My Location
Read your current latitude and longitude from the browser geolocation API and display them in all six coordinate formats with accuracy interpretation. Button-triggered with explicit permission; nothing is logged or transmitted.
How to use this tool
Click "Use my location"
Your browser will show a permission prompt. The tool never asks for your location until you click — there is no automatic geolocation on page load. If you decline, the rest of the site still works; the homepage tool or /tools/coordinates-to-address let you set a coordinate by other means.
Read your location and accuracy
On a successful read, the hero card shows your latitude and longitude with a copy button and an accuracy chip. The accuracy section below explains what the reported radius means in physical terms (rooftop, city block, neighbourhood, etc.).
Jump into another tool with the coordinate pre-loaded
Every tool on Coordinately that takes a single point or a starting point has a cross-link in the report — full elevation analysis, reverse geocoding, magnetic declination, sun position, time zone, distance, midpoint, bearing. One click; the coordinate carries forward in the URL.
What “my location” really means
A browser's reported location is the device's best guess from whatever signals are available. The W3C Geolocation API (browser-side) and the underlying operating-system layer combine multiple sources behind the scenes.
GPS — satellites from the four global constellations (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou) and two regional ones (QZSS, NavIC). Best outdoors with a clear sky view.
WiFi geolocation — the device scans for nearby access points and asks a database (Google, Apple, Mozilla, or a vendor-specific service) for the lat/lon of the AP. Works indoors; requires the AP to be in the database.
Cell-tower triangulation — distance from one or more cell sites to the phone, used when GPS and WiFi are unavailable.
IP geolocation— last-resort fallback. The browser's public IP address is matched against a database (MaxMind, IPinfo, db-ip) that maps IP ranges to approximate geographic regions. Accuracy: tens of kilometres.
How accurate is your fix?
The accuracy field on every GeolocationPosition is the radius (in metres) of a circle that contains the true position with about 95 % probability. The accuracy your browser reports depends entirely on which sources contributed.
A typical phone outdoors with a clear sky view will land in the A-GPS band (5–30 m). The same phone indoors, with no GPS lock, falls back to WiFi (20–150 m). A laptop without GPS hardware on ethernet is usually IP-only (5–50 km). The accuracy band the browser surfaces tells you which regime your fix came from.
The scale above gives a physical intuition: a 50-metre accuracy circle is about the size of a city block; a 5-kilometre one is “you're somewhere in this small city.” The report below the tool draws this scale with your specific accuracy marked.
What the GeolocationPosition fields mean
| Field | Type | Always present? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| coords.latitude | number | Yes | Decimal degrees, WGS-84 |
| coords.longitude | number | Yes | Decimal degrees, WGS-84 |
| coords.accuracy | number | Yes | Radius of the 95 %-confidence circle, in metres |
| coords.altitude | number | null | Only when GPS is locked | Metres above WGS-84 ellipsoid (not mean sea level) |
| coords.altitudeAccuracy | number | null | Only with altitude | Same 95 %-confidence semantics as horizontal accuracy |
| coords.heading | number | null | Only while moving | Degrees clockwise from true north; NaN when stationary |
| coords.speed | number | null | Only while moving | Metres per second; derived from successive deltas |
| timestamp | number | Yes | Milliseconds since Unix epoch when the fix was taken |
Ten ways “my location” gets used in the wild
The browser Geolocation API powers most of the “near me” and location-aware features on the modern web. The ten cases below cover the bulk of real-world traffic.
1. Mapping & navigation apps
Google Maps web, Apple Maps web, Mapbox, Mapy.cz — every web map checks geolocation on first interaction to centre the view. The same API call this tool uses.
Worked example: Open Google Maps in a desktop browser; the page prompts for location, then centres the view on your reported coordinate within a few seconds.
2. Weather & forecast services
Weather.com, NOAA Forecast, Windy — most local-weather pages read your geolocation to deliver a forecast for your exact point rather than asking you to type a city.
Worked example: Visiting weather.gov as a US user, the page prompts for location and shows the National Weather Service forecast for your nearest ZCTA / forecast zone.
3. “Restaurants near me” / local-business search
Yelp, OpenTable, TripAdvisor — every local-search site uses geolocation to bias the result list. The radius parameter on the backend search depends on a coordinate from this API.
Worked example:Searching “coffee” on Yelp prompts for geolocation, then returns shops with lat/lon within a 5-km radius (or whatever the site has configured).
4. Ride-hailing pickup
Uber, Lyft, Bolt — the web checkout pages and the in-app PWA surfaces use geolocation to set the pickup pin. The driver app uses the same API server-side for “I'm here” events.
Worked example:Uber's “pickup near you” flow uses your geolocation at button click; if your indoor fix is 80 m off, the suggested pickup pin floats over to the nearest road.
5. Food & grocery delivery
DoorDash, Instacart, Uber Eats — all use geolocation to filter restaurants by delivery range. The browser's reported coordinate becomes the centre of the delivery-radius search.
