Why your revision day now follows your own clock

Some learners revise before dawn, when the house is quiet. Others sit after the evening meal. Until this change, Durra measured days on a single world clock rather than the one on the phone. For a learner several hours ahead of that clock, a sitting before sunrise could be filed under yesterday. For a learner several hours behind it, an evening sitting could be filed under tomorrow, and the review schedule shifted with it.

That is a small technical detail with an unkind effect. A learner who sat down faithfully could open the app the next morning and find the day recorded as missed. A passage they had just revised could reappear as though it were overdue. Neither said anything true about their practice.

A moment and a date are different things

The mistake is a common one in software, and it is worth naming because it appears in many apps. A moment, such as the instant a review was completed, is best stored on a shared world clock. That keeps it unambiguous wherever it is read. A date, such as the day a learner practised, belongs to a person and a place. Converting one into the other with the world clock, instead of the learner's own, gives a precise answer to the wrong question.

Durra now keeps that distinction. The exact time of a review is still recorded precisely. The day it counts towards, and the day the next review falls on, come from the calendar the learner actually lives by. For most people most of the time the two agree. The difference shows up at the edges of the day, which is exactly when many people find a quiet moment to revise.

What we changed

Durra now uses the calendar day on your own phone. When you revise, the sitting belongs to today as your phone shows it. When a passage is scheduled for review in three days, that means three of your days, starting from your date, not from a date somewhere else. The count of consecutive practice days follows the same rule.

We also added tests for reviews just before and just after midnight, across the end of a month and a year, and across the nights the clocks change, so a future change is less likely to bring the old behaviour back. The fix reaches your phone with the next app update. Nothing about your saved passages or notes needs to be redone.

One case remains imperfect. If you travel across time zones, your day moves with your phone. A long flight can make a day feel shorter or longer than usual, and the app follows the calendar you land in. We think that is the right trade: the date you see on your phone is the date the app uses.

What a practice day is for

The change made us look again at why Durra counts days at all. A count of days is a reminder to return, nothing more. It does not measure sincerity, and it is not a record of worship. A learner who revises carefully three times in a week, as their teacher asked, has not fallen short because the count says three.

For that reason we keep the count modest. Any day with a completed review counts, however short the sitting. It does not grade recitation, and it does not compare one learner with another. If a teacher has set a different rhythm, such as a longer sitting on fewer days, that rhythm takes precedence over any number the app shows.

Parents may find it useful to talk about the count in the same spirit. We came back to the page on four evenings says something honest and encouraging. You broke your streak turns a tired night into a failure it was never meant to be.

If something still looks wrong

After updating, a day that was recorded under the old rule may still show its original date. That history is left as it was rather than rewritten. If a review appears due at an odd time, check that the date and time zone on the phone are set automatically. If they are, and the schedule still looks wrong, we would like to hear about it.

Durra is there to help a learner keep the passage their teacher assigned within reach. Getting the day right is part of that. It means the app keeps time the way the family does, and leaves the real measure of progress to the lesson.