On an iPhone: the Compass app
Open the Compass app, which is in the Utilities folder if it is not on your home screen. With Location Services on, the bottom of the screen shows your coordinates, the nearest town and your elevation. If the elevation is missing, go to Settings, Privacy and Security, Location Services, Compass, and allow access while using the app with Precise Location on.
The number comes from the phone's GPS and barometer, so it is height above sea level with the accuracy limits of GPS. Outdoors it is usually within 10 to 20 metres of the true ground elevation. An Apple Watch shows the same kind of reading in its own Compass app and Elevation complication.
On Android: no built-in elevation readout
Android phones do not have a standard app that shows elevation. Google Maps does not display it directly either. There are two built-in ways to get close:
- Terrain layer in Google Maps. Tap the layers button, choose Terrain, and zoom in. Contour lines appear with elevation labels, and you can read your height from the lines around the blue dot.
- Route elevation. For walking and cycling directions, Google Maps shows the climb and descent for the route, which tells you the height difference but not the absolute elevation.
On any phone: a web page
Open our elevation page in your browser and tap Find me. It shows the ground elevation from a survey-based elevation model, in feet and metres, and your phone's own GPS altitude separately. It works in Safari, Chrome and every other modern browser, with no app to install and no account.
Because it reads the ground height from a model rather than from the phone's altitude sensor, it avoids the two errors GPS altitude suffers from: poor vertical accuracy and, on many Android phones, a height measured from the ellipsoid rather than sea level. The GPS altitude guide explains both.
Apps for hikers and pilots
If you need a continuous altimeter on a hike, dedicated hiking apps and watches combine GPS, a barometer and a terrain map, and let you calibrate the altimeter at a known point such as a trailhead sign. Aviation apps show pressure altitude and density altitude, which matter for aircraft performance rather than for knowing where you are.
For most everyday uses, such as canning, baking, curiosity or checking a property, the ground elevation from a map is the more accurate number and needs no app.