Locations and Settings

Location is more than a city label: it affects astronomy, regional calendar behavior, candle lighting, and the preferred zmanim shita.

Saved locations

The location button in the toolbar lists your saved locations: choose one to use it. Below them, Location Settings… edits the location in use, New Location… adds one, and Delete removes the location in use from the list.

Finding a place

At the top of Location Settings, type a city in Search for a city — in English letters, for example “Lakewood, NJ” or “Karney Shomron” — and choose it from the list: its name, country, coordinates, time zone and the region’s default shita are filled in. A state or country after a comma narrows the list (“London, Canada”). The list of about 170,000 places is built into Kaluach, so it works without an internet connection. Every field can still be typed or corrected by hand.

Places in Judea and Samaria are treated as Israel locations, on Israel time.

Zmanim shita

Each location has its own zmanim shita: one of the built-in shitot — Eretz Yisrael (GRA), Eretz Yisrael (M”A), Diaspora (GRA), Diaspora (M”A), Chabad, and the community shitot — a custom shita, or None (show every shita).

Check Also show Rabbeinu Tam to add Rabbeinu Tam’s end of Shabbat and Yom Tov after the shita’s own — for communities with followers of both. It has no effect when the shita already uses that Rabbeinu Tam time, or with None, which lists every shita anyway.

Israel and diaspora

Kaluach follows Israel or the diaspora by the location’s country code: IL is Israel, anything else the diaspora. Changing the code changes the classification without changing the time zone.

Time zone and daylight saving

Each location stores a named time zone (for example Asia/Jerusalem), so the correct daylight-saving rule is applied for each date. City search fills it in; for coordinates entered by hand, choose it from the Time Zone list.

Leave Daylight Saving on Automatic for normal use. If a rare location remains consistently one hour wrong, you can force daylight saving on or off for that saved location.

Candle lighting

Candle lighting follows the local custom — 40 minutes before sunset in Jerusalem, 18 in the diaspora, and the customs of other cities in Israel. A different number of minutes can be set for the location.

General settings

Settings (the gear at the right end of the toolbar, or Ctrl+,) hold: Appearance — the same as Windows, light, or dark; 12- or 24-hour time; the historical Julian/Gregorian transition used for displayed civil dates; and the Event Reminders time — see Reminders. The language (EN / עב), the holidays shown, and the month display are chosen in the toolbar, and Kaluach remembers them.