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

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:

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

This is neat

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.

That seems to work.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Of course it does, they're not gonna miss an opportunity to get you into their app from somewhere else

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

Edit: spelling

It has abysmal support. All the places you'd need it to work without anything special, like link recognition in messaging apps and email clients, it rarely does. Even apps that could make good use of specific locations for inputs often don't register a handler for the scheme. It's been that way for years, and I don't expect it to get a whole lot better.

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.

Well they don't consume GPX files, which is pretty abhorrent in itself

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.

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.

It doesn't work in Voyager, so I pasted it into ddg and I got a list of relevant apps to open it with.

There are apps that can translate links into different formats, I would recommend that for your use case:

https://github.com/jakubvalenta/GeoShare

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

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

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

What about coordinate projections? No crs in that format.

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

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.

The link does not even render in Voyager, unfortunately.

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

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

Yeah I noticed that was well

This is only true if you don't have an app installed to handle the link schema. When I click the link, it opens Organic Maps

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?

Let’s see

Remove the space

Like this.

*Downvotes for helping someone is a new one. Strange.

You have a space after the comma which is ruining the formatting. Try it without.

It's the whitespace

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.

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.

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

The exclamation mark is for images, yours isn't working because of the space in the coordinates

How odd 😄

Ah, neat. Works now.

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

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

checks username

Party at your place?

You don't need to bring clams, but it's polite to do so

That's exactly why YSK (especially if you're a developer)!

BYOOR

Bring Your Oyster Opening Rock

Frontend apps need to recognize the markdown as a valid url scheme and parse it accordingly

Voyager does not, for example

Very cool, this was the result for me, so at least on android it seems to work as advertised.

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

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

Lol the pr is only 2 files, one of which is a test class. I do wonder why they wrote their own parser, does javas url handler not support the geo scheme either or something?

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