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It opens with the rose already there. Turn the phone until the Kaaba marker reaches the pointer: that is the qibla. Below it, today's prayer times and how long until the next one.
Turn the phone: when the marker is at the top, you are facing the Kaaba.
Fajr, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, Isha — and how long to the next.
Six conventions, and Asr standard or Hanafi: you choose.
The direction
- A great-circle bearing, not a line on a flat map. They are not the same thing: from New York the flat map would say south-east, while the true direction is north-east, over Greenland. The great circle is what has always been meant.
- Corrected to true north. A magnetometer points at magnetic north, and the difference — the declination — is a few degrees in Europe and up to fifteen in parts of North America.
- It warns when there is metal near the phone: a disturbed compass points the wrong way with exactly the confidence of a right one.
- The distance to Makkah, in kilometres, too.
- In English and Italian, following the phone's language.
It asks the system for the declination, and says so when there is none
Getting from magnetic north to true north needs the Earth's magnetic model, and Android already carries one: the app asks it rather than shipping a copy of its own that goes stale. Where that channel does not answer — on iOS, for instance — the app tells you instead of pretending the arrow is corrected. A few degrees of error in a direction people keep for years is not a detail.
The times, with the convention you choose
Fajr, sunrise, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib and Isha, computed from the Sun's position on the device, with no network. You pick the convention — Muslim World League, ISNA, Egyptian Authority, Karachi, Umm al-Qura, Gulf, and Asr standard or Hanafi — because different authorities have used different angles for a century, and an app that picked one and called it "correct" would be wrong for most of the world.
At latitudes where the twilight never gets deep enough — a northern summer — the app writes a dash for Fajr and Isha instead of inventing an hour.
This app is not a religious authority
It computes, and shows the result of the convention you chose. For what holds in your community, your community is the source.
Your data stays yours
Qibla asks for coarse location and nothing else: not precise location, and no background location. No account, no servers: your position never leaves the phone and we never see it; everything is computed on the device, on a plane too. The app sends no notifications and plays no adhan — it does one thing, when you open it. If you would rather not give a position, a list of cities is bundled with the app.
How it is paid for
One banner anchored at the bottom, and that is all: no subscription, no convention held hostage.