HTMLGeolocationElement: autolocate property

Limited availability

This feature is not Baseline because it does not work in some of the most widely-used browsers.

Experimental: This is an experimental technology
Check the Browser compatibility table carefully before using this in production.

The autolocate property of the HTMLGeolocationElement interface gets and sets a boolean value indicating whether the browser should immediately request location data when the <geolocation> element is rendered, provided permission to use the geolocation feature is already granted.

It reflects the value of the <geolocation> autolocate attribute.

Value

A boolean value:

If true, location data is requested as soon as the <geolocation> element is rendered, provided permission to use the geolocation feature was previously granted.
If false, location data is only requested when the user presses the <geolocation> button.

Defaults to false.

If permission to use the geolocation feature was not previously granted, the autolocate property is ignored.

Examples

Basic usage

html

js
const geo = document.querySelector("geolocation");
console.log(geo.autolocate); // true

See our Embedded map example walkthrough for a real-world example that includes autolocate.

Specifications

Specification

The HTML Geolocation Element
# dom-htmlgeolocationelement-autolocate

Browser compatibility

Enable JavaScript to view this browser compatibility table.

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This page was last modified on Feb 13, 2026 by MDN contributors.

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