For each example in this post, I will be linking to the sea otter pools at the Vancouver aquarium. That location has the coordinates of 49.30063,-123.13149

To link to it, you would use 'geo:49.30063,-123.13149'.

Depending on your web browser, pasting that into the search bar might prompt you to select which map website you want to use to view that location. For me in Firefox, it asked me to pick between Google Maps and OpenStreetMaps. It's even more convenient on mobile, where it asks me which map app I want to open it with. Both CoMaps and Google Maps handled it correctly.

If you are writing a post or comment on Lemmy/Piefed/etc., you can place it in the second part of the markdown link format: [Sea Otter Pools](geo:49.30063,-123.13149). This would output like this: Sea Otter Pools

The linked OpenStreetMap wiki page has a good summary of how well various apps support this scheme. A lot of people here are active in the open source space, so please consider following up with the apps that are currently missing support or have partial support for this: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Geo_URI_scheme


EDIT: I forgot to mention, you can also use apps like this one to convert maps links between each other

https://github.com/jakubvalenta/GeoShare

https://f-droid.org/packages/page.ooooo.geoshare/

https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/page.ooooo.geoshare

all 83 comments

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[–] 62 points 1 month ago

This is neat

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  • [–] 52 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    Sadly it doesn't work sharing a geo link in Signal, and they don't want to implement it. GitHub Issue

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  • [–] 39 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 child)

    Same with element. They used to support it but dropped it. Really stupid excuse in that github issue. If adding support for sonething so simple adds lots of complexity then your codebase is garbage. This is why we cant have nice things.

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  • [–] 29 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    I will be linking to the sea otter pools at the Vancouver aquarium

    checks username

    Party at your place?

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  • [–] 15 points 1 month ago

    Tapping that little NK on my android phone That seems to work.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    Link doesn't work in voyager. Does in Firefox though!

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago* (2 children)

    For me in Firefox it just takes me to my search engine, which proposes a bunch of sites to convert gps coordinates, top item is a front end for google maps. No OpenStreetMaps to be seen. Doesn't look like it's a universally supported thing. Also none of the position links in this thread are clickable

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  • [–] 12 points 1 month ago (7 children)

    For me, there is no link. I copied it and pasted it (geo:49.30063, -123.13149) several different things and none of them worked correctly.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 month ago (5 children)

    Which app/frontend are you using? It looks like some of the Lemmy/Piefed clients don't support it properly.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    I don't see how which app on Lemmy would matter as far as geo-coordinates because all you're linking there is literally a latitude and longitude of coordinates. And if they paste it into a web browser, it wouldn't matter what lemmy client they use.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 month ago*

    Some apps display/handle links in weird ways. It's the same reason why the OSM link above lists information about support on different messaging apps. I assume some of it comes down to sanitizing inputs, or whether a specific library an app is using has support for it, or if an app offloads the task to the system share sheet

    For example, the links work for me in Boost for Lemmy and Summit, but not in Voyager. Another user mentioned submitting an issue to the developer of their particular app

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  • [–] 11 points 1 month ago

    Very cool, this was the result for me, so at least on android it seems to work as advertised. A picture of an app choice dialog after checking on a 'geo' link showing several map/location apps to choose from

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  • [–] 16 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    This sounds nice. On iphone, nothing happens when I click your link. When I paste it in safari, it searches for it, and the ddg results are coordinates finder websites, not related to the specific location.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    I wonder if it would make sense to have a URL scheme for that instead, like geo://49.30063,-123.13149

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    What about tel:, or mailto:, sms:, callto:

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    I'm trying to say "great job pointing that out" without soundling like an LLM. But seriously, I'm happy you pointed that out. I completely forgot about those syntaxes. After you mentioned them, I went and browsed RFC3986 and found these sample URIs, which include news, mailto, ftp, and more, which covers both // style and non-// style. https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3986/#section-1.1.2

    It's too late for me to claim that I fully grok the nuances, so that'll have to wait for anther day, but I appreciate your comment. TIL some cool stuff.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago*

    Depending on your web browser, pasting that into the search bar might prompt you to select which map website you want to use to view that location. For me in Firefox, it asked me to pick between Google Maps and OpenStreetMaps.

