Salah Companion: Prayer Times user guide

Salah Companion is designed so that the first five minutes decide whether an app stays on your phone. This guide walks through that setup once, properly, so the app fades into the background and simply tells you when it is time to pray.

1. Set your location

On first launch the app asks for location permission. Grant "While using the app" if you prefer, but choose "Allow all the time" if you want times to update automatically when you travel. Prayer times depend on your latitude, longitude and time zone, so an approximate location produces approximate times.

If you would rather not share location at all, tap Settings → Location → Set manually and search for your city. Manual mode is fully supported: the app stores the coordinates of the city you picked and never asks for permission again.

2. Choose a calculation method

Prayer times are derived from the sun's angle below the horizon, and different authorities use different angles. The app supports the common conventions, including Muslim World League, Umm al-Qura, Egyptian General Authority, University of Islamic Sciences Karachi, ISNA and Moonsighting Committee.

If you are unsure which to pick, use the same method as your local mosque so your times match the community around you. You can change this at any time in Settings → Calculation without losing your tracker history.

3. Choose your Asr school

Hanafi and Shafi'i schools calculate Asr differently, which typically shifts the time by roughly an hour. Pick the one you follow in Settings → Asr calculation. This is the single setting most often responsible for "the app disagrees with my mosque".

4. Apply manual adjustments if needed

Some mosques add a few minutes to a calculated time before calling the adhan. Settings → Adjustments lets you nudge each prayer independently, in minutes, so the app matches your mosque exactly rather than approximately.

5. Turn on the notifications you actually want

Head to Settings → Notifications and enable only the prayers you want to be alerted for. Fewer, meaningful alerts are respected; a full set of loud alerts tends to get muted within a week. The notifications guide covers reliability on specific Android manufacturers.

What to do next

• Add the home screen widget for a glance at the next prayer without unlocking your phone.
• Open the Qibla tab once and calibrate the compass while you are somewhere with a clear view of the sky.
• Mark a prayer as completed in the Tracker to start your first streak.

Everything is stored on your device. There is no account to create and nothing to sign in to.

A prayer reminder that arrives ten minutes late is worse than no reminder at all. This guide explains how Salah Companion schedules alerts and what to change on your phone so they arrive on time, every time.

How scheduling works

The app schedules exact alarms for the upcoming prayers rather than polling in the background. Alarms are rescheduled when times change (midnight rollover, travel, or a settings change), which means the app needs permission to set exact alarms and needs to be excluded from aggressive battery optimisation.

Adhan and reminder types

For each prayer you can pick one of four alert styles:

• Full adhan — the complete call to prayer.
• Short adhan — the opening lines only, for offices and shared spaces.
• Beep or vibrate — discreet, still unmissable.
• Silent — the prayer appears in the widget and tracker but nothing sounds.

You can also enable a pre-prayer reminder, from 5 to 45 minutes ahead. Many people find one heads-up before Asr and Maghrib more useful than an alert at every prayer.

Quiet hours and meeting mode

Settings → Notifications → Quiet hours silences audio between two times you choose while keeping the visual notification. Use this for overnight Fajr if you wake with your own alarm, or during recurring meetings.

Making Android deliver alerts reliably

Android manufacturers apply their own battery rules on top of the platform. If notifications arrive late or not at all:

1. 1.Exact alarms — Settings → Apps → Salah Companion → Alarms & reminders → allow.
2. 2.Battery — set the app to Unrestricted rather than Optimised.
3. 3.Autostart — Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Realme and OnePlus devices require the app to be enabled in an Autostart or Startup Manager list.
4. 4.Lock the app — on MIUI and ColorOS, open Recents and pin/lock the app so aggressive cleaners do not kill it.
5. 5.Do Not Disturb — allow the app as an exception if you use DND overnight.

Checking that it works

Use Settings → Notifications → Send test alert. The test uses the same channel and the same scheduling path as a real prayer alert, so if the test arrives correctly and on time, real alerts will too.

If sound does not play

Android notification channels own the sound, not the app. If you previously muted a channel, the app cannot re-enable it. Open Settings → Apps → Salah Companion → Notifications, select the prayer channel and set the sound and importance there.

The qibla compass points toward the Kaaba in Makkah from wherever you are standing. It works fully offline: the bearing is calculated from your coordinates, and your device's magnetometer supplies the heading.

Calibrating first

Magnetometers drift. If the needle wobbles or the app shows a low-accuracy warning:

1. 1.Move away from laptops, speakers, car dashboards, metal desks and magnetic phone mounts.
2. 2.Hold the phone flat, screen up.
3. 3.Move it in a figure-of-eight motion three or four times.

