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
This is neat
That seems to work.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.
Very cool, this was the result for me, so at least on android it seems to work as advertised.
I got the correct area on Fennec -> CoMaps (app) on /e/OS. ☺️ The website alone resulted in a blank page.
Doesn’t do anything as far as I can tell? Or is this android specific?
Also the links don’t work in discord.
It’s what’s known as a “Protocol URI”, which the OS and/or browser have to choose what to do with that
Sounds like you have an OS or Browser that haven’t implemented the protocol
not only that. some clients including voyager don’t recognize geo uris as openable links
I zoomed in on bumfuck, Kansas to try this out. Let’s see.
Ah, neat. Works now.
You need the ! to start it off.
Edit: Not working
Edit 2, trying again:
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?
It’s the whitespace
The exclamation mark is for images, yours isn’t working because of the space in the coordinates
Link doesn’t work in voyager. Does in Firefox though!
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
I’m on a phone, haven’t tried it on a PC yet
That’s probably what makes the difference
I wonder if it would make sense to have a URL scheme for that instead, like
geo://49.30063,-123.13149It’s hard not to immediately want to extend this to astronomy
maybe
geo:earth.surface/lat,lon?date=dateorgeo:mars.sky?lat=lat,lon=lon,date=dateor something? I’m sure there could be a stanard syntax for but I’m pretty ignorant about how that could work well.
The link just does nothing for me on jerboa
An unnecessary complicated example where I use an image in the first part of the markdown notation:
[](geo:49.30063,-123.13149)Which renders as:
Also, no, I do not live at this location. Not currently.
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.
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.
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.
Can’t get to work on iPhone. Apple fuckery?
Is this better than What Three Words which also has a URL scheme? And is more memorable.
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.
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
