Online Compass
A free online compass that runs in your browser. Press start and your phone reads its own magnetometer, the way a native digital compass does.
Not started. Drag the rose or use the arrow keys to set a bearing by hand.
Measured from
True north needs a declination figure. Enter one below to enable it.
- Bearing
- 000°
- Point
- N
- Position
- Not shared
- Qibla
- Needs position
Degrees, east positive and west negative. This site does not guess it: a cheap approximation is wrong by more than ten degrees in much of the world, and a quietly wrong true north is worse than none. Get your figure from NOAA.
Getting a reading
Four things, in this order
A magnetometer measures a weak field, so almost everything about using one well is about what you keep away from it. Do these out of order and the number on screen means nothing.
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01 Step
Start the compass
Press Start compass. Your browser will ask permission to read the device's orientation, because a page cannot read a sensor without you saying so. Nothing is read before you press it.
On a desktop, drag the rose or use the arrow keys instead
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02 Step
Hold the device flat
Lay the phone flat in your palm, screen up, as level as you can manage. A magnetometer reads a three-dimensional field and the correction for tilt gets worse the further from level you are. Held upright like a camera, the reading can be tens of degrees out.
Level matters more than steady
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03 Step
Step away from metal, then calibrate
Move a couple of metres from laptops, speakers, desks, cars and magnetic cases, then move the device in a figure of eight two or three times. That lets it sample the field from several angles and solve for the local offset.
A magnetic case or car mount will defeat this entirely
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04 Step
Choose true or magnetic north
Read the bearing, and pick which north it is measured from. True for anything to do with a map, a panel or a dish; magnetic for a bearing you took with a physical compass. The readout names the nearest of the 16 points so you have a direction as well as a number.
True north needs a declination figure, magnetic does not
Your device
What happens on what
One page, one code path, four quite different experiences. The permission model genuinely differs per platform, and whether there is a magnetometer at all differs more.
iPhone and iPad
- Press Start compass. iOS shows a one-time prompt asking to allow motion and orientation access.
- Allow it. iOS requires the request to come from a tap, which is why the compass cannot start on its own.
- If no prompt appears, check Settings, Safari, Motion & Orientation Access is on, then reload.
iPhone also ships a Compass app, and Apple Maps shows a heading cone.
Android
- Press Start compass. Chrome on Android generally grants orientation access without a prompt on an https page.
- If the needle does not move, the device may have no magnetometer. Budget and older tablets often do not.
- Check Settings, Site settings, Motion sensors if you have previously blocked it.
Google Maps shows a heading cone, and calibrating there also calibrates this page.
Desktop and laptop
- There is almost certainly no magnetometer, so there is no live heading to read.
- The rose is fully usable anyway: drag it to any bearing, or focus it and use the arrow keys.
- Arrow keys step one degree, Shift and arrow steps one point, Home returns to north.
A few 2-in-1 laptops do have a magnetometer. If yours does, Start compass will work.
No device at all
- The sun rises roughly east and sets roughly west, and is due south at local noon in the northern hemisphere.
- An analogue watch, the shadow-stick method and the night sky all give you north to within a few degrees.
- Each of those has its own page under Find a direction, with the error you should expect.
The card
All 32 points
The rose is built by halving: four cardinals, four ordinals, eight half-winds, sixteen quarter-winds. Thirty-two names, each 11.25° apart, with its bearing below.
- 4 Cardinal points 90° apart
- 4 Ordinal points 45° apart
- 8 Half-winds 22.5° apart
- 16 Quarter-winds 11.25° apart
- N 000
- NbE 011
- NNE 023
- NEbN 034
- NE 045
- NEbE 056
- ENE 068
- EbN 079
- E 090
- EbS 101
- ESE 113
- SEbE 124
- SE 135
- SEbS 146
- SSE 158
- SbE 169
- S 180
- SbW 191
- SSW 203
- SWbS 214
- SW 225
- SWbW 236
- WSW 248
- WbS 259
- W 270
- WbN 281
- WNW 293
- NWbW 304
- NW 315
- NWbN 326
- NNW 338
- NbW 349
Principal points
The eight you already know
Four cardinals and the four ordinals between them. Between them they cover every direction anyone gives in conversation.
