"What time is Dhuhr?" "When does Asr start today?" These simple questions come up almost every day. The answer is not a single fixed number — each prayer's time shifts slightly every day and differs from one city to the next. Here is how to make sense of it, and how to find the exact times for your own place.
Prayer times follow the sun, not a fixed clock
The five daily prayers are set by the position of the sun, not by numbers that stay the same all year. Because the sun's position drifts a little each day and differs by location, the moment each prayer begins shifts too. That is why "what time is Dhuhr" in one city can differ by a few minutes from a nearby city, and today can differ by a minute from yesterday.
What time is Fajr?
Fajr begins at the true dawn — the spreading white light on the eastern horizon before sunrise — and ends at sunrise (shuruq). Because it depends on the dawn, Fajr is the time that shifts most noticeably between seasons and between places.
What time are Dhuhr and Asr?
Dhuhr begins just after the sun passes its highest point (midday) and continues until Asr. Asr begins when the shadow of an object is roughly equal to its height (in the method commonly used in Indonesia), and lasts until sunset.
What time are Maghrib and Isha?
Maghrib begins right at sunset and lasts until the red glow fades from the western horizon. Isha begins after that red twilight disappears and extends through the night until just before Fajr.
How to find the exact times for your city today
You do not need to watch the sun yourself. You only need to make sure of one thing: that the schedule you use is genuinely calculated for your city, with a suitable method.
This is where Five Prayers A Day helps. The app shows what time each prayer begins today — Fajr, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, Isha, along with imsak and sunrise — computed directly from your city's coordinates using the Kemenag method (Fajr 20°, Isha 18°), and already matched against Kemenag's official published times to within ±1 minute for hundreds of cities across Indonesia.
One important note: an app is a helpful guide, not an authority. Where the app and your local mosque disagree, follow your mosque. A good app is one that tries to come as close as possible to that schedule.