How to Find Coordinates on Google Maps (Desktop, Android, iPhone)

To get the coordinates of any point in Google Maps in a desktop browser, right-click the spot on the map; the latitude and longitude appear as the first line of the menu. Click that line and the numbers are copied to your clipboard.

Step by step:

1. Open Google Maps in your browser and find the area, by searching for an address or by panning and zooming.
2. Zoom in until you can place the pointer on the exact spot you want, such as a building entrance rather than the middle of the block.
3. Right-click the spot. A small menu opens.
4. Read the first line: two decimal numbers separated by a comma, latitude first, then longitude.
5. Click the numbers to copy them, then paste them wherever you need them.

Right-click where you want the coordinates, not on the red marker of a searched place. The marker sits on Google's point for that place, which may be the middle of a parcel or a building's center, while your right-click gives the exact point under the pointer. If a place card is open, its coordinates come from the place, not from where you clicked.

The numbers are in decimal degrees. A positive latitude is north of the equator, a negative one south; a positive longitude is east of Greenwich, a negative one west. Every location in the 50 states therefore has a positive latitude and a negative longitude, such as 38.8977, -77.0365 in Washington, DC.

In the Google Maps app on Android:

1. Open Google Maps and zoom to the spot.
2. Touch and hold an unlabeled area of the map. A red pin drops where your finger was.
3. The pin's coordinates appear in the search box at the top of the screen.
4. Select the text in the search box to copy it, or use the dropped-pin panel at the bottom to share the location.

Holding on a label or a business icon opens that place instead of dropping a pin, which is why Google's instructions specify an unlabeled area. If the spot you need is covered by a label, zoom in further until there is blank map next to it.

The app shows the pin's position, not your own. To get the coordinates of where you are standing, tap the location button first so the map centers on the blue dot, then hold on the dot's position, or use a tool that reads your device location directly (see the last section).

In the Google Maps app for iPhone or iPad:

1. Open Google Maps and zoom to the place.
2. Touch and hold a blank spot on the map (one without a label) to drop a red pin.
3. A place sheet slides up from the bottom. The coordinates are listed in it; swipe the sheet up if they are not visible.
4. Tap the coordinates to copy them.

In Apple Maps, the steps are similar: touch and hold the map until a pin appears, then swipe up on the pin's card. The coordinates are listed below the pin's details; touch and hold them, then tap Copy.

Some apps write coordinates with a degree sign and hemisphere letters (38.8977° N, 77.0365° W) instead of a minus sign (38.8977, -77.0365). The two styles describe the same point: north and east are positive, south and west are negative.

Google Maps does not print coordinates next to a searched address, so use two steps:

1. Search for the address and let the map center on it.
2. Right-click (desktop) or touch and hold (phone) the exact spot you want, such as the front door, the driveway or the middle of the roof. The coordinates of that spot appear as described above.

Picking the spot yourself matters on large properties. A shopping center, campus, park or farm can have its search result placed hundreds of feet from the entrance you care about. Switching to satellite view first makes it easier to put the pointer on the right building.

To share the result, send the numbers as plain text in "latitude, longitude" form, for example 38.8977, -77.0365. Plain coordinates open in any map app, car navigation system or handheld GPS, while a shared map link usually opens only in the app that made it. If you need coordinates for several addresses, typing each one into a geocoder is quicker than searching and right-clicking (see the last section).

To go the other way, type or paste the coordinates into the Google Maps search box and press Enter (or tap Search). Google drops a pin at the point. Its help page lists three accepted formats, shown here for one point:

All three rows are the same location; converting 41.40338 to minutes and seconds gives 41° 24′ 12.2″, and 2.17403 gives 2° 10′ 26.5″. Google's rules for typing them in:

• Latitude first, then longitude.
• Use a period, not a comma, for decimals. 41,40338, 2,17403 will not work, which trips up anyone used to European number formats.
• Stay in range. Latitude runs from −90 to 90, longitude from −180 to 180. A latitude of 120 is an error, not a far-north location.

If your coordinates come with unusual punctuation, hemisphere letters in odd places or a mix of styles, run them through the GPS coordinate converter first. It reads decimal degrees, DMS and DMM with letters or minus signs, checks the ranges, and gives back clean decimal degrees you can paste straight into the search box (plus UTM if you need it).

Google Maps returns more decimal places than most uses need. Each extra decimal of a degree is ten times finer. One degree of latitude is about 69 miles (111 km), so:

A degree of longitude shrinks toward the poles (by about a quarter at 41° latitude), so the longitude digits cover slightly less ground than the latitude column shows.

Five decimal places is plenty for sharing a location. The real limit is your click: at street-level zoom one screen pixel covers roughly 1 to 3 feet, and imagery can be offset from the true ground position by a similar amount. For more on what the digits mean, see latitude and longitude explained.

Most "Google sent me to the ocean" problems come from one of these:

• Swapped order. Many GIS formats and web map libraries store points as longitude, latitude. GeoJSON, for example, requires longitude first (RFC 7946). Paste -77.0365, 38.8977 into Google Maps and you land in Antarctica instead of Washington. If a pin appears absurdly far away, swap the numbers.
• Dropped minus sign. Lose the minus from a US longitude and the point jumps to the Eastern Hemisphere; 38.8977, 77.0365 is in western China.
• Mixing styles. 38.8977 N, -77.0365 W doubles the hemisphere; use either the letter or the sign.
• Degrees and minutes read as decimals. 41° 24′ is 41.4°, not 41.24°. Treating minutes as decimal digits moves a point by up to about 27 miles (44 km).
• Commas as decimal separators, as covered above.
• Copying the searched place, not the spot. A business pin and the door you want can be a few hundred feet apart on a large site.

When a point looks wrong, check it on the latitude and longitude map, which shows the pin on a grid of latitude and longitude lines with its decimal and DMS forms, so a swapped or unsigned value is obvious at a glance.

Google Maps is convenient when you are already looking at the place. Other jobs are quicker with a tool built for them:

• Your current position: the latitude and longitude finder reads your device location and shows the coordinates with the reported accuracy radius, so you know whether the fix is good to 15 feet or to half a mile. Our guide to how GPS location accuracy works explains that number.
• A street address: address to coordinates geocodes an address or place name and returns decimal degrees and DMS, which saves the search-then-right-click routine. Geocoded points are the geocoder's estimate for the address, usually on the parcel or the street in front of it.
• Changing the format: the GPS coordinate converter converts between decimal degrees, DMS and DMM and also shows the UTM equivalent.

All of these use the same WGS84 latitude and longitude that Google Maps shows, so their results can be pasted into Google Maps and the other way round.