How to use the qibla finder
Check the town, read the number, then turn to it.
- Check the town. The first result is only a guess, marked "from your internet connection", and the tool never saves it. "Change city" searches 12,459 places: towns of 50,000 people or more, plus every capital. It also knows other names such as Bombay and Joburg. For the closest fix, "Use exact GPS" reads your phone's position and tells you how many metres it may be off.
-
Read the number. The large figure is your bearing, and the word beside it names the compass point. A plain sentence beside the dial (below it on a phone) says the same thing. You can copy it, or a screen reader can speak it: "From London the qibla is 119.0° from true north, east-southeast. On a magnetic compass, look for 117.8°." A small table below adds the distance to the Kaaba.
-
Turn to it. The "How to face it" box lists ways to turn, such as the sun and a nearby mosque. With no compass, the box names today's sunrise or sunset point and the turn from there. The sun line works best with these checks on a sunset. Inside a mosque, the mihrab on the qibla wall already shows the way.
Qibla direction in degrees
Read your number as a turn from true north, always clockwise: 0 is north, 90 east, 180 south and 270 west. London's 119.0 therefore means 29 degrees past due east.
Use the number rather than the compass word. "West" covers both Lahore at 260.3 and Dhaka at 277.7, even though those two cities sit 17 degrees apart on the dial.
Magnetic declination is how far the needle's north sits to the east or west of true north at your location. True and magnetic numbers stay within 5 degrees of each other in nine of these ten cities.
Qibla numbers for ten cities, early November 2026
| City | Qibla from true north | Compass word | Quadrant form | Declination | Magnetic compass number |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| London | 119.0° | east-southeast | S 61.0° E | +1.2° | 117.8° |
| Birmingham | 117.9° | east-southeast | S 62.1° E | +0.5° | 117.4° |
| Chicago | 48.7° | northeast | N 48.7° E | -4.2° | 52.8° |
| Lahore | 260.3° | west | S 80.3° W | +2.2° | 258.1° |
| Karachi | 267.7° | west | S 87.7° W | +1.3° | 266.4° |
| Dhaka | 277.7° | west | N 82.3° W | -0.4° | 278.0° |
| Dubai | 258.8° | west | S 78.8° W | +2.2° | 256.5° |
| Lagos | 63.2° | east-northeast | N 63.2° E | -1.2° | 64.5° |
| Kuala Lumpur | 292.5° | west-northwest | N 67.5° W | 0.0° | 292.5° |
| Johannesburg | 14.6° | north-northeast | N 14.6° E | -20.8° | 35.4° |
The quadrant form is the same true bearing written another way, so it is not the number to read on a needle. S 61.0° E means start at south, then turn 61 degrees toward east.
How to find qibla with a compass
With a needle compass, use the magnetic number, not the true one. The needle points at magnetic north, which in most places sits a little east or west of true north. Take the declination away from the true bearing, counting east as plus and west as minus, and you have the figure to read.
In Johannesburg the true bearing is 14.6 and the declination is -20.8, so the figure to read is 35.4. Turn to 14.6 on a needle there and you end up almost 21 degrees off. The magnetic figure also changes slowly over the years, though the true bearing for a place stays put. That is why the printed page carries a date.
With a needle or baseplate compass
Lay the compass flat, well away from keys, steel desks and window frames. Turn the compass until the needle lies over the N on the dial. Then, without turning the compass, face the mark for your magnetic number on its rim. Then fix that line in your prayer room so you only do this once.
With the live compass on your phone
On a phone, tap "Start live compass" and hold the phone flat, top edge pointing away from you. Metal nearby can throw a phone sensor off. Before you mark a prayer spot, check the dial a second way, with the sun or a mosque.
Qibla calculator by coordinates
Type your latitude and longitude into the city box and you get the same result as a town search. These forms all work: 51.5072, -0.1276, 51.5072 N 0.1276 W and 51°30'26"N 0°7'39"W. Longitude can come first only if N, S, E or W letters make that clear.
The box uses one formula. It gives the first heading of the great-circle route, the shortest path over a round Earth, to the Kaaba's location at 21.4225 N, 39.8262 E.
q = atan2( sin Δλ × cos φK , cos φ × sin φK - sin φ × cos φK × cos Δλ )
Here φ is your latitude, λ your longitude, K the Kaaba, and Δλ = λK - λ. Wikipedia's navigation article sets out the same bearing. Exact solutions for the qibla appeared in the middle of the 9th century, and Habash al-Hasib, active around 850, wrote an early one.
Worked example for London
- Start from 51.5085 N, 0.1257 W. The longitude gap Δλ comes to 39.9519°.
- The top part of the formula, y, comes to 0.59778.
- The bottom part, x, comes to -0.33123.
- The angle atan2(y, x) is 118.99°, which the tool rounds to 119.0°.
- Distance uses a separate formula, the haversine with an Earth radius of 6,371 km: London is 4,794 km (2,979 miles) from the Kaaba.
To check the formula against an outside figure, use the Yogyakarta example in Wikipedia's qibla article. It gives "approximately 295°", and this formula returns 294.7.
How to find qibla on Google Maps
Use Google Maps to pin down your spot, then take the bearing for that spot from the box above. Your spot is the blue dot. A light blue circle may show around it. Maps Help says: "The smaller the circle, the more certain the app is about your location." A grey or missing dot means Maps cannot find you.
