experience with Bard mobile

Interestingly, there is a Battery heading at the top of the Settings app battery screen, and if VoiceOver focus is on that heading, and I rotor to headings and flick down, VoiceOver acts like it can't find any other headings.

However, a single flick right off of that first heading followed by the same operation finds the battery usage by app heading. Thanks for letting us know about that.

And for those of you who think BARD can't possibly be the battery hog, I'll wager it varies widely by usage pattern and phone type. BARD tops my list at 44% over the past 24 hours.

The battery problem I'm having is intermittent and when it happens I can't say for sure if I've used bard mobile that day or not. I know that others have commented that the other app I mentioned apparently drains the battery fast and I know I've used it on days when my battery runs down so that is the likely culprit. I'm just trying to eliminate things, and since the battery is 2 years old and I didn't start having the problem until recently and I started using both bard mobile and the other app I mentioned at about the same time I was just checking.

Somebody please tell me what I am doing wrong?
I go to settings, battery, then I select the "last 10 days" option, then I navigate to the heading Alicia mentioned above.
I have been consuming books this past week, however BARD claims to have only used up 2% for the last 10 days.
I should also note that I have background app refresh completely disabled. In fact, I never use this option. Not since it first launched back on, what was it? iOS 7?

Hi all,

I'm both a patron of and employed at the NJ Talking Book and Braille Center. I mostly use my NLS eReader, but all the patrons I've come across who use BARD mobile love it!

Serena

It is a good app, it can be better.

This is my 2025 wish for BARD on iOS. 😇

I have a question. I am in Montreal and through abcglobalbooks.org I saw that some books like the letters of Tolkien are available in an accessible format through NLS. I downloaded the .zip but it contains .3gp files. Is there any way I can access the file from here or do I really need to have a Stream 3 just for one drm like protected resource, as I can't really use bard mobile which require an account which I don't have for obvious reasons.

According to a Google AI search result on the .3gp file extension, Windows Media Player, QuickTime for macOS, and VLC Media Player can all reportedly open the extension.
I do not know if DRM will be an issue or not, but you can give it a try and see whats what.

Do not think you can is protected. Have the book in MP3 send me an email.

Wouldn't this be a question better put to the organization from which you downloaded the book? To my knowledge neither those of us in the US get your books in Canada nor can you get ours directly. So if that organization hosts an NLS title on their sight, I would assume they know a way. And it shouldn't matter whether or not you have a player like the stream, as those of us in the states can't play the books unless we register our players through NLS, and download a special file. So if the people downloading those books through abcglobalbooks.org had a stream, they still couldn't play the books accept through some arrangement with NLS.

Oh yeah, I completely forgot this section in the Stream user guide. Thanks!!

Afternoon to all, I recently tried to redownload a book I have read before, but it says queued for download and will not proceed. Any thoughts on what to do? I have closed the app and restarted several times, no luck.

Hi,

I don't seem to be having any trouble downloading books, whether they are books I've had before, or books I am downloading for the first time. I'm wondering if this is an iOS 26 issue? My primary device is still running iOS 18.7.2, as I refuse to update until Apple get some of the iOS 26 issues resolved. Unfortunately, I can't log into BARD on my testing device, which currently has iOS 26.3 on it, because BARD does not allow being logged into the service on multiple devices, as far as I know at least.
Have you tried logging into BARD from the web? They've recently updated the website to be more in line with the current application, so you may have better luck trying it that way.

HTH.

iOS 26.3 and no issues. Lucky me I already have so many bugs with iOS. Suggest cancel download and redo it again. Long live meows.

@nikos,

Have you tried downloading any other books through BARD? If nothing is downloading, you may have to uninstall, and reinstall the BARD application.

@Holger,

Just remember, Apple hates you. 😺

For Michael, I would cancel the download and do it again. In a blue moon it happen to me. Several iOS in the past but I canceled the download and did it again and it work. For Brian. Yes, apple hates me so. Conspiracy against me to drive me nuts. Long live cats. Probably Bella pay apple.

Not in the app, but both in the player and braille reader, I found that if I turn WiFi off and only turned it on when I wanted to use Bard, I'd have to re-enter my login info. If I tried to view my wishlist, for instance, or just connect with the braille reader, it would give an error.

@Nikos - Are you connected to WiFi when this issue occurs? If not, I believe the default setting for the app is to not download books over WiFi.