I built a free qaza namaz tracker because I kept losing count of missed prayers

Rao Mubashir Ali — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 02:38:19 +0000

If you're Muslim, you probably know the feeling. At some point you missed prayers, maybe for months or years, and now you want to make them up (qaza). The hard part isn't praying them. It's keeping count.

I tried a note on my phone, then a spreadsheet, then a paper tally. All of them broke the same way: I'd forget to update them, and after a few weeks I had no idea what the real number was. So I built a simple namaz and qaza tracker into my site, Yaad-e-Namaz.

What it does

Tick each namaz as you pray it, five a day.
Missed ones turn into qaza automatically. You don't have to remember to add them.
Make-ups count down. Every qaza you pray brings the total down, so you can actually see progress.
Start from an estimate. Most people don't know their exact number, so you can enter a rough starting count and work from there.
Reminders on WhatsApp. This turned out to be the feature people care about most. A notification on a prayer app is easy to swipe away. A WhatsApp message from a contact feels like someone checking in. More on that here: WhatsApp namaz reminders.

The core idea is tiny

Under the hood, it's just a counter per prayer:

const PRAYERS = ['fajr', 'zuhr', 'asr', 'maghrib', 'isha'];

// at the end of each day, anything not ticked becomes qaza
function closeDay(day, qaza) {
  for (const p of PRAYERS) {
    if (!day[p]) qaza[p] += 1;
  }
  return qaza;
}

// praying a make-up brings the count down
function prayQaza(qaza, p) {
  qaza[p] = Math.max(0, qaza[p] - 1);
  return qaza;
}

The real work was everything around it: making the daily tick take one tap, keeping counts per prayer instead of one big number (Fajr is usually the one people miss most), and making the total feel motivating instead of guilt-inducing.

A few design choices

Per-prayer counts, not one total. "You owe 1,200 prayers" is crushing. "You have 240 Fajr left" is something you can plan around.

A simple routine. A common suggestion is to pray one qaza with each daily prayer, so five a day. At that pace the counter visibly drops every week, which keeps people going.

Privacy first. This is personal. The data is private to your account, there are no ads, and you can delete your account any time.

No account needed for everything else. Prayer times, Qibla, the Quran and hadith all work without signing in. You only need an account for the tracker and WhatsApp reminders, because those have to remember things about you.

Try it

It's free: yaadenamaz.com/account. If you've built habit trackers before, I'd love to hear what worked for you. And if you use it, tell me what's annoying so I can fix it.

How I built a Qibla compass that runs in the phone browser (no app install)

Rao Mubashir Ali — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 02:32:33 +0000

I run Yaad-e-Namaz, a free prayer times site with no ads. The page people use the most by far is the Qibla finder, which shows Muslims the direction of the Kaaba in Makkah. I wanted it to work straight in the phone browser, without asking anyone to install an app. Here's how it works and what tripped me up.

1. The math: great-circle bearing

The Qibla isn't "the direction on a flat map". It's the start of the shortest path over the globe to the Kaaba (21.4225° N, 39.8262° E). That's a standard initial bearing calculation:

const KAABA = { lat: 21.4225, lng: 39.8262 };
const rad = d => d * Math.PI / 180;
const deg = r => r * 180 / Math.PI;

function qiblaBearing(lat, lng) {
  const φ1 = rad(lat), φ2 = rad(KAABA.lat);
  const Δλ = rad(KAABA.lng - lng);
  const y = Math.sin(Δλ) * Math.cos(φ2);
  const x = Math.cos(φ1) * Math.sin(φ2) -
            Math.sin(φ1) * Math.cos(φ2) * Math.cos(Δλ);
  return (deg(Math.atan2(y, x)) + 360) % 360; // degrees from true north
}

This is why the answer surprises people. From New York the Qibla is about 58° (north-east), not south-east, because the shortest route curves up over the North Atlantic.

2. Reading the phone's heading

The browser gives you orientation through DeviceOrientationEvent, but every platform does it a little differently:

iPhone (Safari): you must call DeviceOrientationEvent.requestPermission() from a button tap, then read event.webkitCompassHeading.
Android (Chrome): listen to deviceorientationabsolute and use 360 - event.alpha.

The arrow on screen is then just qiblaBearing - heading.

3. Magnetic north vs true north

Phone compasses measure magnetic north, but the bearing above is from true north. The gap (magnetic declination) is only a few degrees in Pakistan but can be much more in other places, so the page corrects for it.

4. The real problem: compasses lie indoors

Most complaints I got were "the Qibla keeps changing". That's almost never the code. Phone magnetometers get thrown off by metal, speakers, laptops and magnetic cases. What helped:

Showing a "move your phone in a figure-8" calibration hint
Smoothing the heading so the arrow doesn't jitter
Adding a fixed fallback: a page for every city with the exact angle and distance, e.g. Qibla in Lahore (260°) or Qibla in London (119°). People can line that up with a landmark once and stop relying on the sensor.

Those city pages turned out to be great for SEO too, since people search "qibla direction + city" a lot.

Try it

Open yaadenamaz.com/qibla on your phone and tap the button. I'd love feedback, especially on sensor accuracy across different Android phones.

The same site also has prayer times, the Quran with Urdu and English, hadith and a free prayer times widget you can embed on your own site.

DEV Community: Rao Mubashir Ali

I built a free qaza namaz tracker because I kept losing count of missed prayers

What it does

The core idea is tiny

A few design choices

Try it

How I built a Qibla compass that runs in the phone browser (no app install)

1. The math: great-circle bearing

2. Reading the phone's heading

3. Magnetic north vs true north

4. The real problem: compasses lie indoors

Try it