Digital Mala Help Documentation

A complete guide to Digital Mala, from the first bead to a finished sankalpa.

Last Updated: November 11, 2026

1. Getting Started

Above the tool, a status line shows today's japa and the mantra you are chanting. Next to it are the five views: Japa (the mala), Mantras, Practice (sankalpas, sandhya times, lunar days and the reminder), Journey and Settings, then How it works. Digital Mala opens on Japa with Om Namah Shivaya and a mala of 108 rudraksha beads. The round button at the top right switches the site between light and dark.

2. Choosing a Mantra

Press the mantra at the top of the Japa view, or open Mantras. Search by name, deity or words, in any script or in Latin letters without the accents, or pick a group: All, Favourites, the nine traditions and Your own. Open a mantra to read it in its own script with its transliteration, meaning and where it comes from, with how much you have chanted it, today and in all, and your sittings. Chant this makes it the mantra you count; the sitting in hand is saved first. Add to favourites keeps it under Favourites.

3. Counting on the Mala

The bead under the small mark at the front of the loop is the one in your hand. Tap the mala to count it, or pull the beads to the left with a finger: each bead you pull past counts, and the beads stay where your finger leaves them. With the mala selected, Space or Enter counts; while you use the tool, J or the right arrow count too. Undo, Backspace or Ctrl+Z take back a bead. The big number is the bead count in this mala; below the mala are the malas of this sitting, today's japa with a bar towards your daily goal, the chanting time and the japa a minute.

Count by Touch, Pace or Writing, below the buttons. In Settings you can also count with a firm flick of the phone (Shake to count) or with earbud and headset buttons (play, pause or next counts, previous takes one back), and make a second tap within 0.12 to 0.5 seconds count once.

4. The Meru and a Complete Mala

When the last bead is counted, the Meru (the guru bead with its tassel) comes round and glows, a bell, singing bowl or chime sounds (or nothing, as you choose), the phone vibrates if it can, and the count shows the mala complete with the time it took. A moment later the next mala begins. By custom the Meru is not crossed: the mala turns round and you go back the way you came. Switch Turn back at the Meru off in Settings if your custom is to go on.

5. Sittings and Targets

A sitting 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; it is then saved to Journey. End sitting shows the japa, malas, time and pace, with a box for a note. Start mala again takes the beads back to the Meru and keeps the japa you counted. Target for this sitting sets a number of malas (1 to 108): a bar shows how far you are, and a bowl and a message mark the target reached.

6. Pace and the Breath Guide

Choose Pace and press Start pace. The slider sets one chant every 1 to 30 seconds; each mantra starts at a calm pace of its own and remembers yours. With Count for me on, each beat counts a bead; off, a soft wooden beat only guides you while you tap. Breath guide shows a circle that grows as you breathe in and shrinks as you breathe out over each beat (with reduced motion it brightens and fades instead). Say the mantra reads it on each beat with a voice stored on your device. Pause stops the beat.

7. Writing Japa and the Notebook

Choose Writing. The mala gives way to a pad with the mantra faintly behind it; write it with a finger, a mouse or a pen. When you rest the pen for the time set (0.6 to 3 seconds), the writing is saved and counts one bead; Count it now counts at once and Clear wipes the pad. The last twelve you wrote are shown under the pad, and Undo removes the last one with its bead. What you write changes the short form you write for each mantra. Notebook shows your writing 108 to a page with the dates, and saves a page as a picture.

8. Focus, Timer and Sound

Focus fills the screen in black with the mala and the count: tap anywhere to count. Dim darkens it in two steps, Hide count hides the numbers, Undo takes a bead back and Close or Esc leaves. The screen stays on while you count if Keep the screen on is set. Timer sets a sitting of 5 to 600 minutes with a soft chime every 5, 10 or 15 minutes if you like, and a singing bowl at the end; keep counting as usual. Sound sets the bead click, the sound at the end of a mala and a tanpura or shruti box drone to chant over; the drone's key (Sa) and the voice are in Settings. On an iPhone, turn the ring and silent switch off to hear sounds.

9. Your Own Mantras

Under Mantras, Add your own takes the mantra in any script, a short name, its transliteration and meaning if you like, and the seconds one chant takes at your pace. It becomes the mantra you chant and appears under Your own. Open it to edit or delete it; your past japa of it stay in your totals as a mantra you deleted.

10. Sankalpa

Under Practice, New sankalpa takes a mantra (or any mantra, where all your japa count), how many japa (such as 1,25,000), in how many days (such as 9 for Navratri, 40 or 108), a start date and a name. The preview says how many a day and how many malas that is. Each card shows the japa so far, today's share and the day of the vow, whether you are ahead, on track or behind, and a strip of the days: full for a day's share met, pale for some japa, empty for none. Today's share also shows on the Japa view. A sankalpa that reaches its number is complete; if it falls short again because a sitting was deleted, it opens again. Completed and ended sankalpas move to their own list.

