Qibla Direction
Which way to face, from wherever you are. Prayer times →
Tap “Use my location,” or choose a city, to find your direction.
This bearing is exact for wherever you are. Everything below is about getting your phone to agree with it.
Hold the phone flat, screen up, like a compass.
You are facing the Ka’bah
On a phone, the live compass turns the dial as you turn — point the arrow away from you, toward the Ka’bah.
Find it by the sun
The sun cannot drift and cannot be thrown off by metal. If you can see it, this is the direction to trust.
Today, a shadow falls on the Qibla line at:
Stand anything straight up in the sun at one of these times — a pen, a stick, a door edge. Its shadow is the line. Mark it once and you have the Qibla for that spot for good.
Holding your phone
Draw a figure of eight
In the air, with the phone in your hand — like this. Roll your wrist as you go, so the phone tips as well as travels. About five seconds.
Start moving your phone through the shape above.
- 1Hold it however you like — upright, flat, either hand. The point is to turn it through as many angles as you can.
- 2Away from metal, magnets and speakers. A desk lamp or a laptop is enough to spoil it.
- 3Sweep the shape above, rolling your wrist so the phone tips as well as travels.
- 4Keep going until the ring fills. About five seconds.
No rush, and nothing breaks if you skip it — the direction is still calculated correctly from your location. It’s only the phone’s sense of where north is that needs the help.
Starting the camera…
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The bearing is calculated to the Ka’bah itself (21.4224779°N,
39.8251832°E) using the WGS84 ellipsoidal geodesic method — the
same standard professional surveying tools use, and more accurate
than the spherical formula most Qibla calculators settle for. It
depends only on your location, so it is exact the moment that is
set.
Your phone’s magnetic compass is the part that isn’t exact. It
drifts, metal nearby pulls it, and on many Android devices it
reports direction relative to magnetic north rather than
the true north this bearing is measured from — a gap that
exceeds twenty degrees in some parts of the world. That is why the
accuracy reading and the calibration prompt are here, and why the
sun method above is offered first: it is the one route to the
Qibla on this page that no sensor can get wrong.