HTML 5 Geo Location Prompt in Chrome

There's some sort of security restriction in place in Chrome for using geolocation from a file:/// URI, though unfortunately it doesn't seem to record any errors to indicate that. It will work from a local web server. If you have python installed try opening a command prompt in the directory where your test files are and issuing the command:

python -m SimpleHTTPServer

It should start up a web server on port 8000 (might be something else, but it'll tell you in the console what port it's listening on), then browse to http://localhost:8000/mytestpage.html

If you don't have python there are equivalent modules in Ruby, or Visual Web Developer Express comes with a built in local web server.

None of the above helped me.

After a little research I found that as of M50 (April 2016) - Chrome now requires a secure origin (such as HTTPS) for Geolocation.

Deprecated Features on Insecure Origins

The host "localhost" is special b/c its "potentially secure". You may not see errors during development if you are deploying to your development machine.

As already mentioned in the answer by robertc, Chrome blocks certain functionality, like the geo location with local files. An easier alternative to setting up an own web server would be to just start Chrome with the parameter --allow-file-access-from-files. Then you can use the geo location, provided you didn't turn it off in your settings.