Worked example: Browse DoorDash in your home browser; the storefront list is filtered to restaurants whose service-area polygon contains your reported coordinate.
6. Emergency reporting & 911 over browser
Some PSAP web portals and FCC-mandated emergency-call gateways use the W3C Geolocation API to attach the caller's coordinate to a 911 ticket. The FCC's wireless E911 accuracy rules ultimately rely on the same OS-level positioning stack.
Worked example: An emergency-reporting web app requests geolocation on submit and includes the lat/lon plus the W3C-reported accuracy in the dispatch ticket.
7. Photo upload with geotagging
Many web upload flows (Flickr, 500px, iCloud Photos web) read EXIF lat/lon from JPEG metadata, but also offer to fill missing location using the W3C Geolocation API at upload time.
Worked example:Uploading a phone photo that stripped EXIF on web export — the site prompts for geolocation and tags the photo to the user's current position.
8. Local news, events, transit
Citizen, the Citymapper web app, transit-agency dashboards, local news sites — geolocation is the primary filter for region-targeted content. The reported lat/lon is mapped to a neighbourhood polygon and content is filtered.
Worked example: Visiting Citizen in a browser prompts for geolocation, then filters real-time incident feeds to a ~3-km radius around the user.
9. Location-aware authentication and fraud detection
Banks (Chase, Bank of America web), fintech (Stripe Radar), crypto exchanges, and SSO providers compare the browser's geolocation against the IP-derived location and known device patterns. A mismatch raises a fraud signal.
Worked example: An online banking login from an IP that geo-resolves to Tokyo while the browser reports a New York coordinate triggers a step-up auth challenge.
10. Government services and civic engagement
Polling-place lookup, district representative finder, school catchment lookup, FEMA flood-zone checks — all rely on browser-reported geolocation to map the user to the right administrative boundary.
Worked example:Vote.org's polling-place lookup reads your geolocation, maps the lat/lon to the jurisdiction polygon for your address, and surfaces the designated polling place.
Choosing the right tool from the “my point” family
| Operation | Right tool on Coordinately | Returns |
|---|---|---|
| Find my current location (this page) | This page | Browser-reported lat/lon + accuracy + altitude + heading + speed |
| Find an arbitrary point on the map | / | Click any point and read its coordinates |
| Address → coordinates | /tools/address-to-coordinates | Forward geocoding with confidence bands |
| Coordinates → address | /tools/coordinates-to-address | Reverse geocoding with snap-distance analysis |
| Convert between coordinate formats | /tools/coordinate-converter | DD ↔ DMS ↔ DDM ↔ UTM ↔ MGRS ↔ Plus Code |
Why your location might look wrong
- You're indoors with no clear GPS sky view. Phones fall back to WiFi geolocation; laptops fall back to IP. Accuracy drops from ~5 m to 50 m (WiFi) or 5 km (IP).
- The WiFi AP isn't in the geolocation database. Google, Apple, and Mozilla maintain WiFi AP databases by crawling them with Street View / Lookaround vehicles and user-submitted scans. An AP outside that index contributes nothing.
- You're on a VPN.IP geolocation locates the VPN endpoint, not the device. If your browser has no GPS or WiFi data, your “location” can be hundreds of kilometres off.
- Your altitude is wildly off. The
altitudefield is relative to the WGS-84 ellipsoid, not mean sea level. The two differ by up to ±100 m depending on local geoid undulation. See /tools/elevation for the orthometric height (height above mean sea level), which is the number maps use. - The browser auto-denied your prompt.Some browsers remember a previous “deny” and silently block subsequent requests. Clearing site permissions in browser settings resets the state.
Privacy and data-flow notes
The tool is wired to minimise data movement. Your browser's Geolocation API returns a coordinate to client code; the client formats it through six notations entirely locally.
The optional nearest-place and elevation lookups in the report below hit server-side proxies (/api/geocode/reverse and /api/elevation) with Cache-Control: no-store. Mapbox and the USGS / SRTM services receive the coordinate for the duration of one round trip, respond, and Coordinately discards the response.
Cross-tool URLs (in the “use your location in another tool” section of the report) carry the coordinate as a query parameter. If you don't want your coordinate to be visible in the URL bar of the next page, copy the lat/lon to the clipboard and paste it into the target tool's input instead.
The site uses Google Analytics 4 to count aggregate pageviews (see cookie policy) but never sends your geolocation coordinate to GA4 or any other vendor — the W3C-API-reported coordinate lives entirely in your browser. See privacy policy for the full picture.
