Qibla Direction Finder

About the Qibla Direction Finder

Find the Qibla, the direction of the Kaaba in Makkah, from wherever you are. Search for your city, let your browser share your location or type coordinates, and the page gives the direction in degrees from true north, the same direction on an ordinary magnetic compass, and the distance to the Kaaba.

On a phone or tablet with a compass sensor, press Start the live compass and a needle turns with the device and points at the Kaaba; the page tells you how far to turn and says when you are facing the Qibla. Without a compass, the shadow method uses where the Sun is right now: stand with your shadow in front of you and turn by the angle shown.

Everything is worked out on your device with standard spherical trigonometry and the World Magnetic Model; no map service is used and your position is not sent anywhere.

How the direction is worked out

The Qibla is the direction of the Kaaba along the shortest path over the globe, a great circle: the bearing you set off on from where you stand. With your latitude φ and longitude λ, the Kaaba at φₖ = 21.4225° N, λₖ = 39.8262° E and Δλ = λₖ − λ, the bearing from true north is

θ = atan2(sin Δλ · cos φₖ, cos φ · sin φₖ − sin φ · cos φₖ · cos Δλ)

The distance is the great-circle distance by the haversine formula on the mean Earth radius of 6,371 km, accurate to about half a per cent. This is the method of the open-source adhan prayer-times library (MIT licence), which the Prayer Times page also uses; this tool’s tests check that both give the same bearing for places all over the world.

True north, magnetic north and your compass

Maps and the bearing above use true north, the direction of the North Pole. A magnetic compass, including the one inside a phone, points to magnetic north, which is a few degrees away in most places and much further in some. The difference is the magnetic declination, and it changes slowly from year to year.

The page takes it from the World Magnetic Model, the standard model for navigation developed by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information and the British Geological Survey, for your place and today’s date. The magnetic bearing is the true bearing minus the declination (east counts as positive): in New Delhi the declination is about 1.3° E, so the Qibla of 266.6° true reads about 265.3° on a magnetic compass; in New York, about 12.5° W, the Qibla of 58.5° true reads about 71° on it. The live compass makes this correction itself.

The model’s own error for declination is shown beside it. It grows near the magnetic poles: in the far north of Canada and Greenland and on parts of the coast of Antarctica the page warns that a compass needs care, and closer still to the magnetic poles that it is unreliable, as the model’s makers do.

The shadow method: no compass needed

When the Sun is up, shadows point exactly away from it, and the page knows where the Sun is for your place and the time on your device. Stand so that your own shadow (or the shadow of an upright pole) points straight ahead of you, then turn left or right by the angle shown.

It is not usable when the Sun is below the horizon, or when it is almost straight overhead around midday (more than 75° up: in the tropics, and in summer up to about 38° north or south), because shadows are then too short to show a direction; the page says so. Never look directly at the Sun. The Sun’s position comes from the suncalc library (BSD licence), which this tool’s tests check against the astronomy-engine library.

Why the Qibla points north-east from North America

On a flat world map Makkah looks south-east of New York, but the map stretches the north. The shortest path over the globe from New York to Makkah heads north-east, over the North Atlantic: the great-circle Qibla there is about 58.5°. Following a single unchanging compass course instead (a rhumb line, the straight line on a flat map) would mean setting off at about 101°, slightly south of east, on a longer path. The same happens across Canada and the United States, and the other way round from Japan, Korea and eastern China, where the Qibla is west-northwest rather than due west.

Getting a good reading on a phone

• Calibrate the compass by moving the phone slowly in a figure of eight a few times. Safari on iPhone tells the page how accurate the compass is, and the page shows it.
• Keep away from metal and magnets: steel tables, cars, speakers, laptops, magnetic phone cases and mounts all pull a compass off.
• Hold the phone flat, or upright like a camera: the page switches to the camera direction when the phone is held up.
• Compare with the shadow method or with a magnetic compass when it matters, and use your exact position near the far side of the Earth from Makkah (in the South Pacific), where the direction changes quickly as you move.

Sources

• NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, World Magnetic Model and its error model and blackout zones; the model’s coefficients are U.S. Government material, not subject to copyright. This tool’s tests reproduce all 100 of the model’s official test values.
• W3C, DeviceOrientation Event Specification: how browsers report a device’s orientation.
• adhan (MIT licence): the Qibla formula the tests compare against; suncalc (BSD licence): the Sun’s position.
• GeoNames place names and coordinates for the city search, licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Limitations

• A phone compass is only as good as its sensor and its surroundings: metal, magnets and electronics nearby can turn it by many degrees. Calibrate it, and check against the shadow method when you can.
• Most laptops and desktop computers have no compass a browser can read, so the live needle works on phones and tablets with one; the bearing and the shadow method work everywhere.
• The city search lists about 2,000 larger places. For a village, use your location or type its coordinates: a few kilometres make no visible difference to the direction, except very close to Makkah or on the far side of the Earth from it.
• This page does the geometry only. For questions of religious practice, such as how exact the direction must be, ask a scholar or your local mosque.

Privacy

On this device: nothing is sent

Your position stays on this device: the direction, the distance, the declination and the Sun’s position are all calculated in your browser, and nothing is sent anywhere. A city you choose, or coordinates you type, are remembered in this browser for your next visit; your device’s own location is not stored.