News
· Version 1.10.0
New versions, offered in the app
When a new version of AWAS is out, the app now offers it in Google Play's own window, at most once every three days, and you are free to decline. The update downloads while you go on using the app, and Restart, on the bar that follows, installs it and opens the new version.
The app still declares no internet permission. To know whether a new version is out, it asks the Google Play app on your phone, which checks online as it does for all your apps; the privacy policy says what Google Play handles for this. The window first appears with the version after this one.
· Version 1.9.0
The Hijri date, and the Hijri day
The Hijri date. It now shows under today's date, computed by the rule each place follows: Umm al-Qura, a forecast of the Moroccan or Algerian announcement, a sighting from the place itself, or the Istanbul 2016 calendar. If an announcement differs, move the date by a day or two in Settings. The Calendar tab can show Hijri months too.
The Hijri day. The home screen can follow the day as the Hijri calendar counts it, from sunset: Maghrib and Isha first, then Fajr to Asr, with the Hijri date on top. The round Day button under the qibla circle switches between it and the Gregorian day, and the app asks once, at its first start, which one to show.
And also. After the day's last prayer, the countdown runs on to the next day's first. The Diyanet method adds the precautionary minutes it publishes. At high latitudes, a prayer the Sun does not reach is shown as a dash on its own, and the rest of the day stays. A reminder can now come up to 30 minutes before a prayer.
· Version 1.7.1
Alerts that arrive at the minute
A reader reported prayer alerts arriving early, and sometimes late. Two unrelated faults, both fixed.
Late. Since Android 14 an app has to ask for the right to set an alarm on the minute, and AWAS only offered it from a settings row. Turning an alert on now asks for it, and so does opening AWAS with one already on.
Early. After a restart, alerts that fell due while the phone was off were all firing at once. They are dropped now.
An alert Android will not let arrive at the right minute is turned off rather than delivered late, and AWAS says so when it happens.
What the app does
- It shows the five daily prayer times (Fajr, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib and Isha), along with sunrise, which marks the end of the window in which Fajr can be prayed.
- It shows the Hijri date under today's date, computed by the rule your authority follows, and lets you move it by a day or two when an announcement differs.
- The home screen follows the Gregorian day, from Fajr to Isha, or the Hijri day, from Maghrib to Asr, as you choose.
- You pick your city from the list built into the app.
- You can add your own places by entering their coordinates: latitude, longitude, elevation and time zone.
- You choose the calculation method that matches your practice, or define your own.
- You can correct each prayer by a few minutes, independently of the others.
- Alerts can mark each prayer, at the time or up to 30 minutes before: silent, vibrating, with the device's notification sound, or with the adhan in a recording of your own, as you choose.
- A calendar gives the times for a whole month, by Gregorian or Hijri months, and lets you write a note against a date.
- A separate section shows the daily voluntary prayers for one school of fiqh at a time, on a clock of their own, with the times in which ordinary voluntary prayer is prohibited or discouraged.
- A qibla compass gives the direction of the Kaaba from the place you chose, and the distance to it, and turns with the phone to bring you onto it.
- For now, three languages are supported: English, French and Arabic.
- A mosque can set it to its own coordinates and its own practice, and read back the timetable it announces.
- Everything is computed on the device, so nothing needs a network.
The Hijri date, and the Hijri day
The Hijri date is computed on the device, like the times, by the rule each place follows: the Umm al-Qura calendar of Saudi Arabia; a forecast of what Morocco or Algeria will announce, from whether the crescent could be seen at the country's western edge, by Mohammad Odeh's criterion; a sighting from the place itself, by the same criterion; or the unified calendar adopted in Istanbul in 2016, which the Diyanet and the CFCM follow. A new place is given the rule of its region, and you can change it in Settings.
Countries do not begin a month on the same day, and no calculation knows what a commission will announce. If the announcement differs from the date shown, move the date by a day or two, earlier or later, and it stays moved. The announcement prevails.
The home screen can lay the six times out by the Gregorian day, from Fajr to Isha, or by the Hijri day, which begins at sunset: the Maghrib and the Isha of the evening that opens it, then Fajr to Asr, with the Hijri date leading the header. The round Day button under the qibla circle switches between the two, and the first start asks which one to show. The times are the same either way; only their order changes. After the day's last prayer, the countdown runs on to the first of the next, and the Calendar tab shows a whole month by either calendar.
The daily voluntary prayers
A section of its own sets out the daily nawafil for one school at a time: Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i or Hanbali. Nothing is chosen for you. The first visit asks which school to show, the choice can be changed at any moment, and it never alters the calculated prayer times.
Each prayer is drawn on a 24-hour clock over the day just calculated, and listed with its degree in that school's own terms, its rak'ah, and how they are grouped into prayers. An outer ring carries the times in which ordinary voluntary prayer is prohibited or discouraged, and the rows name the exceptions, such as the Fajr sunnah inside the restricted morning. Each degree carries a colour of its own on the clock, and a screen of its own sets out the ladder that school uses, so a colour or a term can be looked up where it is used.
It reports what the schools hold. It rules on nothing, and it does not follow what you have prayed: a boundary that depends on an obligatory prayer says so, because a clock cannot know when you performed it.
The qibla
A compass gives the direction of the Kaaba and the distance to it, computed from the place you chose rather than from where the phone is. AWAS never reads your location, so a notice above the compass names the place the direction is for. The rose turns with the phone, the arrow points to the Kaaba, your phone's heading is shown in degrees under the distance, and the phone gives one short vibration when you face the Kaaba.
Two methods turn the rose. Direct reads the magnetometer and gives the direction at once. Stabilised adds the gyroscope, calmer in the hand, and waits a few seconds to agree with the magnetometer before it shows anything.
A phone's magnetometer is easily misled by a magnet, metal or an electronic device close by. AWAS compares the magnetic field the phone measures with the Earth's field at the place you chose: when they disagree it shows no direction and says why, and when they differ a little it shows the direction under a warning. It cannot detect every disturbance, so check against a known reference when it matters.
The adhan, in your own recording
An alert can call the adhan instead of playing the notification sound. AWAS ships no recording of it, so the one you hear is yours to choose: an audio file already on your phone, or one you make with the voice recorder, and a second one for Fajr if you like, with its tathwib. Without a Fajr recording, Fajr is called with the other.
The app plays it to the end, at the volume set for alerts, without depending on the phone's notification sound for that. A phone set to silent or vibrate stays quiet: the alert vibrates for two seconds in place of the sound and offers Listen, which plays the adhan with Stop on the notification, without opening the app. Turning any alert on asks for the three things Android does not grant on its own, and choosing the adhan asks once more, since its playback is the first thing a phone that sleeps the app cuts short. The permissions row in the settings says what is allowed and where to change it.
The app's advantages
- No data collection, in any form.
- No account, no sign-up, no identifier.
- No advertising.
- No access to GPS or to the device's location.
- No server: the app has no backend and makes no network requests.
The science behind the times
Each time is computed from the position of the Sun over the coordinates you chose, using ephem, an open-source astronomy library relied on in real observational work. The app's licence screen lists it: the claim is checkable on the device.
AWAS was created by a PhD in atmospheric sciences, at home with this kind of computation.
A note on the times
Read before use
The times shown are computed astronomically, according to the calculation method you selected. They may differ from those of a mosque or a local authority, whose practice takes precedence.