SalahNow for Android
Privacy Policy
SalahNow has no internet permission. Nothing you record in it can leave your phone, because the app has no way to send it anywhere.
Version 2.6.2 · Last updated 9 October 2026
You do not have to take this on trust. Android requires an app to declare every permission it holds, and Google Play shows that list publicly on the app's store listing. SalahNow does not declare INTERNET. An app without it cannot open a network connection at all — not restricted, not optional, not "only when you allow it". The operating system refuses.
What SalahNow collects
Nothing. There is no account, no sign-in, no analytics, no advertising identifier, and no crash reporting service. The developer operates no servers and receives no data from this app, because none can be sent.
That last one is worth being precise about, because the app now writes down its own errors. If something inside SalahNow fails, it saves the error and where it happened to a single file on your phone, and offers it to you the next time you open Settings → Report a problem. It is not sent anywhere and there is no crash reporting service receiving it — it sits on your device until you open a report carrying it in your email app, share it or copy it, until you use Erase everything, or until you uninstall the app.
SalahNow does use open-source components for things like notifications and sharing. None of them can transmit anything, for the same reason the app cannot: the app holds no internet permission, so Android will not let any code inside it open a network connection. Every one is listed under Settings → About → Open-source licences.
Location is the one part that is not the app's own code. On phones with Google Play services, the position itself is worked out by Google's location provider, the same one other apps on the phone use; how it does that (for example, whether it may use nearby Wi-Fi) is set in your phone's location settings, not by SalahNow. The app receives the coordinates and nothing more, and sends nothing back.
What the app stores on your phone
All of this stays in the app's private storage on your device, and is deleted when you uninstall the app:
- Which prayers you have marked, and when you marked them
- Voluntary prayers you have recorded
- Any exempt periods you have entered
- Your location — coordinates and the place name shown on screen
- Your settings: calculation method, Asr rule, theme, language, notification preferences (which prayers alert, sound or vibration only, and the daily Quran reminder), where you last stopped reading in the Quran, your Quran bookmarks, and the tasbih count
- A copy of your prayer times for the next 22 days, written for the home-screen widgets, the quick-settings tile and the optional always-visible notification, so they can show the next prayer and a countdown without opening the app
- The most recent error the app hit, if one has happened — the message and the code path, capped in length, replaced each time and never more than one
Location
SalahNow asks for precise location. Prayer times depend on where you are, and the Qibla is a bearing from your position to the Kaaba — both are arithmetic, and both are done on your phone.
Precise location is requested rather than approximate for one reason: Android deliberately blurs approximate location to an area of one to three kilometres, which is not enough to name the district you are in. Because the app has no internet permission, that precision has nowhere to go. It is used on the device and stored on the device.
Place names come from a database inside the app. Earlier versions of SalahNow sent your coordinates to an online service to turn them into a name like "Jeddah". Version 2.0 does not. It ships an offline extract of the GeoNames database, so naming where you are no longer involves telling anyone where you are.
You can decline location entirely and choose a city by hand instead. The app works the same way afterwards.
Notifications
Prayer notifications are scheduled by your phone from times calculated on your phone. Nothing is delivered from a server, and no push service is involved. If you turn notifications off, nothing is scheduled.
The daily Quran reminder, added in version 2.4, is the same kind of notification: scheduled on the phone after Maghrib, and it opens the reader where you left off. You can turn it off, or change which prayers alert, in Settings.
The home-screen widgets read the copy of your prayer times that the app keeps in its own storage. They show the next prayer, a countdown and today's times, and nothing else; they hold no permission of their own and send nothing.
To match your phone, the widgets also look at three settings on the phone itself each time they redraw: whether Android describes your wallpaper as light or dark, whether high-contrast text is switched on, and, on Nothing phones, which icon pack is chosen. None of the three needs a permission, and the app does not keep or send any of them. On Nothing phones the icon pack's name is also written to Android's own system log, which stays on the phone and which other apps cannot read.