Related tools
- Find lat/lon of any point on a map— The homepage finder — click anywhere to get coordinates
- Coordinates to address— Reverse-geocode your location with snap-distance analysis
- Elevation at my location— USGS 3DEP or SRTM30m elevation for your reported point
- Magnetic declination here— WMM 2025 declination at your reported point
- Sun position from here— Solar azimuth and altitude at your point right now
Related articles
- How GPS works— The underlying satellite-positioning math
- GPS accuracy explained— Why 4.9 m matters and what degrades it
- Assisted GPS (A-GPS)— How phones fix faster than standalone GPS
- Coordinate formats explained— The six notations the report displays
- Precision vs accuracy in coordinates— NIST distinction between resolution and closeness to truth
Frequently asked questions
How accurate is the result?
It depends on your device and where you are. A smartphone with GPS under open sky typically achieves about 4.9 m horizontal accuracy at 95 percent confidence (GPS.gov SPS Performance Standard). Indoors, in urban canyons, or with no GPS hardware, accuracy falls back to WiFi (~20-150 m) or IP geolocation (~5-50 km). The accuracy chip in the hero card and the accuracy section below interpret the radius for you.
Does Coordinately log my location?
No. The coordinates the browser returns are processed entirely on your device for formatting. The optional nearest-place and elevation lookups in the report hit server-side proxies with Cache-Control: no-store — coordinates pass through to Mapbox / USGS / OpenTopoData once and the response is discarded. Nothing is cached, logged, or persisted on Coordinately.
Why does the browser ask for permission every time?
Per the W3C Geolocation API, browsers show a permission prompt the first time a site requests location, and then remember the decision per origin until the user clears it. If you previously denied the prompt, the browser may show it again or may auto-deny silently — clearing site permissions in browser settings resets the state.
What if I deny permission or the API isn't available?
The tool surfaces a clear message and does not retry silently. You can still use the homepage tool to set a location by clicking a map, /tools/coordinates-to-address if you have coordinates from elsewhere, or any other tool that accepts coordinates as input. Geolocation is one of several ways to set a coordinate on Coordinately, not the only way.
Why does the location sometimes show me elsewhere?
Indoors, the GPS signal is attenuated and the device falls back to WiFi-based positioning, which depends on the WiFi geolocation database (Google, Apple, Mozilla) knowing your network. In urban canyons, multipath errors shift the reported position by tens of metres. On laptops without GPS hardware, the position is derived from IP geolocation, which is typically only city-level accurate. On a VPN, IP geolocation locates the VPN endpoint, not your device.
What are altitude, heading, and speed?
They are additional GeolocationPosition fields that browsers return only under specific conditions. Altitude (height above the WGS-84 ellipsoid) and altitudeAccuracy are present only when the device has a GPS lock. Heading (degrees clockwise from true north) and speed (m/s) are present only while the device is moving. The report below surfaces them when non-null.
Why is the altitude different from the elevation tool?
The Geolocation API's altitude is the height above the WGS-84 ellipsoid (the mathematical Earth model). The /tools/elevation report uses orthometric height — height above the geoid, which approximates mean sea level. The two can differ by up to ±100 m depending on local geoid undulation. See /learn/the-geoid-explained for the underlying geodesy.
Does this work over plain HTTP?
No. Per the W3C spec and the secure-context requirements adopted by every modern browser, the Geolocation API is only exposed in secure contexts — HTTPS, or localhost for development. On insecure origins (HTTP), the API is undefined and the tool surfaces "Geolocation unavailable."
Sources
- W3C Geolocation API — W3C Geolocation API Level 2 — current specification · https://www.w3.org/TR/geolocation/ · Accessed .
- MDN Geolocation — MDN Web Docs — Geolocation API reference · https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Geolocation_API · Accessed .
- GPS.gov accuracy — GPS.gov — Standard Positioning Service Performance Standard · https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/ · Accessed .
- FCC E911 location accuracy — FCC Wireless E911 Location Accuracy Requirements · https://www.fcc.gov/general/wireless-e911-location-accuracy-requirements · Accessed .
- NIMA TR 8350.2 (WGS 84) — NIMA Technical Report 8350.2 — Department of Defense World Geodetic System 1984 · https://earth-info.nga.mil/php/download.php?file=coord-wgs84 · Accessed .
- IETF GEOPRIV — IETF GEOPRIV Working Group — Geographic Location/Privacy framework (RFC 6280) · https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6280 · Accessed .
- NGS GEOID18 — NGS GEOID18 — converting ellipsoidal altitude (what GPS reports) to orthometric height · https://geodesy.noaa.gov/GEOID/ · Accessed .
- OWASP — Geolocation guidance — OWASP — Geolocation API security considerations, secure context requirement · https://owasp.org/www-community/Security_by_Design_Principles · Accessed .
- MaxMind GeoIP2 accuracy — MaxMind GeoIP2 — published IP-geolocation accuracy by country · https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip2-databases · Accessed .
- Mapbox Geocoding API v6 — Mapbox Geocoding v6 — used by the nearest-place lookup in the report · https://docs.mapbox.com/api/search/geocoding-v6/ · Accessed .