This provides an Inline Search capability allowing you to search your current book for words, phrases or tagged content, and more. This filters the book to just show content relevant to your search term. So, for example, you can show just those times that Jesus spoke to Peter,
or where two words appear near to each other in the text.
You can change how much of the surrounding text is shown with your search results using the drop-down menu on the right.
Click the small X to remove the search filter and display the full text again:
The Notes Menu
Click the Notes button to open this menu:
The Show notes button and Show highlights button
toggle the display of your notes and highlights respectively.
The Add note button adds a note and opens the Notes Tool so you can add content to the note, change icon styling, add additional anchors, etc.
Without any text selected in the book, the button will add a note to the currently active reference.
If you have text selected, the button will add a note to the selected text.
In either case, a note will be added and the Notes Tool opened so you can modify the note as required.
If you select a portion of text, you can then add a highlight, choosing from a palette of your six most recently-used highlights.
If you select a portion of text that currently contains a highlight, you are given the option to delete it.
The Notes filter button opens a side panel containing a faceted browser enabling you to select a subset of notes or highlights to display in the current book.
The View Menu
Click the View button to open this menu and gain access to a number of options for changing how the text is displayed.
The Reformat text button displays a menu providing some resource level formatting options - including a toggle to enable or disable the reformatting of text.
The Bible text section provides the ability to change how the biblical text is displayed including, the option to show individual verses on separate lines, whether footnotes display, and whether non-biblical text appears.
The Corresponding Words section makes it easy to find repeated words in the text. Enable it and then click a word to highlight where else it occurs.
To remove these indicators, toggle off text reformatting in the dropdown menu.
The Interlinear button shows an Interlinear menu including the option to toggle the Inline Interlinear for the Bible.
With this enabled, you can select which lines you want to show from the reverse interlinear.
The Paged view button displays a menu providing the ability to switch between scrolling up and down in the text to moving left and right as though through pages in a physical book.
With it enabled, you can select how many columns you want displayed within the panel.
You can also use it to control whether or not footnotes will be displayed at the bottom of the page.
The Locator bar button is simply a toggle to control whether or not the locator bar is displayed:
The controls on the right of the View menu allow you to change the size of the text or move into and out of full screen mode.
The Tools Menu
Click the Tools button to open this menu and gain access to a number of options for engaging further with the text.
The Compare button opens the Text Comparison tool at the currently active reference enabling an easy way to see how different translations agree or differ.
The Translate button opens a Translate pane showing a translation of the text.
The Summarize button opens a summarization pane, enabling an AI-generated summary of the current chapter (or article), or at a higher level in the book.
When you click the Summarize button in the pane on the right, Logos uses AI to generate a summary.
The Set as top Bible button provides a single-click ability to set your preferred Bible to the one you are currently reading.
Note: If the Bible you are reading is currently your preferred Bible, this button is greyed out.
The Share Menu
Click the Share button to open this menu and gain access to a number of ways to share the text you are currently reading.
Select a portion of text to access the Copy button , which provides the ability to copy the selected text and then paste it elsewhere.
Click the Copy link button to copy the current URL, capturing the location in the book in the app. This can then be shared with others so they can explore the same passage.
If you select a portion of text, the Create slides button is also enabled, providing the ability to create slides based on the text using a range of Logos media.
Additional Functionality with Non-Bible Books
In books with page numbers, you can navigate in the Home menu by page number as well as by article.
Additionally, you can enable the display of page numbers in the View menu.
In lexicons that support the feature, you can toggle the display of Outline formatting in the View menu.