11. Your Place and the Sandhya Times

Press Set your place on Practice or Change under Settings. Type a city and pick it from the list (202 places, each with its time zone), or open Latitude and longitude and type them with a name and a time zone. Times are on the place's own clock. The sandhya card shows the day from midnight to midnight with daylight, the Sun's path and the sandhya windows, and lists Brahma muhurta, Pratah, Madhyahna and Sayam sandhya with their times; the date box shows another day, and Chant the Gayatri makes it the mantra. The windows use the common reckoning of a muhurta as 48 minutes. The steps of sandhya vandanam are summarised below the list; families and schools differ, so follow your own teaching.

12. Lunar Days

The lunar day card names today's tithi at your place and when it ends, then the next seven observances in 45 days: Ekadashi, Pradosh, Purnima and Amavasya, each with the times its tithi runs. A day takes the tithi running at its sunrise; Pradosh takes the tithi at sunset. A tithi that runs over two sunrises is listed on its first day, and one that has no sunrise of its own on the day it runs. Calendars can differ by a day near sunrise, and traditions keep fasts by their own rules: check your own panchang for vrat days.

13. The Daily Reminder

Choose a time and press Add to my calendar. A calendar file is saved with a daily 20-minute event at that time on this device's clock, with an alert, named for the mantra you chant. Open it with your calendar app to add it.

14. Journey

The tiles show your japa in all, malas, days of practice, the streak now, your best streak and your time chanting. The calendar shades each of the last twelve months' days by your daily goal: under half, half to the goal, the goal met, twice the goal or more; move along it with the arrow keys and open a day with Enter or a click. Below are the japa of the last 30 days (Show as a table for the numbers), the hours you start chanting, each mantra's total, and every sitting, newest first, with Show more for older ones. The trash button deletes a sitting and takes its japa off the days it was counted on. Sittings (CSV) and Days (CSV) save your practice for a spreadsheet, and Share a picture makes an image of today, your streak or all time.

15. Settings and Backups

• Your mala: ten bead materials and six threads, 108, 54, 36, 27 or 21 beads (changing it saves the sitting in hand), the turn at the Meru, knots, and the whole mala or a close up.
• Counting: the daily goal in malas, pulling the beads, the second-tap gap, shaking to count, earbud buttons, vibration and keeping the screen on (while you count and for three minutes after).
• Sound: the bead click, the sound at the end of a mala, the volume, the drone, its key and its volume, and the voice for Say the mantra.
• Display: big numbers as 1,25,000 or 125,000, the count in Western or Devanagari digits, and the transliteration under the mantra.
• Your data: Back up to a file, Restore from a file (each value is checked; a backup from the original Digital Mala app works too) and Delete everything.

16. Keyboard and Accessibility

• With the mala selected, Space or Enter counts. While you use the tool and are not typing, J or the right arrow count, and Backspace or Ctrl+Z take one back. Esc closes Focus or a window.
• Space and Enter count only on the mala, so elsewhere they still scroll the page and press buttons.
• Tab reaches every button and box; the arrow keys move between the views and inside groups of choices. The count, a complete mala and a complete sankalpa are announced to screen readers; the calendar's days and the charts are described in words, and the 30-day chart has a table.
• With reduced motion on in your device, the beads move without springing, the Meru glows without fading and the breath guide brightens and fades instead of growing.

17. Privacy and Your Data

Your settings, days, sittings, sankalpas and the mala in hand are kept in this browser under five entries named for this tool, and your written pages in a small database of its own, which is made only when you first write. Nothing is saved on a first visit until you count, choose or change something, and nothing is ever sent to a server. Data from the original Digital Mala app, if this browser has it, is brought over once. The microphone and location are not used. Like every page on ZeroDataUpload, this page shows ads; the Privacy Policy explains them.

18. How It Was Checked

Before this page was published, the engine behind the tool was checked: 30,102 cases in 13 groups. Sunrise, solar noon and sunset on the place's own day at 36 places from the equator to Svalbard and Antarctica, and the tithi and its start and end at 3,000 moments from 2000 to 2040, were compared with JPL's DE421 ephemeris (sunrise and sunset within 15 seconds, the tithi within half a minute). A year of lunar days at 22 places was compared with the same rules worked out from DE421. Three thousand runs of counting, undo, sittings, idle pauses, mantra and bead changes and deleted sittings were compared with a model written from the rules on this page, as were sankalpas, streaks and totals; three thousand saved states, most made to break the tool, the reminder file against the calendar standard and the CSV cells were checked too. Then the page was tried at four screen widths in both themes.

19. Troubleshooting and Support

• My counts are gone. They are kept per browser and device; a private window or cleared browser data starts afresh. Back up now and then.
• A double tap counted twice, or a quick tap did not count. Change Ignore a second tap within, under Settings.
• No sound. Sounds play only after you tap or click on the page; check the volume, the bead click and, on an iPhone, the silent switch.
• Say the mantra reads nothing or reads in English. Your device has no installed voice for the script; add one in your device's language settings.
• The lunar day differs from my calendar. See Lunar Days: dates near sunrise and fasting rules differ between calendars.
• A message says the browser is not saving. The browser blocks saving for this site, or it is full; the tool still works until you close the page.

For questions the FAQ does not answer, use the contact form.