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Open the clip to see any location it carries on a map, with the coordinates, altitude and accuracy, and an honest answer when the location is missing.
To find out where a video was taken, open the file here and look at Location. If the phone or camera saved a position, you will see it as a pin on a map with the coordinates, the altitude and accuracy when stored, and the country, all worked out on your device.
The honest catch is that only the original file usually has a location. A clip downloaded from a social network or forwarded through a chat app is a re-processed copy, and those almost never carry GPS, so the viewer will say there is no location in this file. Further down are the checks that still help when that happens.
Nothing is uploaded. The world map is drawn in your browser, and the only request that leaves your device is the optional Show street map, which loads OpenStreetMap tiles for the area on screen.
Drop it on Drop a video or photo here, press Open a file (Ctrl/Cmd+O), or try Try the sample video, which carries a location at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.
Location opens first: latitude and longitude, altitude and accuracy when stored, the country, and a pin on a world map drawn on your device.
Press Show street map for a detailed map. This loads OpenStreetMap tiles, so their servers see your IP address and the area shown; skip it if that matters.
Press Copy coordinates to paste the position into another map. Then look at Date & time and Device to see when and on what it was filmed.
When location is allowed, the phone takes a GPS fix as recording starts and writes it into the file. Each maker uses its own field, which is why some viewers miss it. metadata.video reads Apple’s ISO 6709 key, the ©xyz tag, the 3GPP loci box and GPS fields in XMP or EXIF.
| Device | Field | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| iPhone, iPad | com.apple.quicktime.location.ISO6709, plus an accuracy value | Latitude, longitude and usually altitude, with accuracy in metres |
| Android phones | ©xyz in the MP4’s user data | Latitude and longitude, sometimes altitude |
| Some cameras and older phones | 3GPP loci box | A point and an optional place name |
| Edited clips | XMP GPS fields | Whatever the editing app copied across |
| GoPro | A GPMF data track (GPS5 samples) | A whole route, listed in Location but not plotted |
| DJI drones | A telemetry or subtitle-style track, or a sidecar file | Route and height, listed but not plotted |
The country is looked up from the coordinates on your device, not by asking a server. MKV and WebM files have no standard location field at all, so a clip in those formats almost never shows one.
A phone writes one position for the whole clip. If someone walked a kilometre while filming, the pin shows the start. Action cameras with a GPS track are the exception: they log the whole route.
Outdoors with a clear sky, a phone fix is usually good to a few metres. Indoors, in a city canyon or straight after switching the phone on, it can be tens or hundreds of metres out, or be the last position the phone knew. When the file stores an accuracy value, it is shown next to the coordinates. If an iPhone had Precise Location turned off for Camera, the position is deliberately approximate.
Location is ordinary metadata. Anyone with an editor, including the video metadata editor on this site, can move the pin or add one that was never recorded. A location is good evidence for your own original files and weak evidence for a stranger’s. Check it against the date, the device and what the picture shows, and look at Provenance for signs the file was re-saved. The video forensics guide goes further.
Finding no location at all is the most common result, and there are ordinary reasons for it:
Without GPS, you are working from what the video shows. Approaches that genuinely help:
Be wary of tools that promise to geolocate any video with AI. They make a guess from the picture, sometimes a good one, but they cannot read a location that is not in the file, and a confident wrong answer is easy to believe.
Many people check this the other way round: what would someone learn from a clip I am about to share? If Location shows your street, so will anyone who gets the original file. Remove it before sending with Remove location only, or strip every field for a public post. On iPhone, turning off Camera location stops new videos recording it at all.
Photos work the same way. For a picture rather than a clip, see where was this photo taken.
Anyone who receives the original file can read its location with a viewer like this one. Copies posted through most social apps are re-processed and usually lose it, but the platform itself may read it when you upload. Remove it first if that matters.
The phone may have used its last known position because it had not got a fresh GPS fix yet, which happens indoors or straight after opening the camera. Or recording really did start at home and you moved afterwards; a phone stores only the starting point.
Usually within a few metres outdoors, and much worse indoors or in dense cities. iPhones store an accuracy figure, shown next to the coordinates when it is present.
Not from a link: this tool reads files on your device, not online videos. Copies saved from streaming platforms are re-encoded and very rarely carry GPS, so you will need the clues in the picture instead.
No. The file is read in your browser and the world map is drawn on your device. Only Show street map contacts a server, to fetch map tiles.
No. Screen recordings are made by the system, not the camera, so they do not include GPS. They do record when they were made.
Photo libraries such as Google Photos can estimate a location from other data and show it in their own interface without it being in the file. This viewer shows only what the file itself contains.