How to Fake your Location in Google Chrome

Sometimes websites may request access to your location so that they can serve more relevant information. For instance, if you are looking for a gas station, a maps website may use your current geographic location to display stations that are near your place.

Google Chrome will only share your location if you click Allow.

How Browsers Determine your Location

Earlier, websites would use the IP address to determine your approximate location but with the HTML5 Geolocation API, web browsers can more accurately detect your location using data from GPS, Wi-Fi networks, cell towers, Bluetooth and the computer’s IP address. If you agree to share your location, the browser will send these details to Google Location Services for estimating your location which is then shared with the requesting website.

To give you an example, open the Where am I app in your browser, allow it to use your location information and the app should be able to display your latitude and longitude coordinates (it is more accurate on mobile browsers as those devices have built-in GPS).

Fake your Geolocation Coordinates

When you happen to visit a location-aware website, the browser will always ask for a confirmation before sharing your location. If you aren’t keen to share your geographic coordinates, you can always deny that request or, if you are using Google Chrome, you can even send a fake location to the website.

Here’s how. Press F12 (or Ctrl + Shift + I) in Google Chrome to open the Developer Tools. Click the Settings icon in the lower right corner and switch to the Overrides tab (see the next screenshot). Now you can specify the exact latitude and longitude coordinates* that you want to share with that website.

[*] You can use the Postal Address finder to know the latitude and location of a place.

Make sure that the “Override Geolocation” setting is checked and then refresh the page to send that fake location. And this is obviously a useful feature for web developers who would like to test their geolocation-enabled apps from the same location.

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