# Hold the mic: five ways to practise without leaving the page > A complete guide to Qiraa’s new reading screen: what a tap on the mic does, what a hold opens, how each of the five ways works on the muṣḥaf page in front of you, and a fifteen-minute routine that uses three of them. - URL: https://qiraa.io/posts/hold-the-mic-every-way-to-practise-on-the-page - Language: en - Published: 2026-10-24 - Updated: 2026-10-24 - Section: Product guides - Reading time: 11 min --- Most of what you need for a good session with the Qurʼān fits on one page of the muṣḥaf. You listen to it, you read it aloud, you try it from memory, and you check that it stayed. Until now each of those meant a different screen. On Qiraa’s new reading screen they all start from one place: the microphone in the corner of the dock. A **tap** on the mic does what it always did. Qiraa listens while you recite and follows your place word by word. A **hold** opens the rest. Listen, Memorize, Halaqah and Test me rise out of the mic, all on the page you are already reading. You slide to one and let go. Below: where everything sits, what each way does, which one suits which day, and a short routine to try tonight. Every button word is the app’s own, so you can follow along, phone in hand. ## The dock at the foot of the page Open any page of the muṣḥaf: the printed Madani page, one of 604, laid out as in a paper copy. Tap the page once to read on a clear page; tap it again to bring the bars back. At the foot of the page sits a glass dock. Along it: - **Go to:** jump to a sūrah, a juzʼ or an āyah. - **Hide:** veil the words to test yourself. While they are hidden, **Peek word** and **Ayah** uncover one word or one āyah, and **Show** brings the page back. - **Listen** and **Play:** the Sheikh you have chosen reads while you follow. - **The mode chip:** a small blue label naming what the mic will do. Out of the box it says **Recite**. - **The mic:** the round button in the end corner of the dock — on the right, or on the left when the app is in Arabic. ## Tap the mic: Recite Tap the mic and start reciting from wherever you like on the page. Qiraa finds your place and follows you word by word. With the AI Tutor on, if you begin an āyah that is not on the open page, Qiraa looks across the whole muṣḥaf, and once it is sure, the page turns to where you are. ### It never shows a word before you say it If you have hidden the words to recite from memory, each word appears only once you have said it. We call this faithful follow, and we hold it strictly: when we first measured, 45.5 per cent of words appeared before they were said; across the paces we test, that is now 0.0 per cent. A page that gives the next word away cannot tell you whether you knew it. ### It tells you about a slip while you are still there With the AI Tutor on, Qiraa marks slips on the page as you say them, in amber, with a short sound and a small buzz, and a line above the dock says what happened. For example: - **A word was left out —** followed by the word, when you skipped one and carried on. - **wrong vowel (tashkeel) — say it again**, after the word, when the word was right but a short vowel slipped. - **That’s … — a look-alike, not here**, when you slid into a similar āyah elsewhere. Qiraa names it and stays on your page. The follow’s progress reaches the phone in a median of 401 ms. Checking a whole āyah takes longer — a few seconds on a long one — so a mark may land just after you finish it. ### How to read the marks - **An amber dotted line on a soft amber wash:** a wrong word, a wrong letter, a word from a look-alike āyah, or a wrong vowel. Each counts as a slip. - **A dashed amber outline:** a word you left out. - **A faint grey dotted line:** a word Qiraa could not hear clearly. It is never counted. Not sure is not a mistake. Saying a word again is not a mistake in itself. But a slip the follow already caught stays counted after you correct it, and is kept in Mistakes, so you can practise what tripped you. ### How you know it is listening Red in Qiraa means one thing: the microphone is open. While it listens, the mic turns red with a moving waveform, a soft red ring breathes round the dock, and a thin light runs round the edge of the screen. Tap the mic again to stop. Without the AI Tutor, Recite still works on this phone and you review yourself; the line above the mic says **AI Tutor is off · Turn on**. Marking slips as you say them needs the AI Tutor, and Qiraa always asks before its AI listens. ## Hold the mic: the modes rise out of it Press the mic and keep your finger down for about a third of a second. The page softens