The accuracy indicator turns green when the sensor is confident. Recalibrate whenever you change location significantly or the reading looks obviously wrong.

Reading the display

The outer ring shows compass degrees. The highlighted marker is the qibla bearing from your position, and the app also prints that bearing in degrees from true north. Rotate until the marker sits at the top of the dial; you are then facing the qibla.

The bearing in degrees is worth noting once for places you pray regularly. If you know your living room qibla is 118°, you can align a mat without opening the app.

Using it without a compass sensor

Some tablets and budget phones have no magnetometer. In that case the app switches to map mode: it draws the great-circle line from your location toward Makkah on a map so you can align using a street, wall or landmark instead.

Why the qibla is not simply "east" or "south-east"

The direction is the shortest path over the surface of a sphere, not a straight line on a flat map. From the UK this points roughly south-east; from Indonesia, roughly west-north-west; from northern USA it points noticeably north-east, which surprises people who expect it to look east on a flat world map. The app always uses the great-circle calculation.

Accuracy expectations

A phone compass is generally accurate to within a few degrees when calibrated and away from interference. That is more than sufficient for prayer. If you need higher confidence in a fixed location, take three readings from different spots in the room and use the average.

The tracker exists for one reason: consistency is easier to build when you can see it. It is deliberately simple — no scores, no shame, no notifications nagging you about a broken streak.

Marking a prayer

Open the Today tab and tap a prayer to cycle through its states:

• Not marked — the default.
• Prayed — completed on time.
• Late — prayed, but after the window you set for yourself.
• Missed — recorded honestly so your history stays useful.

You can mark a prayer from the notification shade as well, which is faster than opening the app.

Reading the month view

The month grid shows one row per day and one cell per prayer. Patterns become obvious quickly: many people discover that their Fajr is solid but their Asr collapses on workdays, or that weekends are weaker than weekdays. That pattern is more actionable than a single overall percentage.

Streaks, used carefully

A streak counts consecutive days where every prayer is marked as prayed. Streaks motivate some people and demoralise others, so they can be switched off entirely in Settings → Tracker → Show streaks. Turning them off does not delete your history.

Exporting and backing up

Tracker data lives on your device. Settings → Data → Export produces a CSV file you can save to your storage or cloud drive. Restoring is the reverse: Settings → Data → Import. If you change phones, export first — there is no server-side copy because the app has no account system.

Editing the past

Tap any past day in the month view to correct it. Backfilling a day you forgot to mark is normal use, not cheating; the value of the record is that it reflects reality.

Privacy

Nothing in the tracker is uploaded, shared or analysed remotely. It is a private record kept on your phone.

Common issues, with the fix that resolves each one in practice.

The times do not match my mosque

Almost always one of three settings:

1. 1.Calculation method — match whatever your mosque uses (Settings → Calculation).
2. 2.Asr school — Hanafi and Shafi'i differ by roughly an hour.
3. 3.High-latitude rule — above about 48° latitude, Fajr and Isha can be undefined in summer. Choose the rule your community follows: Middle of the Night, One Seventh, or Angle Based.

If a difference of two or three minutes remains, use Settings → Adjustments to nudge individual prayers so the app matches your mosque exactly.

Notifications are late or missing

Android battery management is the usual cause. Set the app to Unrestricted battery usage, allow Alarms & reminders, and add it to your device's Autostart list. Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Realme, OnePlus and Samsung devices each apply their own restrictions on top of Android.

No sound plays with the notification

Notification channels own the sound. Open Settings → Apps → Salah Companion → Notifications, pick the prayer channel and set both the sound and the importance to at least "Default". An app cannot override a channel you have previously silenced.

Times did not update after I travelled

If you granted location access only while the app is open, open the app once in the new city. In manual mode, change the city in Settings → Location. Check that your phone's time zone is set to automatic.

The qibla arrow spins or points the wrong way

Calibrate with a figure-of-eight motion away from metal and magnets. Phone cases with magnetic mounts and magnetic car holders are frequent culprits.

I lost my tracker history

History is stored locally, so an uninstall or a device change removes it unless you exported first (Settings → Data → Export). There is no server copy to restore from — that is the trade-off of an app with no account.

Ramadan timings look off

Check that Ramadan mode is enabled and that your Fajr calculation matches the one used for local suhoor timings; imsak is often announced a few minutes before Fajr.

Still stuck?

Send us the details through the contact page: device model, Android version, your calculation method and the times you expected versus what the app shows. Those four things resolve most reports on the first reply.