Designing a Tasbih of Light

The problem with "tap anywhere"

Most tasbih apps make the whole screen a button. It works, but it feels like pressing an elevator call button ninety-nine times. A physical misbaha gives you something those apps lost: the sensation of beads passing under your thumb, one by one, each with a tiny weight and a tiny sound.

We wanted that feeling back — without drawing a skeuomorphic wooden bead necklace on the screen.

Beads as light

Just Tasbih's counter is a strand of glowing amber orbs on an invisible curve. There's no string, no clasp — just lights on an arc, the way a physical strand catches lamplight in a dark room. Each count slides the strand along its curve: a new bead flows in from one side, the rest shift over, the farthest fades out. The queue is infinite, like remembrance should feel.

The beads are brightest at the apex and dim toward the edges, which keeps your eye resting on a single point — the bead you just counted.

The thumb owns the bottom of the screen

Ergonomics research on one-handed phone use is unambiguous: the comfortable zone for the thumb is the bottom third of the screen. So that's where the strand lives. The count, the Arabic, and your progress sit in the top half — the eyes' zone — and nothing you need to touch repeatedly lives up there.

This is also why resetting is a long-press on the number itself, far from the beads: no amount of fast counting can trigger it by accident. And because even deliberate resets are sometimes regretted, an Undo appears for a few seconds after — no confirmation dialog interrupting you before, no permanence punishing you after.

Haptics carry the ritual

Every count gives a soft haptic tap — the digital equivalent of a bead's click. Completing a round gives a stronger pulse, so you can keep your eyes closed or on the road (walking dhikr is real dhikr) and still feel the milestone. With motion counting on, you don't touch the screen at all: hold the phone, flick your wrist as if passing a bead, and the gyroscope counts for you.

Restraint is the feature

The hardest part of this design was everything we didn't add: no floating share buttons, no achievement popups mid-count, no "rate us" interruptions, and — structurally, permanently — no ads. A tasbih has exactly one job. The best compliment this screen can receive is that after a week, you stop noticing it.