Azan Noor: Building My Own Adhan App, One Prayer at a Time

This project started with a wish: I wanted the call to prayer to find me wherever I was, in a way that felt calm, beautiful and personal.

That wish became Azan Noor (نور الأذان), the light of the Adhan.

“Indeed, prayer has been decreed upon the believers a decree of specified times.” — Surah An-Nisa (4:103)

A personal need

Prayer gives the day its shape. Fajr before the world wakes up, Dhuhr in the middle of work, Asr as the afternoon fades, Maghrib at sunset, Isha as the day closes. But between meetings, deadlines and screens, it’s easy to let a prayer time slip by unnoticed.

I tried different prayer apps over the years. Many were cluttered with ads, asked for accounts and permissions I didn’t want to give, or played a short beep instead of the Adhan itself. I wanted something simpler: accurate times for where I am, and the full Adhan at every prayer, nothing more and nothing less.

So, as a developer, I did what felt natural. I built my own.

Starting on the web

Mobile development has never really been my area of work, so I started with what I know best: the web. I built Azan Noor as a web application, and for almost a year now it has been part of my daily routine, reminding me of each prayer and playing the Adhan.

Using something you built yourself, every single day, is a humbling experience. Every small bug becomes personal, and every improvement is something you feel five times a day. Over the months the app grew slowly and carefully into what I actually needed.

Then came Android (even though I don’t use one 😄)

Here’s the funny part: I don’t actually use an Android phone.

A few of my friends saw the app and asked if they could use it on their Android devices. That made me realise that something built for myself might be useful to others too. So I took a step outside my comfort zone and built my first Android application, a native APK of Azan Noor.

As my first time developing for Android, it was a real learning journey: notifications that need to work when the phone is locked, audio that must play the full Adhan reliably, and permissions and battery behaviour that vary across devices. Most of my testing happened on borrowed phones and through friends’ feedback, which made it even more of a shared effort.

What Azan Noor offers

I kept the app focused on what matters for daily prayer:

• Accurate prayer times for wherever you are, with a live countdown to the next prayer.
• The full Adhan at every prayer
• A Qibla compass: hold your phone flat and it points you toward the Kaaba.
• Daily duas to keep your tongue moist with the remembrance of Allah.
• Works offline. Once your times are set, you don’t need a connection.
• No account, no ads, no tracking. Your prayers are between you and your Lord, and your data stays on your device.

It’s free. On Android you can download the APK (around 8 MB). The iPhone app is coming soon, and in the meantime you can open the web app and add it to your Home Screen.

Why it matters to me

As developers, we spend so much of our time building tools for productivity, business and growth. Azan Noor is different. It’s a small tool meant to help someone pause, put the world aside for a few minutes, and turn back to Allah.

If even one person hears the Adhan through this app and stands for a prayer they might otherwise have delayed, that is worth more to me than any metric or download count.

A closing dua

May Allah accept our efforts, make this work beneficial, and allow it to become a small part of someone’s daily connection with Him. May He forgive our shortcomings in it, and make it a source of continuous reward (sadaqah jariyah) for everyone who helped along the way.

Alhamdulillah for the opportunity to build something meaningful. 🤍

👉 Try Azan Noor at azannoor.app