Maktabah vs WhoWasWhen
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Maktabah
Access and read thousands of classic Islamic books with a customizable reader. Sync your progress across devices, search within texts, and annotate content with notes and highlights. Explore detailed Hadith narrations and their evaluations.
- Customizable reading experience
- iCloud sync across devices
- Full-text search across multiple books
- Highlighting and note-taking
- Detailed Hadith narration exploration
- Annotation grouping and tagging
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Read Without Interruption Navigate thousands of classic books with clean and focused readers. Choose the typography you want, adjust the line height, switch the diacritic, and switch between 5 background colors including Dark Mode. Sync Between iPad & iPhone Your reading progress and history are now automatically synchronised across devices through iCloud. Continue reading anywhere without losing track. Search Throughout Your Library Find any phrase in hundreds of books simultaneously using SQLite FTS5 full text search. Choose between the right phrase, a set of sentences, or any phrase. Annotation and Export Highlight and underline any text, add personal notes, tag annotations, arrange annotations by date, page, or context, and group annotations by book or tag. Explore Hadith Narration Look for the biography of the narrator, the evaluation of Jarh wa Ta'dil, and the transmission chain regulated by tabaqat.
WhoWasWhen
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Who was king of France in 1789? Who was Pope when the Black Death struck? How old was van Gogh in 1888 — and who was painting alongside him? WhoWasWhen answers questions like these in an instant, from a single search box, entirely offline. SEARCH ANY YEAR Type a year — 1789, a decade like 177*, a range like 1500-1600, or -44 for BC — and see every ruler in office, how old each of them was that year, and the events happening around them. Add a word to narrow it: "1789 france", "15** pope", "1888 artist". 3,500+ HISTORICAL FIGURES Kings, queens, emperors, popes, Roman consuls, presidents and prime ministers — joined by 200 of history's most famous artists, composers, writers, scientists, and philosophers. Portraits and summary paragraphs load from Wikipedia when you're online; everything else lives on your phone. ON THIS DAY The search screen greets you with an event that happened on today's date, one tap from its full story. DISCOVER A featured ruler and event every visit (shuffle for more), plus what happened 100, 200, 300… years ago today. QUIZ Endless multiple-choice trivia generated from the database — mixed rounds, rulers, events, notable people ("When was van Gogh born?"), works and their creators ("Who composed Messiah?"), or any title with enough holders. Best scores are tracked, and new records earn confetti. TIMELINES Every title's lineage as a scrollable visual timeline: all 267 Popes, all 66 English Monarchs, every Roman consul — with century markers and each reign's place in the era. FAVORITES Save any ruler or event to your own collection. No account needed. PRIVATE AND OFFLINE BY DESIGN The full history database ships inside the app. Search, quiz, timelines, and favorites all work with no connection, no account, no ads, and no data collection of any kind.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is device support: Maktabah at 3 against WhoWasWhen's 1. On price, ads, in-app purchases and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
| Parameter | Maktabah | WhoWasWhen |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 1 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Weekly | — |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 18.6 | 17.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 13 MB | 5 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Yayasan Darun Najah | Giovanni Coppola |
In-app purchases
Maktabah
No in-app purchases
WhoWasWhen
No in-app purchases





