My Location

About This Tool

My Location retrieves your current physical position from the browser and reports it as geographic coordinates, altitude, and accuracy information. It is useful for quickly capturing your location in the field without a dedicated GPS app.

Input

Your device's GPS receiver or network-assisted positioning (IP geolocation, Wi-Fi triangulation, or cell-tower triangulation), accessed through the browser's Geolocation API. Location permission must be granted when the browser prompts. No data is sent to any server — the position is reported directly from device to browser.

Output

Current position in DD, DMS, and UTM coordinate systems; altitude above the WGS84 ellipsoid in metres (if the device provides it); and the horizontal accuracy radius in metres. A marker and accuracy circle are drawn on the map.

Key Concepts

Accuracy radius

The coords.accuracy value returned by the browser represents a 68% confidence circle — the true position has a 68% probability of lying within that radius. Outdoor GPS typically achieves 3–10 m; indoor or cell-based positioning ranges from 50 m to over 1,000 m. The blue circle on the map visualises this uncertainty.

Altitude

Reported as height above the WGS84 ellipsoid in metres when the device provides a 3D GPS fix. Vertical accuracy is typically 1.5–3× worse than horizontal accuracy. On many smartphones, altitude is only available outdoors with a clear sky view.

Geolocation API

A W3C browser standard (navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition) that requests the device position from the underlying platform (OS location services). Requires an HTTPS connection and explicit user permission. The API does not specify the positioning method — it may use GPS, Wi-Fi, or cell data depending on what the device supports.