Location

Most chat apps can send a location, each in its own way, and some can’t at all. The Location tool does it from the keyboard, so it works the same in every app: a tap finds you, you pick how the place should read, and the text goes into the box you’re typing in. It also keeps a list of places you name yourself, like Home or Work, which go in with one tap and never need location access at all.

Open Location from the toolbox, or type location or gps and tap the chip that appears. Typing I'm at or my location offers it too, and keeps your words, so the place goes in right after them. The panel has two tabs, Here and Places, a precision chip, and a shortcut to the tool’s settings. Swipe sideways across the panel to change tabs.

Sharing where you are

The first time, Here shows a Locate me button and nothing else. Tap it and the keyboard explains what it is about to ask for, then Android shows its own location dialog.

• Only this time is a good answer. The keyboard reads your position once and is done with it, so the grant has nothing else to do. Next time you tap Locate me, Android asks again.
• Approximate works too. Android then hands over a point snapped to a grid of a few kilometres, and the panel says Approximate with an Allow precise link beside it for the day you want the street.
• Don’t allow leaves the tool exactly as it was. Saved places still work.

Once Android allows it, the panel finds you the moment it opens, unless you turn Locate when the tool opens off. A position Android already holds from the last minute shows up at once, then the keyboard asks every location source the phone has switched on (the satellite receiver, the network one, and Android’s own combined source on Android 12 and later) and keeps the best answer. It stops as soon as one is within about 25 metres, or after 20 seconds with whatever it has. Nothing keeps listening after that, and nothing runs in the background.

If location is switched off for the whole phone, the panel says so and offers Turn it on, which opens Android’s location settings.

Reading the panel

Instead of a map, Here shows a dial. A map would need pictures of the streets from a map server, and that server would learn roughly where you are every time the panel opened. The dial shows the two things you would check a map for, drawn to scale with north at the top:

• The ring is how sure the reading is. A tight ring is a good fix; a wide one means the phone is guessing.
• The square appears when you share at a coarser precision. It is the area that goes out, with a hollow dot at the point that is actually shared and the filled dot where you really are.

If you’d like streets behind the dial anyway, name a tile server under Map behind the dial in settings. The keyboard then fetches the few tiles around you, and only from that server. None is built in, because the public OpenStreetMap servers don’t allow apps to use them this way, and because every tile request says roughly where you are.

Next to the dial: the address (when Look up the address is on), the coordinates, how accurate the reading is, how old it is, and its Plus code. Open in maps hands the point to your own maps app, which is the way to see it on a real map.

Under that is a row of formats. Tap one and the box below shows exactly what will be typed, then Insert types it. Hold a format to make it the default; the default carries a small dot.

Format	What it types
Message (the default)	📍 and the address on one line, the map link on the next. Without an address, the coordinates take its place.
Link	Just the map link.
Coordinates	23.780600, 90.419300
Degrees	23°46'50.2"N 90°25'09.5"E, the way Google Maps writes them.
Address	The short address, or the place’s name.
Plus code	7MMGQCJ9+6P, a grid reference any maps app can search for.
Custom	Your own template, see Options.

Numbers always use a dot and Latin digits, whatever language the keyboard is in, because a map app reads 23,78 as two numbers.

The buttons beside Insert save the place, open it in your maps app, make it the location the weather and compass use, and find you again.

Precision

The precision chip in the panel’s header cycles through four settings, and the setting is remembered:

Precision	What a share gives away
Exact	The reading as it is.
About 100 m	A point in a 100 metre square: the street, not the house.
About 1 km	A point in a 1 kilometre square: the neighbourhood.
City	A point in a 10 kilometre square, and only the city’s name.

A coarser setting doesn’t blur the point or add noise. It moves the point to the centre of a fixed square, and the squares are the same every time. That matters: ten noisy shares from one sofa can be averaged back to the sofa, but ten shares that all name the same square centre can’t. Everything in a share uses the moved point, including the link, the Plus code and the address, and the address is looked up at a matching level, so a city share is answered with a city.

Saved places

Places lists the places you saved. Tap one to insert it in the format that’s selected; it needs no location access and no network. The distance beside each one appears once the panel has a reading. Its menu opens it in your maps app, makes it the weather location, or deletes it.

Save a place from Here with the bookmark button. It takes the first part of its address as its name, which you can change in settings. In WM Keyboard › Tools › Location you can also add a place by searching for it, by using where you are, or by typing its coordinates.

Saved places are ordinary settings: a backup carries them, and sync brings them to your other phone.

Places somebody sent you

The Found tab reads the places in the text box and in your ten most recent clips: map links from Google Maps, Apple Maps, OpenStreetMap, OsmAnd, Waze and Bing, geo: links, coordinates in decimals or in degrees, minutes and seconds, and full Plus codes. Copy the link a friend sent and it’s there when you open the panel. Each place shows where it was found, and its distance and direction from you once the panel has a reading.

Tap a place for what you can do with it:

• Insert types it in the format that’s selected, so a long Google link becomes an address, a Plus code, or an OpenStreetMap link for someone who doesn’t use Google.
• Open in maps, Save this place, and Use for weather and compass, as on the other tabs.
• Point the compass opens the compass with a 📍 marker on the rose pointing at the place, and the distance and direction under it. It measures from your current reading, or from the weather tool’s saved place when there’s none. Stop pointing under the rose takes the marker away.

