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How do you find the Qibla with the iPhone compass?

Look up the Qibla bearing for your city (it is a true-north bearing), then turn until True Heading in Device Monitor's Digital Compass shows that number. There is no Kaaba arrow in the app, and the big number on the dial is magnetic, not true, which is the one thing that trips people up.

4 min read · Updated 2026-10-06

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Qibla direction in degrees from 12 cities

These are great-circle bearings to the Kaaba (21.4225° N, 39.8262° E), measured clockwise from true north, computed from each city centre. Within a city the figure moves by a fraction of a degree, far less than any phone compass can show.

Qibla bearing from true north and distance to Mecca
CityQibla (true)Distance
New York58.5°10,306 km
Toronto54.6°10,496 km
Chicago48.7°11,146 km
Los Angeles23.9°13,424 km
London119.0°4,794 km
Madrid104.0°4,598 km
Berlin136.7°4,130 km
Istanbul151.6°2,405 km
Lagos63.3°4,251 km
Karachi267.7°2,800 km
Jakarta295.2°7,920 km
Sydney277.5°13,236 km

The North American rows surprise people. On a flat map Mecca sits to the south-east of New York, and a straight line on that map gives 101.3°. The shortest path over the globe leaves New York heading north-east, at 58.5°. That is why many mosques in the US and Canada face north-east.

Not in the table? Open Wireless & Location > GPS Accuracy Test > Start GPS Test; it prints your Lat and Lon to four decimals. With your latitude φ, longitude λ and the Kaaba's φK, λK, the bearing is atan2(sin(λK−λ)·cos φK, cos φ·sin φK − sin φ·cos φK·cos(λK−λ)), converted to degrees and added to 360 if negative. A spreadsheet does it in one cell.

Turning to face it

  1. Take off any case with a magnet, and move away from steel tables, speakers and laptops.
  2. Open Diagnostics > Environment Sensors > Digital Compass and allow location when asked. True north needs your position.
  3. Hold the phone flat, top edge pointing away from you.
  4. Scroll to Heading Details. Watch Accuracy: the number turns green under 5°. If it is yellow or red, wave the phone in a slow figure-8 for a few seconds.
  5. Turn your body until True Heading reads your Qibla bearing. In New York that is 58.5°; in London, 119.0°.

This is easy to get wrong. The large figure in the middle of the dial and the direction word under it follow Magnetic Heading, which is off from true north by the local declination (more than 10° west in New York, for example). Only the small True Heading line has the correction built in, so read that one.

True Heading shows -1.0°

A negative value is iOS saying it has no position for the compass yet. Check that location is allowed for the app, step outside or near a window, run the GPS Accuracy Test once and go back to the compass. If it still shows -1.0°, you can still work in magnetic terms: take the declination for your town from a geomagnetic calculator, subtract an east declination from your true bearing (or add a west one), and turn until Magnetic Heading matches.

How far off is a few degrees?

The Accuracy figure is the error iOS puts on the heading, in plus or minus degrees. Over thousands of kilometres an angle turns into distance at the far end:

Sideways miss at the Kaaba for a given heading error
From2° off5° off15° off
London (4,794 km)167 km418 km1,241 km
Jakarta (7,920 km)276 km690 km2,050 km
New York (10,306 km)360 km898 km2,667 km

Those numbers look scary. But you face a direction, not a point, and how exact that must be is a question for your imam, not an app. A red Accuracy of 15° or more is worth a recalibration first. Green, under 5°, is as good as a phone gets.

What Device Monitor does and doesn't do here

  • No Qibla pointer, no prayer times, no map. It is a compass and sensor tool; you bring the bearing.
  • The Digital Compass and the GPS test are free. The free version shows ads, including a full-screen one now and then when you leave a section.
  • Your location is used on the phone to correct for true north and is not saved or sent anywhere.

If you want an app that draws an arrow to Mecca and nothing else, a dedicated Qibla app is simpler. This one is worth installing only if you want the raw true and magnetic headings plus the accuracy figure, and are happy to judge the reading yourself.

Questions and answers

Is the Qibla measured from true north or magnetic north?
True north. Published Qibla bearings are geographic, so match them against True Heading, not Magnetic Heading. The difference between the two is the local declination, which can be a few degrees or more than ten depending on where you live.
What is the Qibla direction in degrees from London?
About 119.0° from true north, between east and south-east. Turn until True Heading reads 119.
How do I find the Qibla direction from my location?
Get your coordinates from the GPS Accuracy Test, put them in the great-circle bearing formula shown above, and turn to that bearing with True Heading. For a city in the table, the city figure is close enough.
How do I find the Qibla direction without a compass?
Use the prayer direction of a nearby mosque. Without a phone compass or a mosque, a map is not enough on its own: a straight line on a flat map gives the wrong answer for long distances, as the New York example shows.

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