True, the app has Mincha and Arvit, but at the time of writing (Feb 2025), the Shacharit tefil is still not in the app. Why is it so?
Tefilot in CalJ: why?
The first text I decided to put in the app, back in 2010 on my iPhone 3G, was the Birkat Hamazon, because I really needed to have this text with me everywhere while at work or dining out. So what better way to have it, than just paste it in my own app? (After all, I was the first user of my own app and it was primarily for myself that I started to develop it.)
And, since CalJ knows everything about the current date (is it Rosh Chodesh? Is Chanukah? etc.), I took this opportunity to make the birkon smart enough to print only the relevant portions, which also helps focusing and making sure not to forget them.
Then, a couple of years later, around 2012, I found myself at a Chuppa, it was Arvit time, and there weren’t enough siddurim (if at all), so most of the praying men davened by heart (at least, those who were able to). That’s when I decided to paste Tefilat Arvit in the app, too.
I started to work on it as soon as I got back home that same night.
A few years later yet, I also added Mincha, because it wasn’t easy to escape from the office every afternoon and walk/commute to a Beth-Knesset in Paris, and saying Mincha alone in some available room was my only choice. Here, too, pulling my smartphone to pray was the most convenient.
Why is it a lot of work to add a tefila in CalJ?
I could have done a plain copy-paste from one of the numerous sources of tefilot on the Web (although there weren’t so many, back in 2011-15), or simply a picture of a paper Siddur. But that’s not what I was interested in. I am a programmer, remember? so if there isn’t anything to program, why not just let people (or myself) use an actual prayer book?
I like it that the prayers in my app, are auto-arranged about the current date (as mentioned above). For Birkat Hamazon there are a limited number of situations (Purim, Pesach, etc. etc.) but for Mincha there are some more (Tachanun or not? Public Tzom?). Making a “page” that knows to show/hide large (or small) portions of text depending on some algorithm, requires a lot of time.
Now, of all the prayers, Shacharit is the heaviest one: not only the text itself is way longer than the two other daily prayers, but also this is where there are the greatest quantity of “dependent” text (specific pslams, Tachanun, and the Parasha among others).
So, why not Shacharit?
As everyone knows, this is only me maintaining/developing/updating this app, and of course it is only an unpaid hobby. Therefore there are things that I had enough time to make in the app, and others that I couldn’t, or won’t.
Tefilat Shacharit is a huge amount of work, as I already mentioned, and it hasn’t been my priority because basically, unlike my Mincha between to corridors at the office or Arvit behind a tree at a wedding party, in order to pray Shacharit I need my Tefilin. So, if I am in a place and time that I have my Tefilin with me (home, plane, synagogue, you name it), then obviously I was able to pack a prayer book along. Let alone the fact that we also need a Sefer Torah a lot of times, so, the situation is very different from the field minian at a party.
For these reasons, so far I never invested my CalJ-development capacity into putting Shacharit in the app. This doesn’t mean of course that I refuse to do so. It’s only a matter of my own volunteering time, which is very limited. However, nowadays it is very easy to find wonderful alternatives (there really are awesome Tefila apps), and I don’t feel I am in any competition against anyone with my free app, so, if another one does something better than mine, and it is also something than I’m not using myself (remember, I am the first and foremost user of my own app 🙂 ) then: ברוך השם !