Qibla Direction Finder

The Qibla Direction Finder calculates the exact compass bearing from your location to the Kaaba in the Sacred Mosque (Masjid al-Haram) in Mecca, Saudi Arabia — the direction Muslims face for salah (prayer). Enter coordinates, tap a city preset, or use GPS, and the tool shows the Qibla on an animated compass dial, the great-circle distance to Mecca, a live phone-compass mode, and — uniquely — the exact clock times when the sun or your shadow aligns with the Qibla, so you can verify the direction with no compass at all.

How to Use the Qibla Direction Finder

1. Set your location: tap a city button, press 📍 Use my location, or type your latitude and longitude in decimal degrees.
2. Optionally refine: choose a date for the sun-alignment times (defaults to today) and enter your magnetic declination if you will use a real magnetic compass.
3. Click 🕋 Find Qibla Direction. The compass dial shows the bearing from true north, with a Kaaba marker on the rim and the distance to Mecca.
4. Verify on the ground: on a phone, start the Live Compass and rotate until the 🕋 marker sits under the red pointer — or face the sun or your shadow at the listed alignment times.

What Is the Qibla?

The Qibla (Arabic: قِبْلَة, "direction") is the direction of the Kaaba, the cube-shaped building at the center of the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca (21.4225° N, 39.8262° E). Facing the Qibla is a condition of the five daily prayers, and it also orients mosques worldwide: the mihrab (prayer niche) of every mosque marks the local Qibla. Because worshippers stand on a spherical Earth, the Qibla from any point is defined as the initial bearing of the great circle — the shortest path along the Earth's surface — that connects that point to the Kaaba.

Why the Qibla from North America Points Northeast

On a flat Mercator map, Mecca looks southeast of the United States — yet the correct Qibla from New York is 58.5°, northeast. The reason is that the shortest route on a sphere is a great circle, and from North America that arc swings up over the Atlantic toward the pole before descending to Arabia. Flat maps stretch the high latitudes, so the true shortest path looks curved and the "straight" map line is actually the longer route:

The same effect explains other surprising results: from Anchorage the Qibla is almost due north (over the pole), and from parts of the US west coast it is north-northeast.

The Qibla Formula

With your latitude \( \varphi_1 \), the Kaaba's latitude \( \varphi_2 = 21.4225° \), and the longitude difference \( \Delta\lambda \), the initial great-circle bearing is:

$$\theta = \operatorname{atan2}\left(\sin\Delta\lambda,\ \cos\varphi_1 \tan\varphi_2 - \sin\varphi_1 \cos\Delta\lambda\right)$$

normalized to 0–360° clockwise from true north. This is the classical spherical-trigonometry solution that Muslim astronomers such as al-Biruni were already computing in the 11th century; the tool also reports the great-circle distance via the haversine formula, and every step of the calculation is shown with your numbers.

Find the Qibla with the Sun — No Compass Needed

Compasses fail near metal and phone sensors drift, but the sun's position is exactly predictable. This tool computes, for your coordinates and date, the moments when the sun's azimuth crosses the Qibla line:

• ☀️ Sun alignment: at the listed minute, the sun stands exactly on the Qibla bearing — face the sun and you face the Qibla.
• 🌗 Shadow alignment: at the listed minute, the sun stands exactly opposite the Qibla — the shadow of any vertical object (a stick, a lamp post, you) points straight at the Kaaba.

Twice a year the whole planet gets a free Qibla check: on the Qibla observation days (Istiwa al-A'zam), around May 27–28 at 9:18 UTC and July 15–16 at 9:27 UTC, the sun passes directly over the Kaaba itself. Wherever the sun is visible at that moment — Europe, Africa, Asia — facing it means facing the Qibla exactly. Half a year later, around late November and mid-January, the sun passes over the point exactly opposite the Kaaba, and every shadow on the sunlit side of the Earth points toward Mecca. The tool detects all of these automatically and shows the exact local clock time.

True North vs Magnetic North

The bearing reported by this tool is measured from true (geographic) north — the direction of the North Pole. A magnetic compass needle instead points to magnetic north, which currently sits in the Arctic Ocean and drifts every year. The angle between the two, the magnetic declination, ranges from 0° to more than 20° depending on where you live (about −13° in New York, +1.5° in Dubai, +11° in Cape Town). If you will orient yourself with a real compass, enter your local declination in the form and the tool prints the corrected needle reading: \( \theta_{magnetic} = \theta_{true} - \delta \). Phone compass apps and this tool's live mode usually work in true bearings once the declination is known.

Qibla Direction in Major Cities

Reference values computed with the same great-circle formula (bearing from true north):

How Accurate Is This Qibla Finder?

The bearing itself is computed on the WGS-84 sphere with the standard great-circle formula and is exact to a small fraction of a degree; using a full ellipsoidal model changes the answer by under 0.2° at any inhabited location. In practice your accuracy is limited by the instrument you point with: phone magnetometers are good to roughly ±5–10°, physical compasses need the declination correction, and the sun-alignment method is the most precise everyday option (better than 1° if you read the clock to the minute). Islamic jurisprudence generally accepts facing the general direction of the Kaaba (jihat al-Kaaba) when far from Mecca, so small errors are not a concern for prayer.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is the Qibla?

A: The Qibla is the direction Muslims face during salah: toward the Kaaba in the Sacred Mosque in Mecca (21.4225° N, 39.8262° E). From any point on Earth it is the initial bearing of the shortest great-circle path to the Kaaba.

Q: Why does the Qibla from North America point northeast instead of southeast?

A: Because the shortest path on the globe arcs over the North Atlantic. A flat map distorts high latitudes, making the great-circle route look curved; the "straight" southeast line on a Mercator map is actually a longer path.

Q: How can I find the Qibla without any compass?

A: Use the sun-alignment times this tool lists: face the sun at a ☀️ time, or face along your shadow at a 🌗 time. On the global Qibla observation days (around May 27–28, 9:18 UTC and July 15–16, 9:27 UTC) anyone who can see the sun can face it to find the Qibla exactly.

Q: Should I use true north or magnetic north?

A: The tool reports bearings from true north. For a magnetic compass, enter your local declination (east positive) and use the corrected reading the tool prints. Phone compass apps usually apply this correction automatically.

Q: How precise does the Qibla have to be?

A: Most scholars accept facing the general direction of the Kaaba (jihat al-Kaaba) when far from Mecca, so being within a few degrees is more than sufficient. This tool gives the mathematically exact bearing so you can be as precise as you like.

Q: Does the tool need internet, GPS, or send my location anywhere?

A: The calculation runs from the coordinates in the form. GPS geolocation and the live compass are optional, run entirely in your browser, and no location data is stored or transmitted to us.

Sources and Method

Bearing and distance use the standard spherical great-circle (initial azimuth) and haversine formulas with the Kaaba at 21.422487° N, 39.826206° E. Sun positions come from the low-precision solar algorithm of the US Astronomical Almanac (declination and equation of time, accurate to well under a minute of time for 1950–2050) — the same model used by prayer-timetable software worldwide. Qibla observation-day detection checks whether the sun passes within 1° of the zenith of the Kaaba or of its antipode on the chosen date.