Android's own backup is switched off
By default, Android copies an app's data to the user's Google Drive automatically. SalahNow turns this off.
This is worth stating plainly, because it is the one way your records could have left the phone without the app being involved at all: Android reads an app's files directly, and does not need the app's permission to do it. Having no internet permission would not have stopped it.
So automatic backup and device-to-device transfer are both disabled, at every Android version. The cost is real and deliberate: moving to a new phone will not carry your history across by itself. The backup file below is the way to move it — and it is the only transfer you can actually see.
Backups
SalahNow has no cloud backup, so a file you keep is the only way your history survives a lost phone. When you tap Save a backup, the app writes a file and hands it to Android's share sheet, and you choose where it goes — a messaging app, your own cloud drive, or your device's storage.
The file holds everything needed to bring your record back: every prayer you have marked and when, voluntary prayers, exempt periods, your Quran bookmarks, your location and your settings. The copy the app writes in order to share it is deleted once the share sheet has taken it, and any left behind are deleted by Erase everything.
Anything that happens to that file after you choose a destination is governed by whichever app or service you sent it to, not by this policy. The developer never receives it.
Sharing a verse
The Quran reader can copy or share a verse. That sends the Arabic text — the same text bundled inside the app, with its reference and its source — to whichever app you pick from the share sheet. It carries none of your records: not your prayer history, not your location, not your reading position.
As with a backup, nothing moves until you choose a destination, and what happens after that is governed by the app you chose.
Links out of the app
A few screens show web addresses — the sources and licences of the Quran text, the English translation of two verses, the place names, the typefaces and the prayer-time calculation, and these terms. Tapping one copies it to your clipboard; the app does not open a browser for you. What you then do with the address is entirely yours, and those sites have their own privacy practices.
Reporting a problem
Settings → Report a problem writes a description of this app and this phone — the version, whether alerts are permitted, how many are armed, which calculation method is set — and shows it to you in full. Nothing is sent unless you press send, and it is your email app that sends it, not SalahNow. The app has no internet permission and gains none from this; it hands the text to Android, and Android opens whichever mail app you use.
If the app has recorded an error since you last looked, that text is included too, and you can read it in the same preview as everything else.
The report deliberately leaves out anything that would identify you. It carries no prayer history — only how many records exist — nothing you have read, and no account, because there is no account. Your city and your coordinates are excluded unless you switch them on, and even then the position is rounded to roughly eleven kilometres. The time zone is always included (for example, Asia/Riyadh), because many prayer-time problems are time-zone problems; time zones are named after a large city in the region. You can read every word before it goes.
Permissions, and why each one exists
| Permission | Why it is needed |
|---|---|
| Precise location | Calculating prayer times and the Qibla bearing, and naming your area from the bundled database |
| Notifications | Alerting you at prayer times |
| Exact alarms | Delivering those alerts at the right minute rather than whenever Android next batches them |
| Run at startup | Rescheduling your prayer alerts after the phone restarts, so they do not silently stop |
| Vibrate | Vibrating for a prayer alert, including when you choose vibration only. Alerts use your phone's own notification sound and vibration setting — never a sound of ours |
There is no internet permission, no advertising ID permission, and no access to contacts, photos, files, the microphone or the camera.
Children
SalahNow is suitable for all ages and collects no personal information from anyone, including children.
Deleting your data
Two ways, both immediate and both entirely on your device:
- Settings → Backup & restore → Erase everything deletes every prayer you have recorded, along with voluntary prayers, exempt periods, Quran bookmarks, the reading position, the tasbih count, any backup copy the app still holds, and the last recorded error.
- Uninstalling the app removes all of it, including your settings and location.
There is no server to write to and no account to close, so there is nothing to request from the developer.
Changes to this policy
If a future version of SalahNow ever needs network access, this policy will be updated before that version is published, and the change will be visible in the app's permission list on Google Play.
Contact
Questions about this policy: salahnowapp@gmail.com