and a column rises out of the mic with five ways, each with one line that says what it does: - **Recite** — Qiraa listens and marks slips. - **Listen** — the line names your Sheikh: Sheikh Al-Ḥuṣarī reads, you follow. - **Memorize** — Listen · Repeat · Recall. - **Halaqah** — Take turns, āyah by āyah. - **Test me** — From memory — Qiraa checks. Without lifting your finger, slide to one and let go; it begins at once. Let go anywhere else and the column stays open for a tap. Tapping the mode chip opens the same column without a hold. For your first few openings, the mic shows the gesture with a small motion and a line above the dock says **Hold the mic for more**, until you have used it. ### The portion on top At the top of the column, under **PORTION**, is what the way will work on, with a small label beside it: **This page**, unless you change it. Tap it and a question opens — **Which portion?** — with five cards: - **This page** — the āyāt in front of you. - **This sūrah** — the whole sūrah this page belongs to. - **Your memorization** — the āyāt you hold by heart (**Nothing held yet** until there are some). - **Today’s lesson** — the āyāt your plan set for today (**No lesson today** when there is none). - **Choose…** — A sūrah, a juzʼ, pages: any range you like. **Back to the modes** returns to the column. If the portion runs beyond this page, Qiraa turns to each āyah’s page for you. ### The mic remembers The mic keeps the way you chose last. Pick Memorize today and tomorrow the chip still says Memorize, the mic wears its glyph, and a tap starts Memorize. To go back to plain reciting, hold the mic and pick **Recite**. ### The way back While a way is running, the chip shows its name with a ✕. Tap the ✕ and you are reading again, on the same page, as it was. ## Each way, step by step Every way except Recite is a **sitting** on the page: the dock becomes its controls, a line above says where you are, and one large button stands where the mic stood. A turn is one āyah. When you finish it — by pausing, reaching the end of the page, or carrying on into the next — Qiraa shows **Checking…** and gives a verdict: **Held**, **Nearly**, **Slipped** or **Skipped**. With the AI Tutor on, slips go to Mistakes on their own. Without it, every way still runs: you tap **Done** to end your turn, and the result leaves out “Checked by Qiraa”, because nothing was checked. ### Listen The Sheikh reads the portion from its first āyah to its last, each āyah three times, while you follow on the page. The line says, for example, **Listen 1 of 7 · each āyah 3 times**. When he reaches the end, the sitting closes by itself. ### Memorize The way to learn new āyāt, one at a time, in three beats: 1. **Listen.** The āyah is shown and the Sheikh reads it three times: **Listen 1 of 3**, then 2, then 3. Ready sooner? Tap **My turn**. 2. **Repeat.** The page veils itself and the line says **From memory**. Tap **Recite** and say the āyah. 3. **Recall.** Qiraa checks it. Held moves you on with **Next**, or **Done** after the last āyah. A slip shows the āyah with its marks and offers **Try again** — the same āyah, from memory. Along the way, **Hear it** plays the āyah again, **Slower** plays it at three-quarter speed, **Peek** uncovers a word during your turn, and **Again** lets you say it once more. A peek is allowed, and honest: an āyah held with help reads **Nearly**. At the end a result shows how much you held, with **Again** and **Done**. Memorize also records your progress: an āyah you hold here counts as learned in your plan. ### Halaqah In a halaqah the Qurʼān passes from one reciter to the next. Here the circle is you and the Sheikh: he reads the first āyah, you recite the next, he takes the one after, and so on through the portion. The line names him as he reads, then says **Your turn**; once your āyah is checked, he carries on. His seat shows his photo; tap it to choose another Sheikh. **Hide** veils the āyāt still to come, so your turns come from memory, and **Show** uncovers them. If your portion is a single āyah, Halaqah takes the whole sūrah, because a circle needs at least two turns. ### Test me A short check of what you think you hold. Qiraa deals up to five cards from your portion, in a fresh order each time. Each card veils the page and shows only the āyah before as your cue; the line says **Recite what comes next**. Tap **My turn** and recite. If you are stuck, **Cue** plays the āyah before, **Show** uncovers one word (the card can then be **Nearly** at best), and **Don’t know** marks it **Skipped** and moves on. Because each cue is the āyah before, a sūrah’s first āyah is never dealt. At the end a result rises from the dock — **4 of 5 held**, say, or **Every one held** — with each āyah, its verdict, the word you slipped on, and **Checked by Qiraa**. If there were slips it says where they went: **The slips are kept in Mistakes, to practise.