What is my location?
Nothing here is read until you press the button and accept your browser's prompt. That is the whole difference between this page and the IP location page: this one asks and gets metres, that one guesses and gets a city. Deny it and the explanation below still works, because none of it depends on your coordinates.
Your browser will ask before sharing anything. Nothing is uploaded.
Your precise location can be shown above, but only after you grant permission. Unlike the IP-based estimate, this uses your browser's Geolocation API, which combines GPS, nearby Wi-Fi networks and cell towers to fix your position, often to within a few metres. Your browser will ask before sharing anything.
Nothing here is sent to a server. When you allow it, your device computes the coordinates and this page displays them to you locally. If you deny permission, or if you never press the button, no location is read at all. That is the whole point of the permission prompt.
This is the same mechanism that lets a maps site centre on you or a store finder show what is nearby. It is powerful, which is exactly why it is gated behind explicit, revocable consent.
How a website reads this
This is the exact call a page makes. Nothing else is involved, and nothing is sent anywhere: the value is read in your browser and displayed to you.
navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(success, error)Returns latitude, longitude and an accuracy radius in metres, and only after you accept the browser's own prompt. Refusing calls the error handler; the page never sees a coordinate. Accuracy ranges from a few metres on a phone with GPS to several kilometres on a desktop using nearby wifi networks.
- Needs your permission
- Yes, your browser asks first
- Can it be faked
- Yes. Browsers and mobile operating systems both offer location override, and devtools has a sensors panel that will report any coordinates you type in.
- Contribution to a fingerprint
- Not counted. Not part of the fingerprint estimate, because it is never read without an explicit prompt, and a fingerprint is by definition what a site takes silently. How we estimate this.
How accurate a consented location actually is
The Geolocation API returns an accuracy radius in metres alongside the coordinates, and that radius varies by two orders of magnitude depending on what your device had to work with.
| Positioning method | Typical accuracy | When your device uses it |
|---|---|---|
| Satellite (GPS, Galileo, GLONASS) | Around 5 to 20 metres | A phone or tablet outdoors with a clear view of the sky. |
| Wifi network lookup | Around 20 to 100 metres in a city | Any device that can see nearby wifi networks and match them against a database of known ones. This is how a desktop with no GPS gets a usable answer. |
| Cell tower triangulation | Hundreds of metres to a few kilometres | A phone with no satellite fix and no useful wifi, often indoors or rural. |
| IP address lookup | City to region, sometimes wildly wrong | The fallback when nothing else is available. Note this is the same method as the unprompted IP location card, which needs no permission at all. |
The accuracy figure is reported by your device and should be read as a confidence radius, not a guarantee. A reading of 15 metres means the device believes you are probably within 15 metres of that point.
What exactly happens when you press the button
The page calls navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition. That call does not return coordinates: it hands control to your browser, which decides whether to prompt you, and your operating system may ask again on top of that. Only after both say yes does the page receive anything.
Refuse, and the page gets an error callback with a permission-denied code. There is no partial answer, no degraded coordinate and no silent fallback. That separation is the reason this is the only category on the site where you have a real veto.
Grant it, and the coordinates exist in the page for as long as the tab is open. On this site they are rendered to the screen and nothing else, except for the pages that need a place name, which relay the coordinates to a map database and nothing more.
Why this disagrees with the IP location card
Because they are measuring completely different things. This card asks your device where it is. The IP location card asks a database where your internet provider's equipment is. On a fixed connection at home those can be a few kilometres apart; on a mobile connection they can be a few hundred.
Comparing the two is the single most useful thing on this site for understanding what a website can take without asking. One needed your consent and is accurate to metres. The other needed nothing and is accurate to a region, which for most tracking purposes is enough.
What you should know
Why sites collect it
Legitimate uses include maps and directions, finding nearby shops or services, local weather, tagging photos, and regional compliance. A site should only request it when there is a clear, visible reason, and only after you act.
Privacy implications
Precise location is among the most sensitive data your browser can share, since it can reveal your home, workplace and routines. Because it requires a permission prompt, you stay in control: no site gets it silently, and you can revoke access at any time. Treat any site that demands it without cause with suspicion.
How to change or hide it
Grant or deny per site in the address-bar permission prompt, and revoke access anytime in your browser's site settings. You can disable location globally, and mobile operating systems add their own location switch. Denying it here simply means we show nothing.
Frequently asked questions
Do you store my location?
No. When you allow it, your browser computes the coordinates and this page shows them to you locally. Nothing is uploaded or saved.
Why is the permission prompt needed?
Precise location is sensitive, so browsers require your explicit consent before any site can read it. You can deny it and still read the rest of this page.
How is this different from my IP location?
IP location is a silent, rough estimate from your address; the Geolocation API is precise but requires your permission and uses GPS and nearby signals.
Sources
Browser behaviour changes and vendors cap these values differently, so the claims above that are not self-evident are checked against the specifications and vendor documentation below.
Last checked on . How these values are measured and estimated is set out on the methodology page.
Something wrong here? Tell us what your browser reports and it gets corrected.