Coordinates and map services

Coordinate systems

Vault coordinates and supported track files stay WGS-84. Auto recognizes common mainland tile hosts and converts only at the map boundary for GCJ-02 or BD-09 basemaps. A default can be set globally or forced per map view when a proxy URL hides the provider.

The same WGS-84 track moving from a hillside back onto the causeway when basemap conversion is enabled

Open a spot in another map app

Right-click a map — long press it on a phone — and choose Open in external map. Amap, Baidu, Tencent, Google, Apple Maps, and OpenStreetMap receive the datum each expects. Providers can be reordered or disabled, and custom URL templates can use {lat} and {lng}:

https://ul.waze.com/ul?ll={lat},{lng}&navigate=yes      WGS-84
https://www.bing.com/maps?cp={lat}~{lng}&lvl=16         WGS-84
om://map?v=1&ll={lat},{lng}                             WGS-84

Offer external maps at the top of that page switches all of it off at once: right-clicking a map then offers no external app, and the order you arranged and the ones you already switched off are kept for when you want them back.

The map context menu with external-map destinations

Place a note you already wrote

The map’s own menu can create a note at the spot you clicked. Set a note’s coordinates here is the other half: you wrote the note months ago without a coordinate, and you are looking straight at where it belongs.

Right-click the spot — long press it on a phone — choose it, and pick the note. Each row shows its folder and, when the note already has a coordinate, the value it holds — so a fuzzy match is checked before it is taken, not after. Choosing a note with no coordinate writes immediately; choosing one that already has a coordinate names the old value and the new one first, because frontmatter has no undo.

Your templates are left out of the list, read from the folder the core Templates plugin names. A template is not a place, and a coordinate written into one would go into every note stamped from it afterwards.

Only the coordinate property is written. If the note is not in that map’s own query the pin will not appear, which is Bases filtering rather than a failure — the notice names the note and the value either way.

Switch Set a note’s coordinates from the map off under settings → Map buttons and menu and the map’s menu drops the item. The rest of that menu is unchanged, down to the coordinate it hands the items that stay.

The map’s right-click menu with “set a note’s coordinates here” beside New note and Copy coordinates; the note picker, where an already-placed note shows the coordinate it holds; and the confirmation naming the old value and the new one

On a phone the same menu opens on a long press, as a sheet from the bottom of the screen. Everything this guide asks you to right-click a map for is in it: Set a note’s coordinates here, Open in external map with its list of providers, and Export places….

Set coordinates from a map link

Set coordinates from a map link understands common mainland and international share links, geo: URIs, Plus Codes, degrees/minutes/seconds, and plain lat,lng. It previews the result and always writes WGS-84.

A Plus Code — 8FVC9G8F+6W, on its own or as a plus.codes link — is read as WGS-84, which is what the format is defined on. Codes that name no single place are refused with the reason: a short code such as 9G8F+6W has dropped the digits that say which part of the world it is in, and a padded one such as 8FVC0000+ stands for a region kilometres across.

The map-link parser showing the WGS-84 coordinate it will write

Search and reverse geocoding

Search for a place and set coordinates uses an open worldwide provider or Amap with your own key.
Fill place name from coordinates reverse-geocodes the current coordinate into the configured place property.

Search and reverse geocoding send a query to the selected provider. See Reference and privacy for exactly what leaves the vault and where a provider key can be stored.

Device location

Fill coordinates from current location asks the operating system on desktop and mobile, so no API key is involved. With Use device location, a present-but-empty coords: property can be filled automatically without overwriting an existing value. Skip these folders is a list of paths that are never stamped, templates to begin with, and each row suggests folders from your vault as you type. Empty the list and nothing is skipped.