For Muslims living away from mosques or Islamic centers, keeping track of accurate prayer times can be surprisingly difficult. I recently came across Sajda, a menu bar app that addresses this exact challenge. Developer ikoshura built it to solve their own need for a modern, native Mac app that displays prayer times without the clutter and outdated interfaces that plague many existing solutions.
Sajda takes the straightforward approach of sitting quietly in your menu bar, showing you the time until the next prayer at a glance. Click the icon, and you get a clean dropdown displaying all five daily prayer times calculated for your location. The app automatically detects where you are, though you can manually search for any city worldwide if needed.
What impressed me about Sajda is the attention to accuracy. The app supports multiple calculation methods including Muslim World League, Islamic Society of North America, Umm al-Qura, and several others. If you follow the Hanafi school, there’s a toggle specifically for Asr time calculations. You can even apply manual corrections of up to 60 minutes for individual prayers, which is useful for aligning with your local mosque’s timing or accounting for regional preferences.
The display options are flexible without being overwhelming. You can configure the menu bar to show just an icon, a countdown to the next prayer, or the exact time of the upcoming prayer. The Pro version adds a minimal text-only style and turns the icon red when a prayer is less than 10 minutes away, which provides a gentle visual reminder without being intrusive.
After evaluating the app, I found the notification system works well with macOS’s native alerts. You get a notification when each prayer time arrives, and the Pro version lets you customize the notification sounds. The app respects the system’s light and dark modes, and you can set it to launch automatically at startup.
The free Legacy version provides all the core functionality most users need: accurate prayer times, location detection, calculation method selection, and basic notifications. The Pro version costs $3.99 with a name-your-price option, adding features like coordinate-based location settings, smart timezone detection, live time display, customizable sounds, and a multi-language interface supporting English, Arabic, and Indonesian with proper right-to-left text support.
System requirements are reasonable: macOS Ventura 13.0 or later, compatible with both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. The developer has tested it on hardware as old as a 2012 MacBook Pro, and it runs with minimal resource usage.
The app is open source, which aligns with the values of transparency and community contribution. Having the code available means technically inclined users can verify the calculation methods and contribute improvements if they find issues.
The interface is intentionally minimal, which some users might find too bare. If you prefer feature-rich apps with extensive customization options, widgets, or Qibla direction features, you might want to explore alternatives. Sajda focuses specifically on accurate prayer time notifications and does that one thing well.
For anyone who needs reliable prayer time tracking on their Mac, Sajda offers a modern, native solution that respects macOS design principles. It’s particularly valuable for people working from home, students, or anyone who spends extended time at their Mac and wants discreet prayer time reminders without switching to their phone or keeping a browser tab open.
