About
About Sinq
Prayer, Scripture and the Church’s day, together on your phone.
What it is
An app for praying the hours, not for reading about them.
Sinq holds the prayers a day is built from, ጸሎተ ነግህ at dawn through መንፈቀ ሌሊት at night, and opens on whichever one the hour suggests. Around them sit the readings that place the day in the Church's year: the ግጻዌ appointed for the date, the ስንክሳር commemoration with its አርኬ, and whichever fast is in effect.
The interface is Amharic first and English if you prefer it. Everything is set in Ethiopic type chosen for reading at length, on a deep liturgical green with gold marking what matters.
Offline by construction
Everything you pray is already on the phone. The bundled prayers, Scripture, lectionary and synaxarium are inside the file before you install it; reading them needs no signal. GitHub builds can check for updates, and optional Catena commentary opens an online page. No account or analytics SDK is required.
It works on a phone with no SIM, in a basement, on a plane, on a bundle that ran out. Your records stay on the device unless you choose to export a backup or share content, and Android's automatic cloud backup is deliberately switched off for this app, so your prayer records don't reach Google either.
Inside the app
ጸሎት Prayer
- The seven hours ጸሎተ ነግህ, ሠለስት, ቀትር, ተሰዓት, ሰርክ, ንዋም and መንፈቀ ሌሊት with its three watches, plus the Veil prayer. The home screen suggests the hour the time of day calls for.
- ውዳሴ ማርያም and ጸሎት ዘዘወትር A portion for each weekday, with ይወድስዋ መላእክት and አንቀጸ ብርሃን, in Amharic, with a Ge'ez toggle.
- Hours you shape yourself Build a custom hour from the psalms and passages you actually pray, and keep a prayer list of your own.
የቀን መቁጠሪያ Calendar and lectionary
- ግጻዌ, the complete lectionary All 366 fixed dates, the movable weekday seasons and the Sunday and mezmur cycle, resolved for the year through the ባሕረ ሓሳብ. Every citation opens in the reader.
- ስንክሳር The day's commemorations in Amharic or in Ge'ez, with its አርኬ hymn and the fixed closing prayer.
- አጽዋማት What fast is in effect today, and every fast of the Ethiopian year.
- The ባሕረ ሓሳብ table The printed 2001–2015 EC annual table, from the Library.
ንባብ Reading
- The whole Bible, bundled The Amharic 1980 Ethiopian Orthodox canon, Old and New Testament, with no connection needed.
- All 150 psalms Amharic by default with a Ge'ez 1980 switch in the reader, numbered as the Ge'ez Psalter numbers them.
- ሌሎች መጻሕፍት, 37 books of the Church The books outside the 81, scanned from printed copies and filed the way the Church files them: 32 መልክእ hymns from መልክዐ ጉባኤ, መጽሐፈ ሰዓታት, ማኅሌተ ጽጌ, ሰቆቃወ ድንግል and ጸሎት ነቢያት. On a መልክእ the salutation opening each stanza and the Name of God are in red, as the printed books set them.
- ሥርዓተ ማኅሌት, the whole year 190 orders of service — the scanned book with the Telegram editions of each order beside it — on the day they are sung and in the Library the rest of the year. A movement named after a hymn opens that hymn on the shelf, at the stanza being sung.
- Reading plans Read the Bible through, or the Psalter one psalm a day, at a pace you set — with reminders in the morning, afternoon and evening while today’s planned reading remains unfinished. Quiet hours and an off switch remain available.
- Type that suits your eyes Scroll or turn page by page; five text sizes, four Ethiopic faces, three line spacings and four alignments, matched across every reading surface. The screen can stay awake while you pray, and each hour remembers where you stopped.
የግል Yours
- ማስታወሻ, a journal that knows the day Write the day down, browsed a ግእዝ month at a time. Each entry keeps the Church's day it was written on (the feast, the fast, that day's ግጻዌ), so an old entry reads as more than a date. An optional passphrase gates access, and journal screens block screenshots and app-switcher previews. Confession preparation is a simple autosaving note; its text is hidden in lists and excluded from backups. The passphrase does not encrypt the database.
- አስራት and ስዕለት A ledger for the tithe: record what you receive and the tenth is worked out, record what you give and it shows what is still owed. Vows are tied to the feast they were promised on, setting what was promised against what has been kept.
- ጉዞ, a record without punishment Track daily prayer and your own habits. There is no broken-streak language here; a missed day is a missed day.
- Reminders that respect the night Prayer-time notifications with per-mode settings, a nightly nudge, a morning ግጻዌ reading, and quiet hours that silence all of them.
- Search that forgives spelling Amharic search treating ሀ/ሐ/ኀ, ሰ/ሠ and ጸ/ፀ as equal, across the prayers, the Psalter, the whole Bible, the 37 books of the shelf, ስንክሳር and ውዳሴ ማርያም.
- Bookmarks, highlights, sharing Colour any verse in one of four colours and it stays coloured everywhere it appears. Copy or share a verse, a reading or a chapter as text or as paginated image cards, and save them to the gallery.
- Backup you choose the contents of Export is a checklist, not all-or-nothing. The journal is off by default and asks for your passphrase before it can be included; confession drafts are never exportable at all.
- Home-screen widgets Keep the day’s readings, a Memento Mori reminder or the Prayer clock on your home screen. Tap the clock to open the current prayer hour.
Where to go next
Install it
Sinq is distributed as a signed APK. Three steps, plus a way to get updates automatically.
Where the text comes from
Every source, its licence, and who transcribed it. The prayer text and the code are under different terms.
What changed
Release notes for recent versions, written for the people using the app.
Corrections
If a reading is mapped to the wrong day, a translation reads wrongly, or a commemoration is missing, that is worth reporting. Corrections to the prayer text mapping and the Amharic are the most useful contribution anyone can make. Send it here, or open an issue on GitHub if you have an account there.