Follow a Taraweeh imam or a student live, word by word

To follow a reciter, open Listen, give the session a name and a track, leave Find the place automatically selected and tap Start listening. Samee places the recitation in the Quran after the first few words, then follows it word by word. Missed, wrong and added words, skipped ayahs and long hesitations appear under Findings as they happen, each with a short audio clip. Tap Stop and save at the end to keep the session.

Before you start

• Ask first. If you are recording in a mosque, ask the imam or the mosque. Samee keeps a few seconds of audio around each finding, and the whole recording if you choose to.
• Place the phone where it hears the imam clearly: near a loudspeaker, not by a fan. A stand or shelf is better than holding it.
• Charge it, and keep it on charge for a long night if you can.
• Don't operate your phone while you pray. Set the session up beforehand and review it afterwards, or let someone who isn't praying hold it.

1. Set up the session

1. Session name: anything that helps you find it later, such as Night 5 or Ahmad, Juz 30.
2. Track: the name of the khatm or student this session belongs to, such as Taraweeh 1448 or Student Ahmad. Sessions with the same track add up into one khatm map. Samee suggests your existing tracks as you type. See tracks and the khatm map.
3. Where does it start?
   • Find the place automatically, from the first few words heard.
   • Continue and the track name, which appears when the track already has a bookmark: it starts where the last session of that track stopped.
   • Start at a chosen ayah: pick the surah and type the ayah.
4. What to catch: Missed, wrong and added words, Skipped ayahs and jumps, and Hesitations and repeats are on by default. Vowels (harakat) is an experimental extra; see what each finding means.
5. While listening:
   • Show the next words when the reciter gets stuck, after 3, 5 or 8 seconds. This is prompting, or talqeen.
   • Vibrate on a mistake, on phones that allow it.
   • Tell imams apart by voice, when imams take turns (how).
   • Hifz test: hide the text until it is recited, for testing your own or a student's memorisation.
   • Keep the full recording, for replaying the report. Off by default; without it, Samee keeps only short clips around findings.
6. Translation under the ayah: a translation, or Arabic only.
7. Tap Start listening and allow the microphone.

2. The live screen

The bar at the top shows what Samee is doing:

Next to it are the timer, a sound-level meter, the name of the voice reciting (when imams take turns) and, if the connection is poor, a connection message.

Below, the header shows the place, for example Surah 2, ayah 255, word 7 of 50. Juz 3, page 42. The current and previous ayahs are shown word by word:

• grey words haven't been recited yet;
• dark words were recited correctly;
• words on a red background were missed or wrong, missed ones dotted underneath;
• red struck-through words belong to a skipped ayah;
• an amber background means a word sounded different;
• a gold line under a word marks a possible vowel difference (experimental).

Tap Page view to see the whole mushaf page with the current ayah highlighted, and Ayah view to go back.

Findings lists what Samee caught, newest first, with counts by kind. Tap Play on a finding to hear the moment. The words Should be and Heard show the difference.

3. Pause, stop and save

• Pause stops sending audio; Resume carries on. On a computer, the Space bar does the same.
• Stop and save ends the session. Samee says Checking the last words for a moment, then Session saved with the range recited, how long it lasted, the counts by kind and, for a track, where the next session will continue.
• From there: Review the findings opens the report, Khatm map opens the track's map, and Start another session sets up the next one with the same track.

If the connection drops

You don't need to do anything. The phone keeps recording and stores the audio, up to 30 minutes, then sends it when the connection is back. The bar shows Connection lost with how much audio is kept on the device, then Sending while it catches up. On networks that block live connections, Samee switches to Slow connection mode and sends the audio in short pieces instead. Either way, Samee hears everything once and in order, so a dropped connection doesn't turn into missed words.

Check a recording instead

If you recorded a recitation earlier, tap Check a recording on the setup screen and choose the audio or video file, up to 300 MB. Samee uploads it (an interrupted upload continues where it left off), says Decoding the recording, then Checking with a percentage, and saves a report like a live session. Fill in the session name and track first if you want it on a khatm map.

Next

• What each marked mistake means
• Review the session report
• Taraweeh: rak'ahs, sajdah, qunoot and imams taking turns