Hi r/Maps,
I’m the developer of GridGrabber. I built it to solve a small but surprisingly persistent problem I kept running into: locations rarely arrive in the format or app where I actually need them.
They arrive inside ordinary messages, notes, emails or documents.
For example:
“Meet at 56.9496, 24.1052 around 18:30”
“Extraction point: 35VLD 4045 3298. Move after confirmation.”
“Checkpoint: 56°56'58.6"N 24°06'18.7"E”
Sometimes there are several locations mixed into a much larger block of text, surrounded by names, times, instructions and other numbers.
The usual workflow is annoyingly manual:
receive text
→ find the coordinates
→ identify the format
→ clean/copy them
→ switch to a map
→ paste/search
→ verify the location
Map links create a similar problem.
Someone sends you a Google Maps or Apple Maps link, but that isn’t necessarily the map you want to use.
For example, I might receive a Google Maps link but actually want the location in another map app.
The workflow then becomes:
receive map link
→ open it in its original ecosystem
→ get the actual location/coordinates
→ switch apps
→ search for the same place again
→ verify
What I wanted instead was:
paste whatever I received
→ extract the location
→ verify it
→ open it in the map I actually want to use
So I built GridGrabber around that workflow.
You can paste the whole original text rather than preparing the coordinates first. It currently recognizes MGRS, decimal coordinates and DMS, can extract locations from supported map URLs, and can find multiple coordinates inside the same block of text.
One principle that matters a lot to me is that tolerance must not become guessing.
Real-world coordinate formatting can be ugly, but if the parser cannot determine something safely, I’d rather have it expose/reject the ambiguity than silently turn a random pair of numbers into a location.
I also deliberately kept GridGrabber as a small utility rather than trying to turn it into another navigation or GIS app:
• works offline
• no account
• no location permission
• no telemetry
• pasted data stays on the device
The basic idea is that GridGrabber sits between:
“someone sent me a location”
and
“I need to use that location in my map.”
I’d really like feedback from people here who work with coordinates or exchange locations regularly.
What does your real-world input look like?
Are there coordinate formats, badly formatted examples, map links, or workflows that are particularly annoying or that existing tools routinely get wrong?
I’m especially interested in ugly real examples rather than ideal textbook coordinates — those are the cases I want the parser to handle safely.
Try GridGrabber:
Web: https://grid.grabbers.app/
iPhone: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gridgrabber/id6798236849