** **Test again** deals a fresh set from the same portion; **Done** takes you back to reading. ## Which way to use, and when - **A page you are reading for the first time:** Listen. Hearing a page before you say it keeps you from learning a word wrongly. - **New āyāt to learn:** Memorize, on **This page** or **Today’s lesson**. Keep it small; three to five āyāt make a good day. - **A sūrah you want to keep:** Halaqah. Taking every other āyah tests the place where most memorization breaks — the join between one āyah and the next. - **Before a lesson, or after a few quiet days:** Test me, on **Your memorization**. Five cards tell you more in two minutes than reading the portion with the page open. - **Daily reading, or a page you hold:** Recite. Hide the words first to recite from memory; faithful follow keeps the page honest. None of this replaces reciting to a teacher. Qiraa is practice between lessons. It cannot grant an ijāzah, and a teacher’s ear for the makhārij is still the one that counts. ## A fifteen-minute routine on one page Three ways, one page, no other screen. Choose a page of five to eight āyāt you are starting to learn. 1. **Listen, about four minutes.** Hold the mic and slide to **Listen**. Follow every word with your eye while the Sheikh reads each āyah three times. Do not recite yet; notice the long vowels and where he stops. 2. **Memorize, about seven minutes.** Hold the mic and slide to **Memorize**. Let the Sheikh read each āyah, then say it from memory when the page veils itself. On a slip, tap **Try again** at once, while the āyah is fresh. If you need **Peek**, take it: a Nearly today becomes a Held tomorrow. 3. **Test me, about three minutes.** Hold the mic and slide to **Test me**. The cards come in a fresh order, each cued by the āyah before, so you cannot lean on the sequence. 4. **Close.** Read the result and tap **Done**. Anything that slipped is waiting in Mistakes. Tomorrow, before anything new, tap **Hide**, hold the mic, pick **Recite**, and recite yesterday’s page from memory. Yesterday’s page first, every day: that is where new memorization becomes your own. ## Small things that help - **Recite as you would to a teacher:** clearly, at your usual pace. A quiet room and the phone close by help Qiraa hear you. - **Read grey as grey.** A faint grey line means Qiraa could not hear the word clearly. It was not counted against you. - **Hold an āyah for its menu.** Press and hold any āyah on the page, not the mic, to play it, repeat it, read its tafsīr, mark it or share it. ## Questions about the mic and its modes ### Why did a tap on the mic start Memorize instead of Recite? The mic remembers the last way you chose, and the chip above it names that way. Hold the mic, or tap the chip, and pick Recite; from then on a tap is Recite again. ### How do I stop a mode halfway through? Tap the ✕ beside the mode’s name, just above the dock. You are reading again on the same page, with the words shown or hidden as they were before you began. ### Do I need the AI Tutor for these modes? No. Listen does not use the microphone, and the other ways run without the AI Tutor: you tap Done after each turn and judge for yourself. With it on, Qiraa checks each āyah and keeps your slips in Mistakes. Qiraa asks before its AI listens, and you can turn it on later from the line above the mic. ### Does Peek or Show count against me? A little, and honestly. An āyah you recite well after a peek reads Nearly instead of Held. It still counts as practice; it simply does not pretend you held it alone. ### Can I use the modes on more than one page? Yes. Tap the portion at the top of the column and choose This sūrah, Your memorization, Today’s lesson, or Choose… for any sūrah, juzʼ or range of pages. Qiraa turns to each page as the sitting reaches it. ### Is my recitation recorded? Qiraa’s production service keeps no recording of your recitation. Your voice goes to Qiraa’s own servers to check your reading and is not kept, unless you have chosen to Help improve Qiraa AI — a choice that is off by default and offered to adults only. ## Try this tonight Open the page you are memorizing now. Hold the mic, slide to Memorize, and take it one āyah at a time. When the portion is through, hold the mic again and slide to Test me. Up to five cards, from memory — and the result is tomorrow’s plan.