Repeat & Reflect using Dwell

“I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.“

– Psalm 119:11

When asked about Dwell and its origins, I sometimes begin the conversation by remarking that Scripture listening was never actually the goal of the app. Dwell certainly does that. And it does it well. And we believe it’s an important part of spiritual formation. But listening alone has never been Dwell’s ultimate aim. All along our team has been working to build an app that would help God’s people saturate themselves in His Word, giving them a beautiful and convenient way to essentially “live in the Bible,” as Charles Spurgeon so succinctly put it. That includes listening, but we believe it also includes other spiritual practices like Scripture meditation and Scripture memorization.

The new feature we’re announcing today helps us take a step toward meditation and memorization. We’re calling it Dwell Mode.

What is Dwell Mode?
Dwell Mode allows you to go deeper with Scripture through repetition and reflection. Particularly, it gives you the ability to repeat just about anything you listen to inside the app. That means a passage of the Bible, a chapter, playlist, plan, or even your entire queue can be looped in order to meditate on or memorize it. At the same time, Dwell Mode also lets you add quiet moments of reflection in between whatever you repeat. You can easily control the time between each repetition by adding 3, 10, 30, or 60 seconds between each hearing.

How to use Dwell Mode
It’s easy to get started using Dwell Mode. When you open the player, you’ll now see a new icon at the bottom (Psst! It’s the one circled in the screenshot above ☝🏻). Tapping it will reveal Dwell Mode’s two primary features.

Once opened, you’ll notice two new toggles: Repeat and Reflect. ☝🏻

Repeat
To begin repeating what you’re listening to, just tap the Repeat toggle (If you see pink, you know the feature has been activated 🙌🏼).

When the Repeat feature is activated, you’ll see two options for repeating:

1. This track – When selected, the track you’re currently listening to will be repeated indefinitely (that could be a chapter, plan, passage or playlist).

 2. Queue – When selected, your entire queue will be repeated.

By default, “This track” will be selected which means that whatever you’re listening to will automatically be repeated. In the screenshot above, Psalm 100 would continue to repeat until you either paused the playback, toggled the repeat feature off, or closed out of the app.

But wait! There’s more!

Reflect
If you activate the Reflect toggle you can add a period of silent reflection in between whatever it is you’re repeating.

This is really beneficial if you’re wanting to memorize a certain passage of Scripture, or just wanting to reflect and process what you’re listening to.

The screenshot above ☝🏻, highlights the different duration options available for Reflection. Shorter durations are great for memorizing short passages of Scripture. Longer durations give you more time to think through what you’re hearing, even incorporating times of prayer. Try them all out and see which one works best for you!

How to know Dwell Mode is activated
When you tap out of the Dwell Mode menu, you’ll know the feature is activated because the “head” icon will turn pink. 👇🏼

With that said, when you want to turn Repeat or Reflect off, you’ll need to tap on the Dwell Mode icon again and turn off each toggle.

Soaking in Scripture
We’re hoping Dwell Mode will make Scripture memorization and meditation easier than ever before for you. Like I said, our vision from the beginning has centered on helping people soak in Scripture—to truly dwell in it, wherever they are. With the release of Dwell Mode, we feel like we’re moving closer to realizing that vision. There’s a lot more to do. We have so much more in store for you! Thanks for your continued support of Dwell. Onward! 

Note: Dwell Mode is currently available for iOS only. It is coming to Android soon.