Reading is done on the phone, and nothing is looked up. A shortened link such as maps.app.goo.gl/… names no place until a server is asked, so it isn’t listed. The text box is never read while it is a password field, and clips marked sensitive are skipped. Numbers that only look like coordinates are left alone: a pair needs at least three decimals on each side, and coordinates inside a link that isn’t a map link don’t count.

A link anyone can open

Map link in settings also offers A WM Keyboard page. The link goes to a page on this website with the place after the #, which a browser never sends to the site, so nothing about the place reaches it. The page shows the name, the coordinates and the Plus code, with a button for each map: Google Maps, OpenStreetMap, Apple Maps, OsmAnd and Waze, plus the phone’s own maps app on Android. A map view is one more press away, and it loads from OpenStreetMap only then. Use it when you don’t know which maps app the reader has. Another WM Keyboard reads the link back, name and all, in its Found tab.

Sending a place to your computer

With a computer paired through KDE Connect and in reach, the Here tab has a computer button, and every place on Places and Found has Send to with the computer’s name. The place goes as a map link, in the map you picked, which the computer opens in its browser. A geo: link has nothing to open it on most desktops, so with that choice the computer gets an OpenStreetMap link instead.

In snippets

Snippets can carry a place. {location} is where you are, in the default format, and {location:link} or any other format name picks one: message, link, coordinates, dms, address, plus_code, custom. {place:Home} is a saved place by name, and takes a format the same way, {place:Home:address}.

A snippet never waits on the satellites. {location} uses the reading the panel has from the last 15 minutes, or the one Android already holds from the last 30, and the address only when it was already looked up for that point. With no reading at all it expands to nothing, says so, and starts one for next time. The precision you picked applies here too.

Photos with the place on them

The camera tool can stamp the place onto a photo, and type it into the box as the photo’s caption. The camera button on Here opens the camera with the stamp on for one photo. Both use this tool’s precision, address lookup and default format.

Weather and compass

The weather and compass tools share one saved place. Both now offer Use my location: on the weather panel when no place is saved, on the compass when the qibla needs one, and in the place dialog under WM Keyboard › Tools › Weather. It reads your position once, names it after the city when the address lookup is on, and saves it. Nothing updates it afterwards, so a forecast for home stays a forecast for home while you travel.

What leaves the phone

The position itself never leaves the phone by the tool’s hand. It goes where you send the text, and nowhere else, with one exception you control:

• The address lookup. With Look up the address on, the keyboard sends the shared point, at the precision you chose, to an address server once per share. The default is Nominatim, the geocoder OpenStreetMap runs. The request names the keyboard, as Nominatim asks, and is limited to one a second. Answers are kept in memory, so changing the format doesn’t ask again. In the F-Droid edition you can point it at your own Nominatim server under Servers. Turn the lookup off and nothing about your position goes anywhere until you send it yourself.

The reading stays in memory for 15 minutes, so reopening the panel doesn’t ask again, and is then forgotten. It is never written to storage unless you save a place. See Network policy and Permissions.

Options

WM Keyboard › Tools › Location

• Default format: Message. What Insert types. Holding a format in the panel sets this too.
• Map link: Google Maps. Which map a link opens: Google Maps, OpenStreetMap, Apple Maps, OsmAnd, Waze, a geo: link, which opens the reader’s own maps app but isn’t a web address, or a WM Keyboard page with a button for each.
• Precision: Exact. See Precision. The chip in the panel changes this same setting.
• Look up the address: on. See What leaves the phone.
• Locate when the tool opens: on. Off, the panel waits for Locate me every time, even when Android already allows it.
• Custom format: a template for the Custom chip. Words in braces are replaced: {name}, {address}, {coords}, {lat}, {lon}, {dms}, {plus}, {link} (in the map you picked), {google}, {osm}, {apple}, {osmand}, {waze}, {geo}, {card}, {accuracy} and {time}. A word with nothing to put in its place disappears, and a word in braces the tool doesn’t know is left as you typed it. An example under the field shows the template filled in for the Eiffel Tower.
• Tile server: blank. A {z}/{x}/{y} address, such as https://tile.example.org/{z}/{x}/{y}.png, for a map behind the dial. Use a server whose terms allow it; tiles are kept in memory only.
• Saved places: each place, to rename, move or delete, and Add a place.
• Location access: Precise, Approximate or Not granted. Tapping it asks Android, or, once precise is granted, opens the app’s page in Android’s settings, where it can be taken back.

Details & edge cases

• A build can leave location out entirely. Building with -Pwmkb.noLocation=true removes both location permissions. The tool then keeps its saved places, and Locate me and Use my location disappear. See Building.
• It isn’t available before your first unlock. Like the other tools that read your settings and saved data, Location waits until you’ve unlocked the phone once after a restart.
• The compass now points at true north once a place is saved. The phone’s sensor finds magnetic north, which is up to twenty degrees off in parts of the world. With a saved place the compass knows the difference and corrects for it, so the qibla marker lands where it should.
• No live location. A shared position is a snapshot. Following someone as they move needs a server between the two phones, and this keyboard has none.
• No hardware-keyboard letter by default. Bind one under shortcuts if you use it often, or reach it through the toolbox shortcut, double-tap Ctrl then T.