How prayer times are calculated
Two things decide the answer on the home page: your five daily prayer times, and the restricted times in which prayer is withheld. This page explains, in plain language, where those times come from, why different authorities publish slightly different Fajr and Isha, and which authority and method applies in your country. Everything is worked out on your own device: no prayer-times service is ever contacted, and your location never leaves your phone.
The one thing authorities differ on: twilight
Sunrise, midday (the sun's highest point), and sunset are simple astronomy. Every authority in the world agrees on them to the minute, and they are what decide the “can I pray now” answer. There is nothing to disagree about.
The two prayers that are defined by a judgement call are Fajr (dawn) and Isha (night), because the sky brightens and darkens gradually - there is no single sharp instant when “dawn” begins or night “fully” falls. Authorities pin it down by measuring how far the sun has sunk below the horizon.
After sunset the sun keeps travelling downward - you simply cannot see it any more. When astronomers say “Isha begins at 17 degrees”, they mean: the moment the centre of the sun is 17 degrees below the horizon, the evening glow is gone and night has begun. For Fajr, “18 degrees” means the sun has climbed back to 18 degrees below the horizon before sunrise, and the first thread of dawn light appears. A bigger angle means a darker sky, which makes Fajr earlier and Isha later.
So “Fajr 18°, Isha 17°” is one authority's precise definition of dawn and nightfall. Another authority might use 15°, or 20°, because its scholars judged that first-light or full-dark moment slightly differently for their part of the world. It is like two photographers disagreeing on the exact minute “dawn” starts: the sun's angle below the horizon is just the ruler everyone uses to settle it.
Terms, in plain language
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Fajr | The dawn prayer. Begins at the first light of true dawn, before sunrise. |
| Sunrise (shurūq) | The sun clears the horizon. Fajr's time ends here. |
| Dhuhr / zenith / zawāl | Midday. The sun reaches its highest point (“solar noon”), then begins to decline; Dhuhr's time starts just after. |
| Asr | The afternoon prayer. Its start depends on your school: the standard view (Shāfiʿī, Mālikī, Ḥanbalī) begins it when an object's shadow equals its own length; the Ḥanafī view waits until the shadow is twice the length (so Asr is later). |
| Maghrib | The sunset prayer. Begins the moment the sun fully sets. |
| Isha | The night prayer. Begins when the evening twilight has fully disappeared. |
| Twilight angle | How far the sun is below the horizon, in degrees, at the moment Fajr begins or Isha begins. The one number authorities set differently. |
| Calculation method | A named bundle of those angle choices, usually named after the authority that defined it (Muslim World League, Umm al-Qura, ISNA, and so on). |
| Restricted times (awqāt al-nahy) | The short windows - around sunrise, midday, and sunset, plus after Fajr and after Asr - in which prayer is prohibited or disliked. These are what this tool actually rules on. See the methodology. |
| Madhhab | A school of Islamic law (Ḥanafī, Shāfiʿī, Mālikī, Ḥanbalī). It affects the Asr time and some rulings; it does not change sunrise, midday, or sunset. |
| Iḥtiyāṭ (safety margin) | A few minutes some authorities add to a computed time out of caution (e.g. Indonesia's Kemenag). It shifts the printed minute, not the underlying astronomy. |
Your local authority is the default
Wherever you are, the app starts from your country's own recognised prayer-time authority, because they know their country best and their times are what your local mosque prays by. This works in one of two ways:
- Where we have the authority's own published timetable (Sri Lanka's ACJU and Malaysia's JAKIM today), the app serves those exact printed times, matched to your nearest district zone.
- Everywhere else, we compute the times using the very method that authority uses, and prepare them into a table too (see how your times are prepared below). This is not a fallback to something generic: most national authorities define their official times by a calculation method (Saudi Arabia by Umm al-Qura, Egypt by the Egyptian Survey, North America by ISNA), so computing with that method reproduces the authority's own times.
You are never locked in. In Settings → Calculation method you can switch to any other method and watch the times change, and switch back to your authority whenever you like. Nothing is fetched from the internet to do this; the whole calculation runs on your device.