    I'm on Firefox and all it did was initiate a web search that found one result: this thread. If it's a hyperlink, all it does is open a blank page.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

    I zoomed in on bumfuck, Kansas to try this out. Let's see.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

    You need the ! to start it off.

    ![Let’s see](geo:37.1213785, -98.9773100)

    Edit: Not working

    Edit 2, trying again:

    ![Let’s see](geo:37.1213785 -98.9773100)

    Edit 3: no worky

    Edit 4: Now it works as a link, thanks to the other posters, but it doesn't really do anything. Maybe Ublock Origin?

    Let’s see

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 child)

    An unnecessary complicated example where I use an image in the first part of the markdown notation:

    [![A computer icon of a map location pinpoint with geographic context.](https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e2/Pin_location_context.svg/330px-Pin_location_context.svg.png)](geo:49.30063,-123.13149)

    Which renders as:

    A computer icon of a map location pinpoint with geographic context.


    Also, no, I do not live at this location. Not currently.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

    Also, no, I do not live at this location. Not currently.

    You otter consider it though. Free food. Swim any time you want. That’s the life.

    Also: Unfortunately, in Voyager, the geo link is rendered just as the link description and isn’t clickable. And on iOS, I tried Firefox Focus and Safari and both just took me to a web search for longitude and latitude. I really wish it worked because it’s a great feature.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    On my Maps for Android, it only zooms to the Aquarium, there's no pointer for the Sea Otter Pools.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 1 month ago

    It seems that google maps is a bit hit or miss, maybe locations that have more details work better?

    Google maps does not have anywhere near the level of detail openstreetmaps does for that location

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

    I got the correct area on Fennec -> CoMaps (app) on /e/OS. ☺️ The website alone resulted in a blank page.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Heh, on my iPhone it wants to open an NFC reading app for the sea otter geo: link

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Doesn't do anything as far as I can tell? Or is this android specific?

    Also the links don't work in discord.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

    Does not seem to open via Thunder. Can confirm that copying and pasting it into CoMaps or Waterfox works great though.

    I have submitted a feature request to Thunder.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    The link just does nothing for me on jerboa

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    I opened this in CoMaps and now i have a permanent map pointer to it hah

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago

    Can’t get to work on iPhone. Apple fuckery?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago (9 children)
  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (6 children)

    Geo means earth. Of course it won't work outside of the Earth

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    Ah, my mistake, there is no geography, geology, or geometry on the moon.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago

    Could be just my configuration, but does not work in Brave, does not work in Safari, DOES work in Orion.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    Is this better than What Three Words which also has a URL scheme? And is more memorable.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    The geo URL scheme works even for non English speakers and it won't give you a location on the other side of the world if you lake a typo or pronounce it bad.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    I mean, that's kind of on purpose with W3W.

    A slight error should make the recipient go "Wait, what? That's in Venezuela!" rather than sending an ambulance crew to a location like 20 miles away from you.

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 1 month ago

    Since WhatThreeWords is proprietary, it likely won't be as easy to get it implemented in everything. I think the difficulty with coordinates can be solved by having an easy way to copy the Geo URI from various map apps

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 child)

    When I pasted mine into duck duck go it didn't work. I deleted Geo and typed location, and now it works

    Edit: spelling

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)
  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    What about coordinate projections? No crs in that format.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Can the commercial map apps spit out that format when sharing a location? I met up with a random person last week to buy a used item off of marketplace and they sent me an Apple maps pin of the exact apartment building they were in. I didn’t have apple maps installed.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    Neat, works well for me on Boost / Android

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Does Goo*le maps support it? Because they usually don't give a flying fuck about anything that would make it possible to share data with open-source solutions.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Cool stuff, but don't use this for your business. You want actual links that will always work regardless of browser support for Geo. You want your customers to easily retrieve information so you gain their business.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 month ago

    Definitely, IMO a business should link to multiple options to catch the most customers

    I believe both google and apple maps support generic links with coordinates, although I don't know the exact structure

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