About location QR codes
A location QR code contains geographic coordinates. Scanning it opens the phone’s map app at that exact point, ready for directions.
Coordinates beat a street address whenever the address is ambiguous or does not exist: a festival entrance, a trailhead, a site gate round the back of an industrial estate, a meeting point in a large park.
How to make one
- Find your coordinates: in Google Maps, right-click the spot and the decimal pair is at the top of the menu.
- Paste latitude into the first box and longitude into the second. Southern and western values are negative.
- Scan the preview and confirm the pin lands where you expect.
- Download and print alongside a short line of context, like "Scan for the site entrance".
What gets encoded
The code holds plain text in a format phones recognise. For this type it looks like this:
geo:37.7749,-122.4194
The geo: URI from RFC 5870, understood by both iOS and Android. Decimal degrees only — degrees/minutes/seconds will not work.
Tips
- Get the order right: latitude first, then longitude. Reversing them is the single most common mistake and usually lands you in the sea.
- Four decimal places is around 11 metres, which is plenty. More digits just lengthen the payload.
- Coordinates place a pin, they do not name it. Print the place name next to the code.
- Test outdoors on a real phone — map app behaviour varies more than you would expect.
Frequently asked questions
Which map app opens?
Whichever the phone is set to use — Apple Maps on a default iPhone, Google Maps on most Android phones. The geo: format is neutral, so the phone decides.
Can I use an address instead of coordinates?
Not with this format, which is coordinates only. For an address, make a URL QR code pointing at a Google Maps or Apple Maps link for the place.
Do you see what I type here?
No. The code is generated entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter on this page is sent to our servers or stored anywhere.
Does this QR code expire?
No. The details are encoded directly into the pattern itself, so the code does not depend on this site or any account. It keeps working even if this site disappears, with no scan limit and no watermark.
Other QR code types
New to this? The QR code guide covers error correction, sizing for print, and the four reasons codes fail to scan.