Digital Mala FAQ

A1: A japa counter: a mala of 108 beads (or 54, 36, 27 or 21) drawn on the screen that you count by tapping or pulling the beads, with the Meru and its tassel, turning at the Meru. It has thirty mantras in their own script, a pace and breath guide, writing japa, a sitting timer, a drone to chant over, sankalpa vows with a share for each day, the sandhya times and lunar days for your place, and your practice calendar. Everything runs in your browser.

A2: Nothing. It is free, with no registration and no limit. Like every page on ZeroDataUpload, it is supported by advertising.

A3: No. Open the page in a modern browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari or Opera) on a phone, tablet or computer. Your counts are kept in that browser, so there is nothing to sign in to.

A4: No. Your counts, sittings, notes, sankalpas, written pages, place and settings stay on your device and are never sent to a server. The page itself loads the site's ads and analytics, as every page on the site does; the Privacy Policy explains those, and what you count or type in the tool is never part of them.

A5: Yes. It works on phones, tablets and computers. On a phone you can pull the beads with your thumb, use Focus to fill the screen, keep the screen on while you count, and count with a firm flick of the phone or with earbud buttons if you turn those on in Settings.

A6: Once the page has loaded, counting, Pace, Writing, the sankalpas, the sandhya times and the lunar days are all worked out in your browser and need no connection. The page has no offline copy of its own, so open it while you are online.

A7: Tap the mala. Or pull the beads to the left with a finger, as you would move them with your thumb: every bead you pull past counts. With the mala selected, Space or Enter counts; while you use the tool and are not typing, J or the right arrow count too. Settings can make a second tap within a quarter or half a second count once, so a double touch is not counted twice.

A8: Press Undo below the mala, Backspace or Ctrl+Z on a keyboard, Undo in Focus, or the previous-track button on earbuds if they count. Undo goes back one bead at a time, up to 300 beads of the sitting in hand.

A9: When the last bead of the mala is counted, the Meru (the larger guru bead with its tassel) glows, a bell rings and the count shows the mala complete. A moment later the next mala begins. By the custom of not crossing the Meru the mala turns round, so you go back the way you came; Settings can switch the turn off.

A10: The beads you count in one go. It starts with the first bead and ends when you press End sitting, choose another mantra, change the beads in a mala, or stop for 30 minutes. A sitting keeps its japa, malas, chanting time and the time each mala took, and you can add a note. All your sittings are in Journey.

A11: Each bead adds the time since the bead before it, up to one minute, so a pause for tea does not count as chanting. The japa a minute uses the beads of the last minute, or the sitting's average.

A12: Pace sets a steady beat from one chant a second to one every 30 seconds, and can count for you or only guide you while you tap; the breath circle grows as you breathe in and shrinks as you breathe out, and a voice on your device can say the mantra on each bead. Writing is likhita japa: each mantra you write on the pad counts when you rest the pen. Focus fills the screen in black: tap anywhere to count, dim it or hide the numbers.

A13: Yes. Choose the beads in one mala under Settings. Many people count a 54-bead mala twice or a 27-bead mala four times for 108; Digital Mala counts each round of the mala you choose as one mala. Changing the number saves the sitting in hand and starts the beads at the Meru.

A14: This site keeps the microphone switched off for all its pages, so the original app's Voice mode, which listened for the pause after each chant, is not here. Silent japa never could be heard anyway. Count by touch, keys, Pace, Writing, earbud buttons or a flick of the phone instead.

A15: Thirty, in nine groups: Shiva, Vishnu, Krishna and Rama, Devi, Ganesha and Hanuman, Vedic and universal, saints and gurus, Buddhist, Sikh and Jain. Each is in its own script (Devanagari, Gurmukhi, Tibetan, Chinese or Japanese) with a transliteration, a plain meaning and a note on where it comes from, such as Rig Veda 3.62.10 for the Gayatri and Rig Veda 7.59.12 for the Mahamrityunjaya.

A16: They are plain renderings of the common published texts, with notes on what tradition holds; they promise no effect. Pronunciation, the form of a mantra and the rules for chanting it differ between schools and families. Follow what your teacher or your elders taught you.

A17: Yes. Open Mantras and press Add your own: type the mantra in any script, a short name, the transliteration and meaning if you like, and the seconds one chant takes at your pace. You can keep up to 200 of your own, edit them, and delete them; deleting one keeps your past japa of it in your totals.

A18: Yes, with Say the mantra under Pace. Only voices stored on your device are used, so the words are not sent to a speech service. If there is no voice for the mantra's script, an English voice reads the transliteration; with no voice at all, nothing is read. Settings lists the voices your device has.

A19: Choose a mantra (or any mantra), how many japa and in how many days, and a start date. Each day shows its share: the japa still to do divided by the days left, so a day missed is spread over the rest. The card shows the total so far, today's share, whether you are ahead, on track or behind, and a strip of the days. A sankalpa is complete when its japa reach the number; if a sitting is deleted and it falls short again, it opens again.

