What city am I in?

What the result means

The result card lists the matched place label and each part of the address that OpenStreetMap holds for it. The City row is the town, village, or city tag of the nearest match. Outside city limits it can be empty, or it can name the nearest town even though you are in unincorporated land.

The coordinates under the title are the point you picked, rounded to five decimal places, about 1.1 meters of latitude. They are also written to the page address, so you can bookmark or share the exact spot.

How to use it

1. Tap Use GPS and allow location access, or type a place in Search a place, or click the map.
2. The map flies to the point and drops a marker. The coordinates are written to the page address, so reloading or sharing the link runs the same lookup again.
3. Read the result card. The title is the city, town, or village. The rows below give the full place label, county, state or region, country, and postcode.
4. Press Clear to remove the marker and start over.

How the city lookup works

Your browser sends the latitude and longitude to Photon's reverse endpoint. Photon searches OpenStreetMap features near the point and returns the closest one with its address tags. The tool reads the city, county, state, postcode, and country from that answer and shows them without changes.

GPS uses your device's location service. Your browser asks for permission first, and the reading stays on your device except for the one request to Photon. Clicking the map or searching skips GPS entirely.

Why the named city can differ from your mailing address

Postal city names follow post office service areas, not municipal boundaries. A house can have a big city in its mailing address and still sit in an unincorporated part of the county. OpenStreetMap tags describe places on the ground, so the city it returns is the nearest mapped settlement, which may not match the name the post office prints.

If you need to know whether a point is legally inside city limits, check the city's own boundary map or the Census place boundaries. For the county, which is unambiguous, use What county am I in?. It tests the point against county outlines in your browser and needs no outside service.

Coverage outside the United States

This is one of the few location tools here that works worldwide, because OpenStreetMap is global. The quality of the answer follows the quality of local mapping. Dense cities are usually complete. In remote areas the nearest tagged place can be far from the point.

For the country alone, the country finder is faster and works offline once loaded, because it tests the point against country outlines instead of asking a server.

What is sent and stored

The only data that leaves your browser is the coordinate pair sent to Photon. Online Map Tools does not log it and has no account system. The point is kept in the page address after the # sign, which browsers do not send to servers.