Church Translation charges per active language, and until now a language stayed on your list forever. One visitor who picked Ukrainian last spring has been adding to the bill at every service since — whether or not anyone read it. This release lets your language list follow your actual congregation.

• Languages switch off when nobody is listening: Set how long a language may go without a listener — anything from 1 minute to 24 hours — and Church Translation switches it off on its own. Nothing is deleted. The language simply stops being translated, and stops being charged.

• They come back by themselves: The moment a visitor with that language opens the app, it switches back on within seconds. No tap on the language picker, no approval from you, nothing for them to notice.

• You choose how far it reaches: Switch off only the languages visitors added themselves, or every language including the ones you added yourself.

• The language you speak is never touched: Your speech-to-text language always stays on. So does a language showing on the projector while you're translating — the projector serves exactly the people who aren't holding a phone.

• Off for your church until you switch it on: If you were already with us, nothing changes. Your languages behave exactly as they did yesterday until you turn this on yourself.

To get started:

• Go to Settings → Translation Settings

• Find "Switch off languages nobody is listening to" and click Edit

• Choose "Languages visitors added themselves" or "Every language, including the ones you added", then Save

• Under "How long to wait before switching a language off", pick your window. Churches joining today start on After 5 minutes

• Optionally, under "Catch up visitors who arrive late", decide how much of the service a latecomer gets translated. This is Off by default, because catching someone up costs translation

One thing worth knowing: the saving comes from not translating into a language nobody was listening to — so the archive for that stretch has nothing in that language to show. Rather than leaving it blank, we show the words in the language spoken at the service, with a short note explaining why. If members of your church read the archive back during the week without ever joining live, a longer window keeps more of it in their own language.