How To Set Your Location On Google Chrome

How To Faux Your Location in Google Chrome

Google Chrome keeps rail of your location for several reasons. Sharing your location allows the browser to get useful information from sites, making information technology easier for you to observe the things that yous need nearby (i.eastward nutrient delivery). Many business concern sites collect location data from visitors for marketing purposes, or to come across whether a particular advertising campaign is bringing in readers from a specific part of the world.

Regardless of the reasons for the demand for the data, Google Chrome (among other browsers) does rails the geolocation of the computer, tablet, or smartphone it is running on.

There is a similarly broad range of reasons why you might desire to block Chrome from reporting location, or improve however, force it to give out an wrong location. You might want to convince a website that you are located in a region where it has a license to testify you sure TV or movie content, for example.

Yous may want the "local news" tab of Google News to give you stories from a different city than the one in which you happen to live. Perchance you just want to print out a agglomeration of navigation directions from Google Maps for your upcoming trip to Paris, and don't want to have to reset the location continually.

Any your reason for wanting to set a dissimilar location in Chrome, in that location are many ways you can do so. This article volition show you how to simulated your location in Google Chrome; but first, let'south learn how Chrome can figure out where y'all are in the outset identify.

How Does Chrome Know Where You Are?

Quick Links

How Does Chrome Know Where Yous Are?
- GPS
- WiFi
- IP Accost
How Tin can Yous Spoof These Location Methods?
- Shut Off Access to GPS
- Faux Your Location Within the Browser
- Fake Your Location With a Chrome Extension
- Simulated Your Location With a VPN

In that location are several different methods that Chrome (or any other program on your figurer or smartphone) tin can determine your location. Equally Chrome runs on smartphones, tablets, and computers, this information applies to all these three basic platforms.

GPS

All modern smartphones and most tablets include hardware that tin can interface with the network of global positioning system (GPS) satellites that orbit our planet. As of February 2022, there are 31 operational satellites in the GPS constellation, which orbit the Globe twice a 24-hour interval. Each of these satellites contains a powerful radio transmitter and a clock and continually transmits the current fourth dimension at the satellite to the planet beneath.

A GPS receiver, which could be part of a smartphone, tablet, or even a laptop or desktop PC, receives the signals from several GPS satellites, whichever satellites are currently orbiting higher up the Earth reasonably close to the receiver. The receiver then calculates the relative strengths and timestamps from all the satellites and estimates where it must be on the planet's surface.

The system is capable of accuracy as close every bit i foot, merely more than realistically, a consumer-level GPS like the one in a smartphone will provide a location within nearly ten or twenty anxiety of the "existent" location. Chrome, similar every other program on a smartphone or tablet, has access to this GPS location data and volition apply it to plot your location.

WiFi

Every wireless network access betoken or router broadcasts something called aBasic Service Set Identifier(BSSID), which is an identifying token that indicates that router or admission betoken'southward identity within the network. The BSSID does not, in itself, contain location information. Your router does not know where it is in the concrete world; it but knows it'due south ain IP address.

So how can anyone know the location of a BSSID? Well, considering BSSID information is public, every time someone with smartphone admission the router, an entry is made in a Google database correlating that smartphone's GPS location at the fourth dimension of the connection, and the BSSID the smartphone talked to.

Over time, a massive database of BSSID/geolocation correlations has been built upwards. While it is non perfect, if Chrome is connected to a router, it tin can apply that router's BSSID to look upward its own physical location very quickly and easily using the HTML5 Geolocation API.

IP Accost

If all else fails, Google Chrome has access to your computer's IP address. An IP address or Net Protocol Address is a numerical characterization that is assigned to every device on a computer network. In simple terms, it is more like a postal address, but with long binary numbers.

While the IP accost is exact when it comes to your location within the architecture of the Internet, that compages is only sketchily continued to geographical areas. All the same, Internet Service Providers do create a rough correlation between IP accost ranges and detail regions of the country. In other words, an automatic query to your Internet access provider requesting your computer's physical location will mostly return a result which, if information technology isn't perfect, is considerably better than zip. In the United States, a location generated from an IP address will be accurate every bit to what country you are in and will probably be accurate as to what city.

You can examination this yourself past visiting the IP Location Finder and typing in your IP address. Depending on what kind of computer or device you are using, this page will besides testify you the location information it has for you based on your WiFi connection or GPS data.

How Tin You lot Spoof These Location Methods?

Now that we know how Chrome knows where you are, how can we trick information technology into thinking that you're somewhere else?

Shut Off Access to GPS

One of the ways to fake your location is to close off your GPS functions on your smartphone or tablet and then that Chrome won't accept access to the information. If you get to a website in Chrome and you see a little alert in your browser that says "1234567.com wants to know your location" or words to that event, that's the HTML 5 Geolocation API beingness used.

Clicking "Block" on this popup every fourth dimension tin can exist abrasive. To plow off location sharing in Google Chrome, and to permanently cake this popup, follow these steps:

Click the card icon to the right of the toolbar. Information technology'due south a row of three vertical dots.
From the drop-downward, click Settings.
Gyre downwards to Privacy and Security, then click Site Settings.
Click Location.
Toggle the Enquire earlier accessing button to on.
Click on the Trash icon next to websites if you'd similar to ban specific sites from accessing your location.

Now, websites will not exist able to admission your location. If you're on mobile, however, Chrome will accept access to your IP accost by default. Yous have no selection over your IP address being used to locate y'all. For GPS information, though, you can either refuse app access to leave GPS turned off birthday.

