Sharing Prayer Times with Family: Groups, Posters and Parents

A family that prays together needs the same timetable, and a family spread across three cities needs three. The problem is rarely finding prayer times; it is getting the right ones to the right people in a form they will actually look at. Here are the methods that work, from the fastest to the most durable.

Decide the household source first

Before sharing anything, agree what you are sharing. If the family prays at a local masjid, its timetable is the natural source. If not, choose a method and Asr rule for the household and keep to it; see calculation methods. Then set every phone to the same settings. Most "your app says 05:34, mine says 05:53" conversations are two apps on two methods, as explained in mosque times vs apps.

1. The family group post

The quickest method and the one most families already half do.

1. Open the city page for your city in the prayer times tool.
2. Press Print and save as PDF, or take a screenshot of the month.
3. Post it in the family WhatsApp or Telegram group on the last day of the month with a one-line caption: "March times, Birmingham, masjid method. Fajr jama'ah 06:00."
4. Pin the message so it stays at the top.

For relatives in another city, post that city's page, not yours. A link to the city page works too and never goes stale, but a picture is what people open.

2. The fridge poster

Paper is still the most reliable display in a kitchen.

• Print the month's table in A4 from the tool, or the Ramadan poster from the Ramadan timetable at the start of the month.
• Large type matters more than colour. If your parents read it without glasses from the table, it is big enough.
• Put a pen next to it. Children tick off prayers; parents circle the Jumu'ah time.
• The QR code on the printed sheet opens the same table on any phone, which saves explaining where the times came from.

For Ramadan 2027, which is expected to begin on Monday 8 February, print the poster in the first week of February and put next to it the masjid's tarawih time, written by hand.

3. A link to the city page

For family members who are comfortable with phones, a bookmarked city page is enough: it shows today's times, the next prayer, the Hijri date and the month, and it works offline after the first load. Send the link once, tell them to add it to the home screen, and it behaves like an app with no account and no ads. The prayer reminders article covers setting up notifications.

4. One-time setup for elderly parents

The aim is a phone that shows the right times and reminds them, set up once, and then never needs touching.

1. Sit with them and the phone. Do not do it remotely; you will miss the setting that confuses them.
2. Check the time zone and automatic time in the phone settings. A phone on manual time drifts and then every prayer time is wrong.
3. Install one app or add the city page to the home screen. One, not three. Set the method and Asr rule to match their masjid.
4. Turn on adhan or notification sounds for the prayers they want, and show them how to silence the phone during the prayer itself.
5. Set the font size large in the phone's accessibility settings; most apps respect it.
6. Print the month as a fallback and stick it where they pray.
7. Write the masjid's iqamah times on the sheet by hand; those are the ones they will ask about.

If the local masjid shares its timetable as a QR code, an app that can import it, such as the free import in Jamaah Lock, puts the masjid's own times, including iqamah, straight onto the phone with nothing to type; the same app can rest chosen apps during each prayer window and bring them back after a short dhikr, which some families find helps with the phone being the main distraction at prayer time. Whatever app you choose, the test is whether your parent can open it and read the next prayer without help.

5. Children

Children do better with something physical. A monthly table at their height, a tick box per prayer, and a small reward at the end of the week make the five times concrete; teaching prayer begins at seven (Abu Dawud 495). In Ramadan a countdown to iftar on the fridge keeps the youngest ones involved. See teaching kids to pray and kids and Ramadan.

6. Family abroad in different time zones

Each person prays by their own sky, so a shared timetable across countries is meaningless; what helps is knowing each other's times for calls and group iftars.

Note that Karachi's Maghrib is 13:22 London time and New York's is 22:22 London time, so a family video call at London iftar catches the parents after theirs and the sister before hers. The city pages show the local time for each; the prayer times when travelling article explains the zone shifts for anyone flying between them.

Keep it simple

One source, set the same way on every phone; one poster per kitchen; one post per month in the group. The more systems a family has, the more they disagree, and the less anyone trusts any of them. Praying together in congregation is rewarded 27 times over (Bukhari 645; Muslim 650); the timetable is only there to make that easier.