A Brand New Omer Counter App From Chabad.org

Ten Passovers ago, Chabad.org released Omer Counter, an app that revolutionized the way people fulfilled the mitzvah of counting the 49 days (nights) of the Omer from the second night of Passover up to the holiday of Shavuot.

In addition to daily reminders, a live counter told the user how much time remained for counting that day and kept track of whether they’d counted all days until then (since a person who misses one night may no longer include the blessing before counting on subsequent nights) and synced to their location.

Beyond the mechanics of the daily count, the app also provided a specially created daily meditation from Rabbi Tzvi Freeman, corresponding to the Kabbalistic mystical confluence of sefirot (“emanations”) associated with each Omer day, as well as a wealth of insights and other information culled from Chabad.org’s vast library of Jewish content.

For the novice just foraying into the intricacies of Hebrew reading, the app included a trainer to highlight each word as it is chanted, allowing them to familiarize themselves with the Hebrew at their own pace.

And now, a decade later, just in time for Passover, based on feedback from thousands of users, the app has been fully revamped, upgraded and redesigned—an effort that took months of programming, testing, and refining.

Chabad.org extends its heartfelt appreciation to Shmuel and Yael Solovyev, whose leadership, inspiration, and support helped make this app remake possible. We also thank the many donors who responded to the matching campaign (still in progress!) to help bring the completion of this app to the finish line.

In addition to an entirely new interface and faster performance, the app includes many enhancements. Chief among them:

Users can customize their reminders, choosing when and how often they wish to be reminded each day, ranging from the first possible moment (nightfall) to thirty minutes before the sun sets at the end of the day.
While the previous iteration of the app was tethered to the location of the device for determining sunset times, the new version allows the user to manually specify any location.
In addition to selecting the version of text to display (Ari, Sefarad (Eidot Hamizrach), Ashkenaz, or Sefarad (Chassidic)), users can now customize the text size, select dark or light mode and other personalizations to improve their experience.