If yous're not certain whether or not your browser knowing your location is important, click hither to see just how well your device can track your location. Allow the app to access location data, and your position should announced on the map in the center of the screen.

Fake Your Location Inside the Browser

Another option to cake websites from seeing your location is to false information technology. Faking your location in Chrome volition not let you to access Hulu from exterior the U.S., but it will enable you to see regional news or static spider web content you lot would not usually be able to see. If yous want to admission geo-locked websites, you will demand to apply the VPN method explained below.

Y'all can simulated your location in the browser itself, or you can use a VPN. Faking in Chrome is temporary, and y'all will accept to do this each time yous open up a new browser session. Only it gets the job done. To fake your location in Google Chrome desktop.

Go to this website and copy a random fix of coordinates. Drag the scarlet icon anywhere, and the Lat and Long will appear in the box above it.
Open Google Chrome on your device.
Press Alt + Shift + I on PC or CMD + Option+ I on Mac to admission Programmer Tools.
Select the three dot carte du jour in the top correct of the pane.
Select More tools and Sensors.
Change Geolocation to Other.
Add the Lat and Long coordinates y'all copied earlier into the boxes underneath Geolocation.
Reload the webpage.

You tin can test the settings by opening up Google Maps. Rather than showing your home or last known location, information technology should nix in on the position marked by those coordinates you fix. Yous cannot fix this permanently and will have to perform the above steps for every new browser session you open. Otherwise, it works similar a charm.

Faking your location in Google Chrome is simple and will piece of work for near things you might want to do online. You can apply the aforementioned principle if you utilize Firefox, Opera, and other major browsers too. The bill of fare syntax might differ a little, but you should be able to figure it out.

Fake Your Location With a Chrome Extension

You can manually change your location all 24-hour interval long, but wouldn't it exist easier but to have a browser extension to practice it for you? Enter Location Guard, a costless Chrome extension that lets you lot add together "noise" to your location within Chrome to protect your privacy. Location Guard enables y'all to get the do good of "proficient plenty" geolocation (for example, getting your local news and the weather for the right part of your state) by adding a certain amount of "noise" to your genuine location. This offset means that your real location cannot be detected, only your general region.

Location Guard lets you lot ready any of three privacy levels, with higher levels increasing the "slop" in your location. Y'all can configure the settings on a per-website ground so that your dating app can get very accurate information while your newsreader gets the least precise information. You can also set a fixed fictional location.

Fake Your Location With a VPN

By far, the all-time way to simulated your location is to use a VPN. Non only is it a permanent solution, but information technology also has the added benefit of encrypting all web traffic and preventing government and Isp surveillance. In that location are many adept VPN services, but our favorite continues to be ExpressVPN, one of the best and most premium VPNs on the marketplace today. Non only will ExpressVPN allow you to change and simulated your location within Chrome, only with a solid back up team, applications and device support for almost every platform under the sun, and the best Netflix region-breaking we've seen from any VPN to date, it's the obvious selection for anyone looking to invest in a slap-up VPN.

VPNs won't permit you to specify your verbal location the way GPS spoofing apps volition permit for, merely they can make it easy to change your general city or state location by assigning yous a new IP address. For those trying to fool their friends into thinking they're right next to them, this may non exist the best tool, but for those who are trying to sidestep regional blocks for content and other tricks requiring new locations within your browser, using a VPN is perfect.

There are several reasons to recommend ExpressVPN for this, equally we covered above. While they aren't the but VPN on the marketplace, their server count—over 3000 servers across 160 locations—in addition to apps for every major platform under the sun, make it an obvious selection for your VPN choice. Being able to automatically translate your IP accost to any of those 160 locations is straightforward. Once you're connected, there'south virtually no service that won't be able to tell yous aren't there. That includes Netflix, a platform notorious for working hard to make sure those spoofing their IP locations are unable to access out-of-region content. In our tests with ExpressVPN, which you can read more than most here, we've had no issues connecting to Netflix from regions similar Canada and the United Kingdom to stream movies we couldn't usually view.

Like most VPNs, ExpressVPN supports a whole host of unlike platforms for protecting your browsing information. We don't live in a one-device globe in 2022, and ExpressVPN makes sure you're covered no matter what device yous're using. Dedicated apps exist for iOS and Android on the App Store and Play Shop, respectively. This allows you to activate your VPN on your phone whenever you need to secure your internet. The usual desktop apps are here, with support for Windows, Mac, and Linux, making it an option no matter what platform you're using for your daily computing.

Support for devices doesn't cease in that location. After covering your computer and your smartphone with protection while browsing, you lot can as well install ExpressVPN on several other platforms, perhaps the most we've seen to date. Express offers apps for Amazon's Burn Stick and Fire Tablet, Google's Chrome OS, extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. At that place are fifty-fifty tutorials for getting a VPN up and running on your PlayStation, Xbox, Apple Television, or Nintendo Switch. Being able to utilize a VPN on a smart streaming device isn't something that every VPN supports, so it's great to encounter the app offering users support on these platforms.

Possibly the all-time reason to apply ExpressVPN is their support squad. ExpressVPN offers 24/7 back up for its customers available through both live chat and e-mail. This ways yous should be able to solve your internet problems no matter the time of day. If you're prepare to have the plunge with ExpressVPN, you tin can check out their prices right here. With a 30-day money-back guarantee, there's no reason non to check out one of the best VPNs for faking your location online today.

Know of any other ways to imitation your location in Google Chrome? Tell us virtually them below if you do!