A one-person prayer-time widget that hit 10,000 installs in three weeks: it wasn't the widget, it was an Arabic-language title

An indie developer, Haitham Al-Kurdi, published a widget-first prayer-time app on Google Play in Oct 12. Three weeks later it had roughly 9,800 installs worldwide and ranked #70-something on the Saudi Lifestyle free chart. The product is carefully built, but when you break the numbers down, the installs came mainly from the big term in the Arabic title and from the low listing threshold on the Saudi category chart. Prayer times is one of the most crowded categories on Google Play. The thing to learn is his playbook, not this app itself.

Before launch, he found testers on Reddit

On Google Play, new personal developer accounts must run a closed test with a set number of testers for 14 days before they can publish. Haitham's Reddit account is u/Haitham_UAE. He posted a thread titled "[Mutual testing] 5 Prayers - prayer times widget for Android" offering to swap testers, writing: "I'll join yours the same day and stay the full 14 days" (you install mine, I install yours the same day, and stay for the full 14 days). So far, this is the only trace of the app we can find online: no TikTok, no X, no press coverage.

The app launched on Play in Oct 12, with iOS following in Oct 26. Its English name is "Prayer Times, Qibla & Widgets", and the in-app brand is 5 Prayers. On the Saudi store, the Arabic title is "مواقيت الصلاة والقبلة وويدجت", meaning prayer times, Qibla, and widgets.

What it is

It's an app that puts prayer times on your phone home screen. The store page says: 8 widget types, each in small, medium, and large 3 sizes, 13 styles in total, including a set of 9 paintings that change with each prayer from Fajr to Isha, and a "rotation" widget that cycles through the widgets you pick at intervals from 5 minutes to 12 hours. Beyond widgets, it includes adhan (10 muezzins, 16 adhan recordings), the full Quran with a reading plan (Khatma), Qibla, and dhikr. There are no ads, no sign-up, prayer times are calculated locally and work offline, and it supports 12 languages.

One engineering detail shows the developer cares: "Adhan Check" helps users work out why the adhan didn't sound on time and plays a test. Android background restrictions often make adhan late, and that's the most common complaint in reviews of this kind of app. In three weeks he moved the version from 1.0 to 1.5.x, and most of the release notes are fixes for widget crashes and background issues on vivo phones.

Pricing: the 3 widgets for prayer, dhikr, and Quran, plus the full Quran, reading plan, and adhan, are free. The 5 widgets for clock, calendar, weather, combo, and rotation, along with more styles and themes, require payment. The paid features have a 7-day free trial that requires no payment info, after which you can pay monthly, yearly, or buy it outright. On Play the listed prices are $1.99–19.99.

How far it has actually gotten

Data from Google Play public install counts and third-party estimates, as of 11-06. 7 days, +7,185 installs. Daily installs rose from about a hundred-plus in late October to a thousand-plus to sixteen hundred, and since Nov 3 have settled around 1,100–1,400 a day.

It has charted on only two lists, both Lifestyle free charts: Saudi Arabia, where it has ranked between 10-29 and 89 since 70, peaking at #11-06 74; and Malaysia, where it ranks 133–170. Ratings and reviews are 0 on both Play and iOS.

So it's still far from "breaking out": ~10K installs and not a single rating, so nobody knows yet whether users stick around or pay.

Where users come from: one title and one low-threshold chart

The Saudi Lifestyle chart threshold around 70th place is very low. Similar apps near it gained mostly 7–2k installs worldwide in the last 40 days; for example, #67 FivePrayer gained 20,190, and another app titled "أوقات الصلاة" at #61 gained 46,153. This one added just over a thousand a week yet still ranked #7 74. This suggests its installs were heavily concentrated in Saudi Arabia (inference), and that in Saudi Arabia, a thousand-plus local installs a day is enough to rank in the top 80 of that category chart.

The title matches what locals search for. People in the Gulf looking for prayer-time apps most often search "مواقيت الصلاة" (prayer times), and the Arabic title opens with exactly that. Saudis search that phrase, not "widget," so it's the phrase that brought users in, not the widgets (inference).