The calculation methods
Angles are how far below the horizon the sun sits when each prayer begins; a few authorities define Isha as a fixed number of minutes after Maghrib instead. Most rows are an authority's own stated convention. Two - ACJU and Kemenag - are marked “fitted”, and it is worth being exact about what that means.
What “fitted” means for ACJU. ACJU publishes a timetable, not an angle - their times follow the method of the late Al-ʿAlim M.I. Abdus Samad Makdoomi (per acju.lk). The 20° / 18° here is not a figure ACJU publishes; it is a number we reverse-engineered by searching for the angles that best reproduce ACJU's own printed Colombo table (mean error about 0.7 min on Fajr, 1.0 min on Isha). So where we have their table we serve their exact times; the fitted 20° / 18° is only our close approximation for the few days a table does not cover, and it is ours, not theirs.
| Method | Fajr | Isha | Whose convention it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACJU | 20° | 18° | All Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulama (Sri Lanka) - and served from their extracted timetable |
| Kemenag | 20° | 18° | Ministry of Religious Affairs (Indonesia) |
| Muslim World League | 18° | 17° | The most widely adopted world convention |
| ISNA | 15° | 15° | Islamic Society of North America (USA, Canada) |
| Egyptian | 19.5° | 17.5° | Egyptian Survey Authority |
| Umm al-Qura | 18.5° | 90 min after Maghrib | Umm al-Qura University (Saudi Arabia) |
| Karachi | 18° | 18° | University of Islamic Sciences, Karachi (Pakistan, India, Bangladesh region) |
| Tehran | 17.7° | 14° | Institute of Geophysics, University of Tehran (Iran) |
| Gulf Region | 19.5° | 90 min after Maghrib | UAE / GAIAE Awqaf, Gulf states (official) |
| Dubai | 18.2° | 18.2° | UAE (unofficial Batoul Apps fit) |
| Kuwait | 18° | 17.5° | Kuwait (Awqaf) |
| Qatar | 18° | 90 min after Maghrib | Qatar Calendar House |
| MUIS | 20° | 18° | Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (Malaysia's JAKIM and Brunei use the same 20°/18°) |
| Diyanet | 18° | 17° | Diyanet (Turkey) |
| UOIF | 12° | 12° | Union of Islamic Organisations of France |
| Russia (SAMR) | 16° | 15° | Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Russia |
| Moonsighting Committee | 18° | 18° | Moonsighting Committee Worldwide (with a seasonal adjustment for high latitudes; UK, Ireland, Nordics) |
No method involves an internet call. Each is a small table of angles applied to the sun's position for your coordinates and today's date, entirely on your device. For the exact parameters behind each one - the fixed-interval and Shia conventions, the Asr rule, high latitudes, and a side-by-side difference table - see calculation methods in depth.
Every country: its authority and the method it uses
This is the reference the app's defaults are built from. “Served by” is either the authority's own extracted timetable (their printed numbers), or computed with the authority's own method. A handful of authorities publish tables that deviate slightly from a pure method (a safety margin, an observational tweak); those are the ones we extract over time - see the last section. Sources are the authorities' own pages.