- N 000° north
- NE 045° northeast
- E 090° east
- SE 135° southeast
- S 180° south
- SW 225° southwest
- W 270° west
- NW 315° northwest
Find a direction
What are you actually trying to do?
A bearing on its own is rarely the goal. Each guide states the answer first, then the method, then the accuracy you should expect from it.
The basic one
Which way is north?
If you are on a phone, press Start compass and turn until the bearing reads 000. If you are not, and the sun is up, stand with the sun on your right in the morning and you are facing roughly north.
No instrument
Without a compass
Put a stick upright in the ground, mark the tip of its shadow, wait fifteen minutes and mark it again. The line from the first mark to the second points roughly east.
Fixed installation
Aim a solar panel
In the northern hemisphere, face a fixed array due true south, 180 degrees. In the southern hemisphere, due true north, 000. Tilt it at roughly your latitude.
Line of sight
Aim a satellite dish
Look up the azimuth, elevation and skew for your postcode and your satellite, set the azimuth as a true bearing, then fine-tune on signal strength.
Great-circle bearing
Find the qibla
The qibla is the great-circle bearing from where you are standing to the Kaaba in Mecca, at 21.4225 degrees north, 39.8262 degrees east. It depends entirely on your location, so there is no single answer.
Aspect
Which way a house faces
Stand with your back against the front wall of the house, facing out, and read the bearing. That is the aspect. Outdoors, several metres from the wall, or the steel in it will spoil the reading.
Three norths
Take a bearing from a map
Line the compass edge from where you are to where you are going, rotate the housing until its grid lines match the map's north lines, read the bearing, then add your local declination to walk it.
Sensor hygiene
Calibrate your phone
Hold the phone away from your body and trace a figure of eight in the air two or three times, rotating your wrist as you go. Do it away from metal and magnets.
Guide
The online compass, explained
What the tool measures, how to read it, and where a browser-based compass is trustworthy, and where it is not.
The Online Compass is a free, browser-based instrument that tells you which way you are facing, with nothing to install and no account to create. As an online compass tool it works on any device with a browser. Open this compass online on a phone and it reads the device's built-in magnetometer, the same sensor a native app uses, then draws a live heading on the rose. Open the same page on a laptop and you turn the digital compass card yourself, by dragging it or using the arrow keys. Either way the tool gives you a bearing in degrees and the named point of the rose it falls on.
How the digital compass works
A digital compass has no spinning needle. Instead, a magnetometer measures the strength of the Earth's magnetic field along three axes, and the device works out a heading from those readings after the accelerometer tells it which way is down. This online magnetic compass exposes that same measurement through your browser, so the number you read is real sensor data, not an animation. Because it is an online digital compass rather than a mechanical one, it can also show the exact heading in figures, name the direction, and switch between references without any moving parts.
Most phones and tablets sold in the last decade include the sensor a compass needs. Most desktops and laptops do not, which is why this tool never pretends: if no magnetometer answers, it says so and hands you a compass rose you can set by hand. That hand-turned mode is a genuine virtual compass, useful for teaching the points of the card, planning a bearing, or checking a direction you already know.
Reading compass degrees online
Every heading here is given as a three-digit bearing, so north is 000, east is 090, south is 180 and west is 270. Writing compass degrees online this way follows the same convention aviation and marine radio use, where a bearing must never be mistaken for a distance or a channel number. Alongside the figure, the tool names the nearest of the sixteen points, so you get both a precise number and a direction you can say out loud. The full rose carries all 32 points, each 11.25 degrees apart.
Finding true north online
There are two norths, and the difference matters. Magnetic north is where a needle settles; true north is the direction of the geographic pole that every map is drawn to. The angle between them, called declination, can be more than fifteen degrees depending on where you stand. To find north online for a map, a solar panel or a property boundary, you want true north; for a bearing you took with a physical compass, you want magnetic. This true north compass online lets you enter your local declination and switch the reading between the two, so the compass direction online always states which reference it is using rather than leaving you to guess.
Is this a GPS compass?
