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 49.301,-123.131.
To link to it, you would use ‘geo:49.301,-123.131’.
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:49.301,-123.131). 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.
On my Maps for Android, it only zooms to the Aquarium, there’s no pointer for the Sea Otter Pools.
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
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.
Sadly it doesn’t work sharing a geo link in Signal, and they don’t want to implement it. GitHub Issue
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.
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?
Gotta marvel at the logic at work. No one supports it, neither should we. Great way to ensure nothing ever happens.
That seems to work.This is neat
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.
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
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.
Of course it does, they’re not gonna miss an opportunity to get you into their app from somewhere else
Well they don’t consume GPX files, which is pretty abhorrent in itself
I got the correct area on Fennec -> CoMaps (app) on /e/OS. ☺️ The website alone resulted in a blank page.
What about coordinate projections? No crs in that format.
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.
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
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.
Which app/frontend are you using? It looks like some of the Lemmy/Piefed clients don’t support it properly.
Voyager
FYI Works with Summit
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.
Frontend apps need to recognize the markdown as a valid url scheme and parse it accordingly
Voyager does not, for example
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
You have a space after the comma which is ruining the formatting. Try it without.
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.
When I pasted mine into duck duck go it didn’t work. I deleted Geo and types location, and now it works
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.
Pro tip: on Android, the Automate app can receive text shared to it and do custom things — such as getting coordinates, slapping ‘geo:’ on them, and opening in a map app. This can alleviate some of the pains by the user selecting and sharing the coords by hand. The app is paid and requires some programming chops, but is hella useful for custom automation.
The link does not even render in Voyager, unfortunately.
Yeah I noticed that was well
That’s exactly why YSK (especially if you’re a developer)!
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