Middle East, Gulf, North Africa
| Country | Authority | Method used | Served by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Saudi Arabia | Umm al-Qura University | Umm al-Qura | Computed |
| UAE | GAIAE Awqaf / IACAD | Gulf Region | Computed |
| Kuwait | Ministry of Awqaf | Kuwait | Computed |
| Qatar | Qatar Calendar House | Qatar | Computed |
| Bahrain, Oman, Yemen | National Awqaf | Umm al-Qura | Computed |
| Egypt | Egyptian Survey Authority | Egyptian | Computed (this is the definitional Egyptian method) |
| Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq | National Iftaa / Awqaf | Muslim World League | Computed |
| Libya, Sudan, Mauritania, Tunisia, Algeria | National Religious Affairs | Muslim World League | Computed |
| Morocco | Ministry of Habous & Islamic Affairs | Muslim World League | Computed (national table deviates - extract later) |
South, Southeast & Central Asia
| Country | Authority | Method used | Served by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sri Lanka | All Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulama (ACJU) | ACJU | Extracted timetable |
| Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Nepal, Myanmar | Karachi convention / national bodies | Karachi | Computed (Bangladesh table deviates - extract later) |
| Indonesia | Kemenag - Bimas Islam | Kemenag | Computed (adds ~2 min iḥtiyāṭ - extract later) |
| Malaysia | JAKIM (e-solat) | JAKIM (20°/18°, same as MUIS) | Extracted timetable (60 official zones) |
| Singapore | MUIS | MUIS | Computed |
| Brunei, Thailand | Religious Affairs / CICOT | MUIS | Computed |
| Philippines | NCMF | Karachi | Computed |
| Iran | Institute of Geophysics, University of Tehran | Tehran | Computed |
| Azerbaijan | Caucasus Muslims Board | Muslim World League | Computed (board publishes separate Shia/Sunni columns, discloses no angle) |
| Turkey | Diyanet | Diyanet | Computed (official API - extract later) |
| Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan | National Muslim Boards | Muslim World League | Computed (regional tables - extract later) |
Europe, Americas, Africa, Oceania
| Country | Authority | Method used | Served by |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States, Canada | ISNA / Fiqh Council of North America | ISNA | Computed |
| United Kingdom, Ireland | No single authority; Moonsighting Committee widely followed | Moonsighting Committee | Computed (some mosque tables deviate in summer - extract later) |
| France | Union of Islamic Organisations of France (UOIF) | UOIF | Computed |
| Germany, Netherlands | Diyanet-affiliated (DITIB) communities | Diyanet | Computed |
| Russia | Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Russia | Russia (SAMR) | Computed |
| Bosnia, Kosovo, Albania, N. Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria | National Islamic Communities (official takvim) | Muslim World League | Computed (official takvim deviates - extract later) |
| Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland) | National Islamic councils (high-latitude rule) | Moonsighting Committee | Computed (high-latitude tables deviate - extract later) |
| Sub-Saharan Africa (Nigeria, Senegal, Kenya, Tanzania, ...) | National Islamic councils (coordinate moon-sighting) | Muslim World League | Computed |
| South Africa | Regional bodies (MJC, Jamiatul Ulama) | Muslim World League | Computed (regional tables deviate - extract later) |
| Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, and others | No single authority | Muslim World League | Computed |
How your times are prepared and read
The model is the same everywhere and is built to be instant, offline, and private. Every supported location gets a compact annual table of times, prepared once a year on our build machines - never on your phone. Each table is one of two kinds:
- Extracted - the authority's own published numbers, read from their timetables, for authorities whose tables deviate from a pure method (Sri Lanka's ACJU, Malaysia's JAKIM).
- Computed - for everywhere else, the times computed with that country's authority method, plus any per-district adjustment the authority announces. Because the authority defines its times by that method, this reproduces the authority's own times.
At prayer time your device simply reads the row for your nearest zone - no calculation, so the answer is instant and works with no signal at all. The app computes on your device only as a fallback: an exact GPS spot we have no table for, or when you switch to a non-default method. That runs a small astronomical engine compiled to WebAssembly so it is fast and identical to the offline preparation - and, like everything here, it never contacts a server or a prayer-times API.
On a city page the timetable is also written into the page itself, so the times are present before any script runs - for you, for search engines, and for a shared link's preview.
Extracted so far: Sri Lanka (ACJU) and Malaysia (JAKIM, 60 official zones). Queued next, in rough order: Indonesia (Kemenag), Turkey (Diyanet), Bangladesh (Islamic Foundation), the Balkan takvim authorities, the UK and Nordic high-latitude timetables, Morocco (Habous), and the Central Asian boards. Everywhere not yet extracted is served by its authority's computed method, already correct for the great majority.
Sources for the tables are the authorities' own publications; the full per-country evidence is in the project's research record. Nothing you see is ever fetched from a prayer-times service. See the rulings & evidence and data sources.