Time with Christ: a private way to notice the time you make for Him

What it is, and what it is not

Time with Christ is a small browser extension that helps you notice the room you make for Christ in an ordinary day on a computer. Many people read the Bible on a website in the morning, listen to a sermon while they work, put on worship music at lunch, and encourage a friend online in the evening. None of that shows up anywhere, and so it is easy to feel that the day held no time for Him at all. The companion exists to let you see, privately and in words, what you chose to count.

It is not a measure of holiness. It does not know whether you understood what you read, whether you prayed with your heart, or what God did in you while you sat in the quiet. It cannot know those things, and it does not pretend to. It has no scores, no streaks, no goals, no badges and no rankings, and it never compares you with another believer. A week with few counted minutes is not a failure. Much of life with Christ is never measured by a browser, and this companion says so on its own pages.

It is free, it has no ads, and it belongs to The Living Bread, a home on the web where a person can read the Word, pray with real people and be known by a family in Christ. You can use the companion on its own on one computer, or link it to your private Living Bread record. Linking is a choice you can undo at any time.

What it counts, place by place

The companion begins with only two places turned on, because they were the first it learned to count: Bible Gateway and Bible Hub. On those two sites it counts active reading time while the page is in front of you. Every other place is off until you switch it on yourself, one at a time, and your browser asks for your permission each time. The companion keeps a short list of well known Bible, teaching and daily reading sites so that turning one on takes a single tap. It groups them simply:

• Read Scripture: Bible.com, Blue Letter Bible, Biblia, Bible Study Tools, Bible.is, the ESV and NET Bible sites.
• Learn and reflect: Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, Desiring God, Ligonier, BibleProject, Grace to You, In Touch, GotQuestions and similar teaching sites.
• Daily devotionals: Our Daily Bread, My Utmost for His Highest, the daily readings of the Catholic bishops of the United States, the Orthodox Church in America and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, Forward Movement, the Book of Common Prayer online, Sacred Space, Hallow and Pray.com on the web.

The list is ecumenical on purpose. Each site comes with one plain sentence saying exactly what counts there. A site is not treated as Scripture because of its name: only the pages that carry Bible text count as reading Scripture, and the rest count as reading about Christ.

Reading time is an estimate of active time. A minute counts when the page is visible, the browser window is focused, and you have scrolled, clicked or typed in the last minute and a half. If you switch to another tab, minimize the window, or walk away, it pauses. It reads the address of the page to tell a passage from a menu, and it never reads the words.

Video and audio: your rule, your list

YouTube, the Spotify web player, Apple Podcasts on the web, SoundCloud and Vimeo are each off until you turn them on. For each one you choose a rule, and the quietest rule is the default.

• Count only what I mark. Nothing counts until you tap Count this on the video or audio you mean. For this rule the companion never even asks for the title.
• Count matches from my Christ list. The companion looks for channels, creators and words you chose, and counts what matches while it is playing.
• Count all playing media. Everything that plays on that platform counts, including things that have nothing to do with Christ. The companion says this plainly beside the choice, so no one is surprised.

Media counts only while playback is truly moving and you are either watching the tab or hearing it. Paused, buffering, finished, advertisements, and silent playback in a hidden tab do not count. Where a page does not let the companion verify playback, it says so and offers a manual way to count instead.

Your Christ list is yours. You can add a pastor's channel, a creator, an @handle, and your own words and phrases such as sermon, Bible study or worship. An optional starter list names a few well known teaching and worship sources and common words, and you can switch off any of them. Matching is careful: a whole word or phrase, never a loose piece of a word, and an exact creator name or handle before any phrase. Every match is a suggestion based on your own list. The companion cannot know whether something is truly Christian and never claims to. You can see why something matched, dismiss it, never count that source again, or undo the stretch it counted.

Social media and any other tab: you decide

The companion does not read posts, messages, feeds or profiles, on any site, to guess at faith. Instead there is one control: Count this as time with Christ. When you tap it, the companion asks what you are doing: encouraging someone, reading a testimony, praying with someone, or sharing Christ. Then it counts your active time on that tab, shows a small visible note while it counts, and stops when you tap Stop, close the tab, or the page changes. You can pause, change what you are doing, cancel, or undo it.

This works on Instagram, Facebook, X, TikTok, Reddit, Threads, Bluesky and LinkedIn, and on any other tab. On any other site it uses the browser's own temporary permission for the tab you are on, given when you tap, so it never asks for permanent access to everything you browse. If you like, you can turn on a small button for one social site so that starting and stopping is one tap there.