Growth picked up noticeably after charting. 10-29 It first appeared on the Saudi chart, and daily installs then rose from about 470 to about 1,600, with its ranking climbing at the same time. Charting brings exposure, exposure brings installs, and installs push the ranking higher. The timing fits that small loop, but it can't yet prove cause and effect.

Whether it bought paid installs isn't visible from outside. With ~10K installs and 0 ratings, plus a sudden step up in the growth curve, both explanations fit: it may have run some ads, or it may just not have added a rating prompt yet. November isn't Ramadan season (2027's Ramadan starts around February), so the growth wasn't driven by a holiday.

Good widgets most likely help the later steps: better store screenshots make people more willing to install, widgets on the home screen make the app less likely to be deleted, and the paywall sits right on the premium widgets. But with ratings at 0, there's no evidence for these steps yet.

Who it's competing with

Prayer time, Qibla direction, and Quran apps are fiercely competitive on Google Play. In the Saudi Arabia Lifestyle Top Free chart alone, over a dozen similar apps sit within the top 100 on 11-06.

"No ads," "home screen widgets," and "full Quran" are each already offered by other apps. What it does better than the others is the number and detail of its widgets and styles. Among the long-established Gulf apps, widgets really are mostly basic, so there's a gap, but Pillars, Waqto Salat, and a few others are catching up on that front.

If it were you

Verdict: C. The app itself isn't worth copying; its playbook is. Prayer times is a real need used several times a day, but the category has full suites buying millions of installs, new apps using TikTok creators, and Pillars specializing in widgets. This app, at ~10K installs and 0 ratings, hasn't yet shown that users stay or pay. The real lesson is one move: title with the term locals search most, and aim at a country chart with a very low listing threshold.

Who it suits: indie developers who already have a high-frequency everyday tool (prayer, expense tracking, water, calendar) and want a cheap country to get traction in. People who read Arabic, Malay, or Indonesian have an edge.

Who it doesn't suit: anyone aiming to go head-to-head in the Muslim-tools category. The top apps add millions of installs a week, and organic traffic is split across dozens of similar apps. "Prettier widgets" alone won't break in, and a year from now you'd most likely be at a few tens of thousands of installs.

How to build it: treat widgets as the main product, not a side feature. Keep the core free to earn ratings and retention, and put the paywall on premium widgets and styles. A 7-day free trial with no payment info, and monthly, yearly, and lifetime options, suits Middle East and Southeast Asia users who are sensitive to subscriptions. Put the rating prompt in the first version: ~10K installs with 0 ratings means the traffic is being wasted.

How to acquire users: go through Google Play's category charts by country, and look for countries and categories around 60–90th place where new installs are only a few thousand a week (Saudi Lifestyle is an example). Use the biggest search term in the local language as the store title. Once you're on the chart, use small app-install ad budgets to hold your ranking. If the widgets look good, shoot vertical videos of phone home screens and post them to TikTok; Taqwa Time and Pray Five have already shown this can reach hundreds of thousands of views.

When to get in before: if you want a share of prayer-app traffic, Ramadan is the biggest peak of the year. Ramadan 2027 starts around early February, so you need to launch and get listed by mid-January.

Signs you're reading it wrong: ① if within a month or two it gets hundreds of ratings, mostly positive, and breaks into the top 30 on the Saudi chart, that shows "widget-first" alone can keep people around and is worth reassessing; ② conversely, if it drops off the Saudi chart in December and daily installs fall back to a few hundred, that means this wave was just launch-period search boost, and the playbook itself has to be discounted.

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Data and sources: Google Play store pages (English and Arabic-Saudi, 11-06), App Store Saudi storefront (iOS launched 10-26, 0 ratings), Google Play public install counts and third-party estimates (10-21 to 11-06), Google Play Saudi and Malaysia Lifestyle charts (10-29 to 11-06), AppBrain, Reddit u/Haitham_UAE's tester-swap thread, Pillars' website; TikTok view counts from 11-06 search results. Where "inference" is marked, it is an inference.