CompassPro Help Documentation

A complete guide to CompassPro, from the first heading to the Qibla.

Last Updated: November 13, 2026

1. Getting Started

The tool has five tabs: Compass, Navigate, Sky, Map and Tools. Above them, the place button shows your chosen place; beside them sit Settings and How it works. The round button at the top right switches the site between light and dark.

Choose your place first: magnetic north needs nothing, but true north, the Sun, the Moon, the Qibla and every distance count from it.

2. Your Place

Location is turned off for this page, so it cannot ask where you are. Instead:

• A town: press the place button and search the list of about 200 towns and cities; with a place chosen, the nearest come first.
• Coordinates: open Type coordinates and enter them in any common format, with a name if you like. The line under the box shows how the page reads them.
• The map: tap a point on the Map tab and press Make this my place.
• A position fix: on the Navigate tab, Work it out, Where am I, then Use as my place.

The place keeps its time zone (a town's own; this device's for typed coordinates and map points), which the Sky tab uses for its times.

3. Reading the Compass

The dark mark at the top of the dial is where your phone points; the red pointer on the card is north. Beside the dial: the heading in large figures, the direction in words, which north it counts from, and a line that says where the reading comes from. Under them are the north buttons, the actions (Hold, Follow this bearing, Way back, Sight, Calibrate, Keep screen on, Night light), the marks to show on the dial, and facts about your place: the declination and how fast it changes, the grid convergence, your destination, the Sun, the Moon, the Qibla and your coordinates.

In Settings you can choose North stays up: the card then stays still and a pointer turns.

4. On a Phone or Tablet

• Flat: the heading is the direction of the top of the phone. Tilting it does not throw the reading off; the facts say how far it is tilted, and the bubble in the middle of the dial shows when it is level.
• Upright: the heading is the direction the camera faces, and a line under the dial says so.
• iPhone and iPad: tap Start the compass and allow motion and orientation access.
• Calibrate: step away from metal, draw a large figure 8 three times, then check the heading against a known direction. On an iPhone the line under the heading shows how sure the phone is of its compass.
• Vibration: on phones that support it, a short buzz when you are on course and as you pass north (Settings turns it off).

Steel, magnets, cars, speakers and phone cases with magnets pull a phone's compass off by several degrees: keep away from them and check the heading against something you know.

5. On a Computer

Most computers have no compass sensor, and the line under the heading says so. Drag the dial round, or click it and use the arrow keys (1 degree) and Page Up and Page Down (10 degrees), to set the direction you face. Everything else works as on a phone.

6. Magnetic, True and Grid North

• Magnetic: where a needle points.
• True: the direction of the North Pole. The angle from magnetic north is the declination, worked out for your place and today's date with the World Magnetic Model 2025 of NOAA and the British Geological Survey, valid from 2025 to the end of 2029.
• Grid: the up direction of the UTM or MGRS grid on a paper map; it differs from true north by the grid convergence.

Every bearing on the page follows the north you choose: the dial, saved places, Going to, the calculators and the sky. N switches between them. Near the magnetic poles, NOAA marks compasses as possibly not fully accurate or, nearer still, unreliable; the facts say so for such a place.

7. Following a Bearing

• Follow this bearing (or F): locks the direction you face as your course. A magenta line marks it on the card, a shaded arc shows how far you are off, and the course panel says Turn left or Turn right, or On course, with the way back. Type in the Course box to set any bearing; the cross stops following.
• Way back: follows the reverse of the direction you face now.
• Hold (or H): freezes the reading so you can lower the phone and read it; press again to let go.

8. Marks on the Dial

Under Show on the dial, turn on the Sun (a sun shape), the Moon, the Qibla (a green square), the Pole star (a star: Polaris, or Sigma Octantis south of the equator) and the Destination (a magenta diamond). A hollow shape means it is below the horizon. Each shape differs, so they can be told apart in Night light too. They need your place.

9. Saved Places and GPX Files

• Save my place keeps your chosen place; Add saves a place from coordinates in any format.
• Each place shows its coordinates and its bearing and distance from your place, with Go here, Share, Edit and Delete (Undo in the message).
• GPX: the download button saves all places as a GPX file; the upload button reads the waypoints and route points of a GPX file (up to 5 MB), adding new ones and skipping repeats.
• Share: opens the phone's share sheet, or copies a link. The place travels after the # sign of the link and leaves the address bar as soon as the page opens; whoever opens it sees it as a destination for that visit, with Save it to keep it.

Up to 500 places are kept, with names of up to 80 characters.

10. Going To and the Radar

Going to shows the destination's bearing and distance from your place and, when the compass is live or the dial turned, how far to turn. Show on the compass puts it on the dial; Follow this bearing sets it as your course; Stop clears it. Around your place plots your saved places by true bearing and distance, north up, within the range you choose (Auto, 200 m, 1 km, 10 km or 100 km); places beyond it are arrows at the edge. Distances count from the place you chose, because location is off for this page.

11. Work It Out

• Between two places: the distance over the Earth's surface, the bearing to set off on (true, magnetic and grid), the bearing on arrival, a constant-bearing route and the halfway point. Leave From empty for your place.
• Go a distance: the point you reach from a start on a bearing after a distance (up to 20,000 km).
• Where am I: your position from the bearings to two places you can see and know; Use compass takes each bearing from the compass. The page says how good the fix is from the angle the lines cross at, and how far a two degree error would move it.