Supported sites count by themselves once you turn them on. Everything else counts only when you start it. The companion keeps that difference obvious.

One honest clock

Reading, media and sessions you start all report to a single clock, so a second of your day is counted at most once. If you have Scripture open while worship music plays, the time counts once, as reading. The rule is simple and written down. A session you started yourself comes first, then reading a page you are actively using, then media that is genuinely playing. A higher one that is still active holds the clock, and the others simply wait.

The clock uses real elapsed time and real playback, not an assumption that every tick means engagement. It closes a stretch when the tab is hidden, the window loses focus, the browser sleeps, or you go idle, with only a short credit for the last moments. A small status always says what is happening: Counting, Reading; Counting, Worship; or Paused. Pause, Stop and Undo are always within reach.

What leaves your computer, and what never does

Matching your list, judging the page, and every decision about what counts happen on your computer. The title of a video, the name of a channel, the address of a page, your Christ list and your keywords are never sent anywhere, never saved after the moment of the decision, and never written to a log.

When your browser is linked to your Living Bread account, the companion sends only: the kind of time (for example Scripture reading, worship, or encouraging), how many seconds, when that stretch began and ended, a random identifier for the stretch, and which broad category of place it came from. For the two Bible sites it has always named, it also sends the site and the passage, such as John 3, because that is what lets you continue where you left off. The server refuses anything outside this short list, whole, so a mistake cannot slip a page's words into your record.

Two honest notes. First, your browser still sends what any connection sends, such as your internet address, and the companion adds a device token that proves it is your linked browser. Second, your record belongs to your account. It is private to you, but it is tied to your account, so we do not call it anonymous. The start and end times are there so your time lands in the week you lived it, even if the browser was offline and sent it later.

What you see in Living Bread

Inside Living Bread, Time with Christ shows your week in plain words. It leads with a sentence such as: This week, you made room for Scripture, worship and prayer. Then it lists, without ranking, the ways you chose to count: reading, listening, watching, worshipping, praying, encouraging and sharing Christ. It says: This reflects the activities you chose to count. Your life with Christ is greater than what a browser can record.

If nothing was counted, it says: Your life with Christ is more than what appears here. When you choose to count an activity, it will appear in this space. There are no streaks to protect, no goals to reach, and nothing to compare. Ten quiet minutes with Christ are never less than an hour.

“But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”

What it asks your browser for, and why

Browsers are right to be careful with extensions, so each request has a plain reason.

• The address of Bible Gateway and Bible Hub: to tell a passage from a menu. Nothing else on those pages is read.
• One site at a time, only when you switch it on: each curated site, video or audio platform, or social button you enable is a separate request your browser shows you.
• The current tab, only when you tap Count this tab: the browser lends the companion that one tab for that moment. It is not permanent access to other sites.
• Storage and a timer: to keep your settings, your Christ list and any unsent time on your computer, and to send in small batches.

The companion does not run remote code. It works in Chrome and Edge, and in Firefox, where the browser asks you about its data use at install. These browsers handle permissions and media a little differently, so a few details differ between them, and the companion says plainly where a feature cannot be verified.

Pause, undo and delete

You can pause everything for an hour, for the rest of the day, or until you resume. You can stop a session, undo the last stretch of time it counted, disconnect the browser from your account, forget anything still waiting to send, or delete everything it keeps on your computer. To remove time already in your Living Bread record, use the Privacy page inside the app. Nothing here is hard to leave.

“But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.”

Who it is for

It is for anyone who wants to notice the shape of their days with Christ without turning that into performance. A student reading the Gospels before class, a pastor listening to a teaching on a commute, a parent who prays with a friend in a message thread, and a believer who simply wants to see that they did make room, can each use it the way that suits them. It is not a replacement for a church, a Bible, or prayer. It is a quiet mirror, and you hold it.

If you are looking for the Bible itself, start with the Bible pages on Living Bread. If you are new to all of this, the guide to coming to Christ takes the questions one at a time. If you would like company, Living Bread is a free home for it.

More on the site

The guide to coming to ChristHow Living Bread walks with youWhat to read first in the BibleHow to pray when you do not know howFind a church near youGet the Living Bread appBegin on Living BreadWhat we believeHow we writeHelp now