this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2026
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You Should Know

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YSK - for all the things that can make your life easier!

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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

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[–] abbadon420@sh.itjust.works 67 points 1 week ago

This is neat

[–] squirrel@cake.kobel.fyi 56 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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

[–] zekas@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 days ago

Gotta marvel at the logic at work. No one supports it, neither should we. Great way to ensure nothing ever happens.

[–] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 40 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 6 points 1 week ago

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?

[–] lawks@aussie.zone 39 points 1 week ago (3 children)

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.

[–] sik0fewl@piefed.ca 26 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The link does not even render in Voyager, unfortunately.

Yeah I noticed that was well

[–] grue@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago

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

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[–] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 30 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

checks username

Party at your place?

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 32 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

[–] LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyz 11 points 1 week ago

BYOOR

Bring Your Oyster Opening Rock

[–] DougPiranha42@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] CombatWombat@feddit.online 6 points 1 week ago

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

[–] logi@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago

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

[–] naught101@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (3 children)

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

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[–] deltapi@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week 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

[–] Outdated4134@piefed.zip 11 points 1 week 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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[–] chunes@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] Zachariah@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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.

[–] friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (3 children)

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

[–] filcuk@feddit.uk 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

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[–] aim4harmony@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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

[–] smeenz@lemmy.nz 6 points 1 week ago (8 children)
[–] MimicJar@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Technically it does.

The default is to use the Coordinate Reference System for the Earth, but if you wanted to use the moon then you'd use something like,

geo:37.786971,-122.399677;crs=Moon-2011;u=35

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[–] kn33@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

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

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[–] RollingZeppelin@piefed.ca 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

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[–] anotherandrew@lemmy.mixdown.ca 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

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[–] GTG3000@programming.dev 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

Also the links don't work in discord.

[–] gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 week ago

not only that. some clients including voyager don't recognize geo uris as openable links

[–] Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The link just does nothing for me on jerboa

[–] arschfidel@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

For me it does work when I hold press the link and then choose "Open in external" in the popup that opens. But yes, simply tapping does nothing.

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[–] roomy@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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

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[–] scytale@piefed.zip 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago
[–] ArchEngel@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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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