Places can be typed as a saved place's name, a town of the list, Kaaba, my place, or coordinates.

12. The Sky Tab

A chart of the sky over your place, seen from above with the horizon at the edge: the Sun's path today with its hours, the paths of the longest and shortest days, the Moon's path, the Qibla, the pole star and where the Sun and the Moon rise and set. The time bar and the date move it to any time; Now comes back. Turn with the compass turns the chart with the phone.

• Sun: its position, sunrise, solar noon, sunset, the golden hour (the Sun under 6 degrees), the blue hour, the length of daylight and the direction and length of your shadow.
• Moon: its position, phase, moonrise and moonset.
• Qibla: its bearing and distance, when the Sun stands in the Qibla direction, when shadows point to it, and the two days the Sun passes over the Kaaba.
• Find north without a compass: from the Sun, at solar noon, with a watch and from the pole star.

13. The Map Tab

From my place centres the world on your place: straight lines from the centre are true bearings and the distance from the centre is real. Whole world is the flat map; drag it to move. The zoom buttons (or a pinch on a touch screen) zoom in and out. The chips turn on and off the lines of equal declination, the night side, the routes to your destination and the Kaaba, your places and the towns. Tap a point for its bearing, distance and magnetic field, with Go here, Save place and Make this my place. Under the map, the magnetic field at your place: a diagram of the three norths, the declination and its yearly change, the dip, the strength, the grid convergence and the north magnetic pole.

14. The Tools Tab

• Coordinates: paste coordinates in any format (or press My place) to see them in all six formats, each with a copy button, with Go here, Save place and Show on the map.
• Bearings: a bearing in degrees, mils or grads, from magnetic, true or grid north, shown in all units, as a quadrant bearing and a compass point, with its back bearing and the other norths.
• Level and slope: a spirit level from the tilt sensors, with the slope in degrees and as a grade.
• Measure a height: from the distance, the angle up and your eye height; Use tilt takes the angle from the phone.
• Point to it: eight rounds of facing a direction or a town; the best score is kept.
• Sensor check: what the browser offers: the compass and its readings, the screen's turn, Keep screen on, vibration and the camera.

15. Sight

Sight opens the camera with a strip of bearings across the top and a ring in the middle. Hold the phone upright and put the target in the ring to read its bearing and how far you tilt up or down. Take bearing notes it (the last six are listed), Follow it follows it, Close or Esc closes Sight and turns the camera off. The Sun, the Moon, the Qibla and your destination are marked when they are in view; marks away from the middle are placed approximately. Your browser asks before the camera is used; without it, the strip still works. The picture is never recorded or uploaded.

16. Settings and Your Data

• Bearings in degrees or mils; Distances in kilometres, miles or nautical miles; Coordinates shown as decimal, degrees, minutes and seconds, degrees and minutes, UTM, MGRS or plus code.
• Dial: the card turns, or north stays up and the pointer turns. Needle: quick, normal or steady. Vibrate: on or off.
• Delete everything: removes your place, saved places, destination, scores and settings from this browser after you confirm; the rest of the site is left alone.

Nothing is saved on a first visit until you change something. Data from the earlier version of CompassPro in this browser is moved over once.

17. Keyboard and Accessibility

Every button and field works with the keyboard. The tabs are a tab list: the arrow keys, Home and End move between them. While you use the tool and are not typing, H holds the reading, F follows the current bearing and N switches the north; elsewhere on the page these keys do what they always do. The dial is a slider that screen readers announce with its heading. With reduced motion set on your device, the calibration drawing does not move.

18. Privacy

CompassPro works in this browser, and nothing you do in it is sent anywhere: no upload, no account and no server-side storage. The magnetic model, the astronomy, the map and the list of towns are part of the page, the camera picture never leaves your screen, and the heading is read aloud only with a voice of your device. Like every page on ZeroDataUpload, the page shows advertising and counts visits; the cookie banner explains the choices and the Privacy Policy explains both. What you do in the tool, such as your places, is never part of them, and a shared place leaves the address bar before those scripts start.

19. How It Was Checked

Before this page was published, the engine behind the tool was checked against independent references: 242,382 cases in 17 groups. They include the magnetic field at thousands of places and dates against NOAA's own model and coefficients, distances and bearings between any two points (also on nearly opposite sides of the Earth), UTM, MGRS and plus codes, coordinates typed in every format the page reads, the Sun, the Moon and the pole stars against a planetary ephemeris, sunrise and sunset, local midnight at every clock change from 2000 to 2030 in fifteen time zones, the Qibla, the GPX file against its published schema, the heading from the sensors, and saved data and links made to break the tool. Then the page was tried at four screen widths in both themes.

20. Troubleshooting

• The heading is wrong or jumps. Move away from metal, magnets and electronics, take the phone out of a magnetic case, and calibrate.
• No compass sensor found. The device has none, or the browser does not offer it; turn the dial by hand. On an iPhone, tap Start the compass and allow access.
• True and Grid do not work. They need your place: press the place button and choose one.
• Distances do not change as I walk. Location is off for this page, so distances count from the place you chose; change your place, or fix your position from two bearings.
• The camera does not open in Sight. Allow the camera for the site in the browser's settings; the bearing strip works without it.
• My saved places are gone. They are kept per browser and device; a private window or cleared browser data starts afresh. Save them as a GPX file to keep a copy.

21. Support

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