A20: From sunrise, solar noon and sunset at your place, which your browser works out from the position of the Sun. They use the common reckoning of a muhurta as 48 minutes: Brahma muhurta is the second muhurta before sunrise, Pratah sandhya the muhurta before sunrise, Madhyahna half a muhurta either side of solar noon, and Sayam sandhya the muhurta after sunset. Your own tradition may reckon them differently.

A21: A tithi is each 12 degrees the Moon gains on the Sun, thirty to a lunar month: Shukla (waxing) Pratipada to Purnima, then Krishna (waning) Pratipada to Amavasya. A day takes the tithi running at its sunrise at your place, and Pradosh the tithi at sunset. A tithi that runs over two sunrises is listed on its first day; one that starts after a sunrise and ends before the next is listed on the day it runs.

A22: When a tithi starts or ends within minutes of sunrise, calendars made with different methods can name different days, and many traditions keep fasts by their own rules (for example, Vaishnava Ekadashi rules about the tithi before dawn). The times here agreed with JPL's DE421 ephemeris to within half a minute in the checks, but for vrat days, follow your own panchang or temple calendar.

A23: Sunrise and sunset depend on where you are. Choose a city from the list (it brings its time zone), or open Latitude and longitude and type them with a time zone. Times are shown on the place's own clock, so a place in another country gets its own dates. The place is kept only on your device. This site keeps location switched off, so there is no Use my location.

A24: A short summary of a common order: achamana, pranayama, sankalpa, marjana, arghya to the Sun, Gayatri japa and upasthana. The words and the order differ between Vedic schools and families, so treat it as a reminder and follow what your elders or your teacher taught you.

A25: A web page cannot wake your phone at a set time, so Daily reminder saves a calendar file with a daily event and an alert at the time you choose. Open the file and your calendar app adds it; the calendar reminds you.

A26: Your japa in all, malas, days of practice, the streak now and your best streak, and the time chanting; a calendar of the last twelve months shaded by your daily goal; the japa of the last 30 days as a chart or a table; the hours you start chanting; each mantra's total; and every sitting with its note.

A27: The days in a row with at least one japa, counting back from today, or from yesterday until you chant today; the card then says chant today to keep it. The best streak is the longest run you have had.

A28: Each day of the last twelve months is shaded by your daily goal (a number of malas, set in Settings): no japa, under half the goal, half to the goal, the goal met, and twice the goal or more. Hover, touch or move to a day with the arrow keys to read its japa and time; press Enter or click to open the day with its mantras and sittings.

A29: Yes, with the trash button on its row in Sittings. Its japa are taken off the days they were counted on, so a sitting that ran past midnight comes off both days, and your totals, streaks and sankalpas follow.

A30: Yes. Sittings (CSV) saves every sitting with its date, times, mantra, japa, malas, minutes, pace and note; Days (CSV) saves each day's japa, minutes and japa by mantra. Spreadsheets open both. Share a picture makes an image of today, your streak or all time, which you can save or send to an app you choose.

A31: The beads (ten materials and six threads), the beads in a mala, the turn at the Meru, knots, the view of the mala, the daily goal, pulling to count, the second-tap gap, shaking to count, earbud buttons, vibration, keeping the screen on, the bead click, the sound at the end of a mala, the volume, the drone and its key, the voice, big numbers as 1,25,000 or 125,000, Devanagari count digits, the transliteration and your place. Light and dark follow the site's theme button.

A32: In this browser on this device: the settings, days, sittings, sankalpas and the mala in hand under five entries named for this tool, and written pages in a small database of its own. Nothing is saved on a first visit until you count, choose or change something. Delete everything, under Settings, removes it all after you confirm, and the rest of the site is left alone. A private window or cleared browser data starts afresh.

A33: Press Back up to a file under Settings, then Restore from a file in the other browser. The backup holds everything, written pages included, and each value is checked when it is read back. A backup from the original Digital Mala app restores here too.

A34: Yes. Tab reaches every button and box, arrow keys move between the views and inside groups of choices, and the count, a finished mala and a finished sankalpa are announced. With the mala selected Space or Enter counts; J, the right arrow, Backspace and Ctrl+Z work while you use the tool. The calendar and charts are described in words and the 30-day chart has a table.

A35: Sun and Moon is a full almanac: sunrise, twilight, the Moon and a daily panchang with nakshatra, yoga and karana. Digital Mala uses the same astronomy only for the sandhya times and the coming lunar days of your practice. Prana is a breathing tool with fifteen techniques; Digital Mala's breath guide is a circle that follows the pace of your chant. The Clock's timer counts down anything; Digital Mala's sitting timer sounds a bowl while you keep counting.