Qibla Finder: Which Way Is the Qibla?

How to use it

1. Tap Find the qibla and allow location. On iPhone, also allow motion and orientation access, so the page can read the compass.
2. Hold your phone flat, screen up, away from metal and magnets.
3. Turn your whole body until the gold arrow points straight up to the white marker. The ring glows gold and your phone gives a short buzz when you are within 5° of the qibla.
4. On a computer, or if you would rather not share your location, type your city. The dial then shows the direction with north at the top. Face that many degrees clockwise from north.

Phones measure from magnetic north, which can be more than 10° away from true north in parts of North America and Australia. The finder corrects for this with the World Magnetic Model, the same model phones and maps use. If the arrow still looks off, calibrate your compass by moving the phone in a figure eight, or use one of the ways below to check.

How to find the qibla without a phone

• The sun over the Kaaba. Twice a year the sun stands directly above the Kaaba: on 27 or 28 May at 09:18 UTC (12:18 in Mecca), and on 15 or 16 July at 09:27 UTC (12:27 in Mecca). At that minute, face the sun and you face the qibla. Every shadow points straight away from it. In the UK that is 10:18 and 10:27; in Norway, Germany and France 11:18 and 11:27. It works wherever the sun is up at that moment: Europe, Africa, the Middle East and most of Asia.
• The sun on the other side. Around 28 November at 21:09 UTC and 13 January at 21:29 UTC, the sun stands directly opposite the Kaaba. Then your shadow points towards the qibla. This one works in the Americas: in New York it is 16:09 and 16:29, in Los Angeles 13:09 and 13:29.
• The sun at midday. On any sunny day, at solar noon the sun is due south anywhere north of the tropics, such as Europe, Canada and the US mainland, so your shadow points due north. Dhuhr begins just after solar noon. Mark north, then turn clockwise by your qibla bearing from the table below.
• A mosque. Every mosque is built facing the qibla. The wall with the mihrab, the niche where the imam stands, faces the Kaaba. Note which way it points and use the same direction nearby.
• A plain compass. Pick your city in the finder above; it tells you which figure to face on a magnetic compass.

More ways, and what to do on a plane, at work or when you cannot tell at all, are in how to find the qibla direction for prayer.

Why great-circle direction

The earth is round, so the shortest way to Mecca is not the straight line you would draw on a flat map. It is a great circle, the path a plane flies. The qibla is the direction you set off in along that path.

From New York, Mecca lies further south and far to the east, so on a flat map it looks east-south-east. But the shortest path climbs north over the North Atlantic, passes over Europe and comes down to Arabia, so you set off to the north-east, at 58°. The same is true across North America. Some older mosques there face east or south-east, following the flat-map line; most Muslims and scholars today use the great-circle direction, and so does this finder.

From Western Europe the difference is smaller, and the qibla points south-east. From Norway it turns further south, to 139° from Oslo. From Indonesia and Malaysia it points west-north-west, and from Australia roughly west.