Two apps can show different prayer times for the same town because they are using different calculation methods, a different setting for Asr, or both. A calculation method is a set of agreed rules for turning the position of the sun into the start of Fajr and Isha, and different bodies of scholars and astronomers in different countries have settled on slightly different rules. Most people who want their phone to agree with their masjid find out which timetable the masjid uses and set the app to match it, and that is the approach this article walks through.
Each of these choices can be set in our app, Miqa, and we explain how at the end.
Why two apps can show different times
Some prayer times leave very little room for difference. Dhuhr begins once the sun has passed its highest point, and Maghrib begins at sunset, and both of these can be calculated precisely for any place and date. Apps that use the same location will usually agree on them to within a minute or so, and a difference larger than that often means the apps are set to slightly different places.
Fajr and Isha are another matter. Fajr begins with the first true light of dawn spreading across the horizon, and Isha begins when the last light of evening has left the sky. These moments depend on how much light is in the sky, and that light changes with the season, the latitude, the height of the land and the clearness of the air. Turning them into a number that a phone can calculate means making a choice, and that choice is what a calculation method records.
Asr is the third source of difference, because the schools of fiqh hold two views on when its time begins. An app set to one view and an app set to the other can be far apart on Asr, by an amount that changes with the place and the season, while agreeing on every other prayer.
What a calculation method is
When a calculation method describes Fajr and Isha, it usually does so as an angle, meaning how far the sun has sunk below the horizon at that moment. A larger angle for Fajr places it earlier in the morning, when the sun is further below the horizon, and a smaller angle places it later. Isha works the other way round, so a larger angle places it later in the evening.
Some methods do not use an angle for Isha at all. They set Isha at a fixed length of time after Maghrib, and one well-known method makes that interval longer during Ramadan.
The methods in common use carry the names of the bodies that published them, which are usually national religious authorities or recognised Islamic organisations. Each of them reflects the observations and judgement of the people who set it, for the region they were serving. One of the pictures on Miqa’s store page, for example, shows the app set to Riyadh with the Umm al-Qura method, which is the method used in Saudi Arabia.
There is one further complication in places far from the equator. In parts of northern Europe and Canada during summer, the sun may never sink far enough below the horizon for the usual angle to be reached, so the standard formula gives no answer for Fajr or Isha. Methods handle this with special rules for higher latitudes, for example by dividing the night into parts. How to pray in such places is a question for scholars, and an app can only apply the rule its user has chosen.
Two ways of working out Asr
The time of Asr is set by the length of shadows in the afternoon. At noon, an upright object casts its shortest shadow of the day, and as the afternoon goes on, the shadow grows longer.
The view of the majority of jurists is that Asr begins when the shadow of an object equals the object’s own length, added to the length of the shadow it cast at noon. Shaykh Ibn Baz states this in his fatwa on the beginning and end of the prayer times (binbaz.org.sa, fatwa 15630), and IslamQA, the site run by Shaykh Muhammad Salih al-Munajjid, gives the same definition in answer 9940. Imam Abu Hanifah held that Asr begins when the shadow reaches twice the object’s length, again added to the noon shadow, which places Asr later in the afternoon. IslamQA’s answer 179769, in Arabic, records both views and notes that the majority of jurists, along with Abu Hanifah’s two students Abu Yusuf and Muhammad, held the first.
Prayer apps usually offer this choice as a single setting with two values, one named Shafi’i and one named Hanafi. The setting named Shafi’i calculates Asr at one shadow length and the setting named Hanafi at two, whatever school the person using it follows. We give no ruling here on which view is stronger, and the setting exists only so that the app can match the practice you already follow.
Small adjustments by the minute
Even when an app uses the same method as your masjid, the times can still differ by a minute or two. A masjid timetable might round times, add a few minutes of caution to certain prayers, or be calculated for a point in the town a little way from where you live.
For this reason, a good prayer app lets you move each prayer earlier or later by whole minutes. The rules for when a prayer begins stay exactly as they were, and the adjustment only brings the app into line with the timetable your community uses, so that the adhan on your phone and the adhan at the masjid fall together.
Adjustments also help where a method is close to right for your town but your masjid has made a small local correction over the years. Setting the difference once means the app carries it forward through every day of the year.
Matching your masjid’s timetable
Once you know which timetable your masjid uses, the rest is a matter of settings. You choose the matching method in your app and the matching Asr setting, and then make small minute adjustments until the app agrees with the printed timetable.
On the question behind this, IslamQA’s answer 139757 explains that the prayer times are tied to signs that can be seen, such as dawn, the sun passing its height and sunset, and that it is best for a person to learn those signs. It adds that where this is too difficult, it is permissible to follow a masjid whose people in charge are trusted.
We are a software studio, and we give no rulings. Our part is narrower: to make the app match the timetable you have chosen, as closely and reliably as we can.
Setting it in Miqa
Miqa offers 14 calculation methods, a choice of Hanafi or Shafi’i Asr, and an adjustment by the minute for each prayer so that you can match your masjid exactly. You choose your place from your location or from a list of cities, and the times are then worked out on your phone, with no internet needed at any point, in the way our article on prayer times without the internet describes.
To match your masjid, open the location and calculation settings, choose your city and the method your masjid uses, pick the Asr setting you follow, and then compare a few days of times with the printed timetable. If one prayer is consistently a minute or two off, adjust that prayer by the difference and leave the others alone. The settings then stay as you left them, so the comparison only needs doing again if your masjid changes its timetable.