Decimal Degrees → DMS

Paste decimal coordinates — like 48.858222, 2.294500 — and get degrees-minutes-seconds with proper hemisphere letters: 48°51'29.6"N 2°17'40.2"E. One pair or a whole list, one per line, converted on your device and ready to copy into documents, charts or an older GPS unit.

Reverse: DMS → Decimal Degrees

Paste decimal coordinates — one pair per line

Latitude first, then longitude. South and west are negative.

The math

The whole number becomes degrees; the remainder × 60 becomes minutes; that remainder × 60 again becomes seconds. 48.858222° → 48°, then 0.858222 × 60 = 51.493' → 51', then 0.493 × 60 = 29.6". The sign becomes a letter: positive latitude is N, negative S; positive longitude E, negative W. One second of latitude is about 31 meters, so one decimal place on the seconds is plenty.

When you still need DMS

Legal descriptions and deeds, marine and aviation charts, ham-radio logs, older Garmin units, and any form that prints coordinates for humans rather than software. Everything digital-first (maps APIs, GPX files, spreadsheets) wants decimal degrees instead — keep both tools bookmarked and you're covered in either direction.

Frequently asked questions

Which coordinate goes first?

Latitude, then longitude — the convention every GPS and this converter follow. If your result lands in the wrong country, the pair was probably swapped: latitude never exceeds 90, so a first number above 90 is really a longitude.

How precise is one second of arc?

About 31 m of latitude. The converter keeps one decimal on the seconds (~3 m), which matches consumer GPS accuracy. If you need better than that, stay in decimal degrees — DMS notation just gets unwieldy.

Can I convert a whole list at once?

Yes — paste any number of decimal pairs, one per line, and every line converts with its own copy button. Lines that don't parse are flagged individually rather than failing the batch.