Copy the coordinates for your spot into the city box. It also reads long Maps links carrying @lat,lng or ?q=lat,lng, but not short maps.app.goo.gl links.
Avoid ruling your own line to Makkah across the flat map. From Chicago that line misses the true bearing by 52 degrees, and why North America prays toward the north-east explains the gap.
How to use Google's Qibla Finder
Open qiblafinder.withgoogle.com (short link g.co/QiblaFinder) in your phone's browser and allow location. It is a separate tool made by Google. Its calibration prompt reads: "Tilt and move your device 3 times like this." This site is not part of Google; see who runs it.
What you see depends on your device.
| Device | What you see | What it asks for | If you get stuck |
|---|---|---|---|
| Android phone | A blue line over the camera image, plus a compass | Location and camera | Turn the camera off; 9to5Google reported in 2017 that the tool kept working without it |
| Laptop or desktop | A map with a line, and a note that the tool "is best experienced on mobile" | Your place on the map | Take the number from a calculator instead |
Google's help page says the tool is built for "GPS and camera (on Android)" and that its route is "calculated using the haversine formula". About your location, it says: "This information is never stored, and is not shared outside the Qibla Finder." You can change those permissions in your browser at any time.
Is there a Google Qibla Finder app?
You do not need to download anything. Google announced the tool on 12 June 2017 as "a web app", "available through your browser".
Gulf News reported in 2018 that an update added offline use and a home-screen shortcut on Android. On iPhone, Apple's Safari guide shows how to put a website on the Home Screen with "Add to Home Screen" and "Open as Web App".
Offline use has a catch. The app says it "needs to find your location in order to work offline". So let it find you once while you have signal, ideally before a flight or a hotel stay. Store apps with a similar name may come from other developers, so check who made one before you install it.
Is a qibla finder accurate?
Yes for the number: correct calculators land on nearly the same figure. Trust the number more than the arrow. Most of the error comes in after the calculation, as the table shows. Choosing the right north matters far more than choosing between two good tools.
| Step | How large the error gets | What it looks like |
|---|---|---|
| The Kaaba point used | About 0.001° on London's bearing | Google's point sits 105 m from the one used here, and London's bearing rounds to 119.0° with either |
| Using the wrong north | The full declination | London 1.2°, Chicago 4.2°, Johannesburg 20.8° |
| The phone's compass sensor | No fixed size | Apple warns of "magnetic or environmental interference" |
Google Maps Help puts GPS at around 20 metres and a mobile data connection at a few thousand metres. Wikipedia's qibla article says nearly all qibla apps and websites rest on the same spherical trigonometry. This tool's declinations match NOAA's published test values to within 0.01 degrees.
The sensor deserves the most doubt, so test yours with these checks for a phone's qibla reading. A check with no sensor at all comes on the two days a year the sun passes over Makkah. How far off a prayer line may be is a separate question for scholars, and their tolerance rulings have their own page.
Qibla finder not working
Look at the browser's permissions first, because a web tool can only use what the browser lets it read. Find what you see in the left column.
| What you see | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| The location prompt comes back on each new visit when you tap "Use exact GPS" | You chose "Allow this time" in Chrome | Choose "Allow while visiting the site", or reset it under the site's Permissions |
| Tapping "Use exact GPS" changes nothing | Location is blocked, so the tool keeps the place it already shows | Reset the permission as in the next row, or tap "Change city" |
| "Location is not allowed in this browser" | Location is blocked for the site | Chrome: reset the permission. iPhone: Settings, Apps, Safari, Location, then Ask or Allow. Or search your city |
| A nearby town appears, not yours | The first guess comes from your internet connection | Tap "Use exact GPS", or tap "Change city" |
If two apps point opposite ways, believe neither until one matches your number in the box above. Rulings on prayers you already made off the line are a separate matter.
FAQ
Which north does a qibla number use?
True north, the fixed north printed on maps. Every qibla bearing on this site counts from it. The one exception is the magnetic compass number, which counts from magnetic north because that is where a needle points.
How does a qibla finder work?
It takes your latitude and longitude and runs one bearing formula toward the Kaaba. It then works out the magnetic declination for your place and today's date from the World Magnetic Model, which gives the needle compass figure.
Does the qibla finder work on a laptop?
Yes, for the number. A laptop gets its place from your connection, "Use exact GPS", the city search or typed coordinates. With no compass sensor, the dial stays still with north at the top and the bearing drawn on it. Carry that number to a compass or a landmark.
Is the approximate city good enough?
In cities far from Makkah, yes, if the town shown is your own: from London, Lahore or Chicago, a 20 km miss moves the bearing by under 0.4 degrees. Under 50 km from the Kaaba, the tool tells you to use GPS. Jeddah, about 67 km out, gets no such note, so use GPS there too.
Does this qibla tool store my location?
Not on any server. Your approximate area comes from this site's own server, which reads your connection and neither stores nor logs it. GPS position, search text and result stay on your device. Your browser remembers the last place so the next visit is quicker, and the "Forget location" button clears it.
Can I share or print the qibla direction?
Yes. "Share" makes a link that holds only your latitude and longitude, and it does so only when you tap it. "Print" fits one page, A4 or Letter, showing the bearing, the compass word, the magnetic number and the date you printed it.
Conclusion
Print your result while your phone still works, because paper does not run out of battery. If your number and your arrow ever disagree, the number is the one to keep. With no phone at all, you can still work out the line from the sky or a nearby mosque.