People often search for a GPS compass online, so it is worth being clear: GPS and a compass measure different things. GPS tells you where you are; a magnetometer tells you which way you are pointing while standing still. A phone blends the two, using GPS to derive a heading only once you are moving. This tool reads the magnetometer for its heading, and it uses your location, with permission, only to show your coordinates and to compute directions like the qibla. Your position is never sent anywhere, because those calculations run inside your browser.
A free online compass that respects your privacy
This is a compass online free of charge, free of adverts and free of tracking. There is no analytics script counting you, and the two permissions it can ask for, motion and location, are requested only when you press the button that needs them, never on load. Nothing the sensors return is stored or transmitted: a heading is drawn to the screen and replaced by the next reading sixty times a second. For a tool that asks to read your orientation and your position, that restraint is the point.
The compass rose behind the tool
Beyond the live reading, the Online Compass is also a complete reference to the compass rose. The rose is built by halving: four cardinal points, four ordinals between them, eight half-winds and sixteen quarter-winds, thirty-two names in all. Each is listed on this page with its exact bearing, from north at 000 to north by west at 349, so the tool doubles as a way to learn the card rather than only to read it. Whether you need a quick heading or the precise degrees of west-southwest, the rose has it.
When to use the online direction finder, and its limits
As an online direction finder, a calibrated phone held flat and away from metal is good to within a few degrees, which is plenty for orienting a map, aiming a dish or settling an argument about which way a room faces. It is not a certified navigation instrument, and it should not be relied on at sea, in the air or anywhere a wrong direction is dangerous. Steel, magnets, laptops and car bodies all distort the field, so step clear of them and calibrate with a figure-of-eight motion before you trust a reading. Used within those limits, the Online Compass is a fast, honest way to find a direction on whatever device you already have.
Questions
Before you trust the number
The six that come up most. There are more on the how-to page, grouped by what they are about.
Does an online compass actually work?
On a phone or tablet, yes. Modern devices have a real magnetometer, and the browser exposes its output to this page in the same way a native compass app reads it. The number you see is measured hardware, not a guess.
On a desktop or laptop, no. Almost none have a magnetometer, so there is nothing to read. The rose on this page is still fully usable there, but you turn it yourself: drag it, or use the arrow keys. It is a working model of a compass card rather than a live instrument, and the page says which mode you are in.
Why does it ask permission before starting?
Because a page that can read the angle your device is held at can infer a surprising amount, so browsers put that behind an explicit grant. On iOS the grant must come from a tap, which is why there is a Start compass button rather than a compass that is already running.
Nothing is read before you press it, and nothing is kept after. The angle is drawn to the screen and thrown away on the next frame.
I pressed Start and nothing happened.
Three things cause this. The page has to be served over https, or the browser blocks sensor access outright. The permission prompt has to be accepted, and if you dismissed it once, Safari and Chrome both remember that and will not ask again until you clear the site settings.
The third is simply that the device has no magnetometer. Desktops, most laptops and some budget tablets do not. In that case the page falls back to the hand-turned rose and tells you so rather than showing a needle that is quietly lying.
The needle drifts, or points somewhere obviously wrong.
A magnetometer measures the earth's magnetic field, which is weak, so anything closer and stronger wins. The usual culprits are a magnetic phone case or car mount, a laptop, speakers, a metal desk or a car body. Step a couple of metres away from all of it and the reading usually settles immediately.
If it still wanders, the sensor needs recalibrating: hold the device away from your body and move it in a figure of eight two or three times. This is not a superstition, it is the device sampling the field from several orientations so it can solve for the offset.
What is the difference between true north and magnetic north?
True north is the direction of the geographic north pole, which is the north on every map. Magnetic north is the direction a magnetised needle points, and it is somewhere else entirely: the magnetic pole sits in the Arctic Ocean and moves tens of kilometres a year.
The angle between the two, from wherever you are standing, is called magnetic declination or magnetic variation. It can be nearly zero, or it can be more than twenty degrees, depending on where you are.
Which one should I use?
Use true north if you are working with a map, a property boundary, a solar panel or a satellite dish. All of those are specified against the map, and the map means true.
Use magnetic north if you are following a bearing you took with a physical compass, or reading one off a chart that gives magnetic bearings. Mixing the two is the single most common navigation mistake, and over a few kilometres a twenty degree error puts you a long way from where you meant to be.