Qibla direction finder

How the direction is worked out

The Qibla is the great-circle bearing from where you are to the Kaaba, the shortest path over the surface of the Earth, which is also the direction you would set off in if you walked there. It is calculated from your coordinates and the Kaaba’s, at 21.4225°N 39.8262°E, using standard spherical trigonometry.

Why the answer can look wrong

From most of North America the Qibla points north-east, which surprises people who picture Makkah as being to the south-east. Both intuitions come from a flat map, and a flat map cannot show a sphere without distorting direction. The short way from New York runs up over the Atlantic and down across Europe, so the bearing is 58°, and the straight line you would draw on a wall map is the longer route, not the shorter one.

The same effect puts the Qibla to the west from Jakarta and Sydney rather than to the north-west.

True north and magnetic north

This tool reports a true bearing, measured clockwise from the geographic north pole. A magnetic compass needle points at the magnetic pole instead, which is somewhere else entirely and moving. The difference is called declination, and it runs from near zero to over 20 degrees depending on where you are.

Most phone compass apps already correct for this and show true north. A hiking compass does not. If you are reading from a needle, put your local declination into the field above and the tool will give you the number to turn to.

How precise is precise enough

Very little precision is actually required: facing the general direction has long been accepted as sufficient for anyone not in sight of the Kaaba. A degree or two makes no practical difference to where you stand in a room. The figures here are exact because the arithmetic is free, not because a small error matters.