3
DayZ maps covered
Out now on iOS and Android · Switch 2, PC, PlayStation, Xbox
DayZ gives you no map. This locator puts you on one.
ZLocator is a DayZ location finder — a map app that answers one question: where am I? Point your phone or tablet at the screen and it recognizes the terrain in front of you — then names the town you're next to, marks your position on the Chernarus, Livonia or Sakhal map, and shows which way you're facing.
Out now on Google Play and the App Store. Works with Switch 2, PC, PlayStation and Xbox — nothing is installed on the console, and no server mod is needed.
~3 s
Between position fixes
0
Game files touched
225 km²
Chernarus map, walked
How it works
How the DayZ map locator works: your phone watches the screen.
No capture card, no second account, no overlay. Prop the phone or tablet where it can see the picture, and leave it running while you play.
01
Lock the frame once
Put the tablet in a stand where it sees the whole picture. The detector finds the TV for you, or you place the four corners by hand; press Lock and that's your frame. Tracking won't start before it is, and once locked the device has to stay exactly where it is.
02
It reads the DayZ terrain
Ridge lines, road bends, a rusted sign in Cyrillic — the match runs against a million reference views of the map.
03
You get your position on the map
A marker on the map, the direction you're facing, and the name of the town you're next to — plus the nearest well, shop or military zone from the map data. Road signs and landmarks are read along the way to confirm the fix.
In the app
What the DayZ map locator looks like while you play.
A tablet in landscape is what this is built for: the map gets the room, the camera preview stays small enough to ignore, and the last fixes stay on screen so you can watch the position settle. On a phone the same panels fold away so the map keeps the screen.
Under the hood
How a camera pointed at a TV turns into a dot on the DayZ map.
Four steps, all of them running while you play. No capture card, no overlay, nothing installed on the machine you play on.
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1
The screen becomes a flat picture
Before anything else you lock a frame. In the camera view the detector looks for the TV about five times a second while you aim, or you place the four corners by hand — then Lock stores that quad and the detector stops. From then on you're in the map view, and every three seconds one capture is cropped and squared with that locked frame and sent off to be matched. That's why the tablet sits in a stand: move it and the frame has to be set again.
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2
The picture becomes a terrain fingerprint
A vision model compresses that picture into a few hundred numbers describing the shape of the place: ridge lines, the run of a treeline, the bend of a road, the silhouette of a building. Not pixels — structure.
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3
The fingerprint is matched against the map
We walked every terrain in-game and photographed it from every angle, ending up with around a million reference views for Chernarus alone. Your fingerprint is compared against all of them in milliseconds, and the closest candidates come back with the coordinates they were taken at.
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4
Candidates become one position on the map
The candidates from several seconds of frames are pooled, weighted by how recent they are, and checked against how fast a person can actually walk — so a match 4 km away is rejected rather than drawn. Road signs are read separately, and a legible town name can override a weak visual guess outright.
None of this touches the game. The reference views, the map tiles and the place names are all things we captured ourselves by walking the terrain — no game files are shipped in the app.
DayZ maps
Every official DayZ map: the Chernarus map, the Livonia map and the Sakhal map.
Each terrain was walked in-game and photographed from every angle. Coverage is not uniform — the areas people actually play through are the strongest, and the emptiest corners are the thinnest.
What every DayZ map shows you
These came out of the same walk as the terrain, and their positions are exact. Once your own marker is in the right place, so is the distance to every one of them.
- Towns and villages
- Wells and ponds
- Military
- Hospitals
- Fire stations
- Fuel
- Shops
- Schools
- Landmarks
- Helicopter crashes
- Wrecks
- Coastline
Price
The map is free. You pay to be found on it.
Install the app and the whole map is yours — every town, well and military zone, offline, with no account and no time limit. The subscription buys one thing: the app working out where you are and putting you on it. Both paid plans start with a 3-day free trial and renew automatically unless you cancel before it ends. Billing goes through Google Play or the App Store — nothing is sold on this page, and you cancel from your store account whenever you like.
Free
€0
The whole map, offline. Towns, wells, military, place names and distances. No account, no time limit. You just have to know where you are.
Monthly
€2.99 / mo
Starts with 3 days free. Cancel before they end and you pay nothing.
Yearly
€29.90 / yr
2 months free
Ten months' price for twelve. Also starts with 3 days free.
One subscription covers Chernarus, Livonia and Sakhal — and every DayZ map we add later.
Field notes
How fast the locator finds you on the map.
Recognition works off what's on screen, so what you point the character at decides how fast the fix lands. This is the honest version — how it actually behaves, not how we'd like it to.
The bar we hold ourselves to
Name the town, give the heading, point at water.
That's the promise, and it's the one thing worth having when you're lost. The rest we'd rather under-sell than over-claim. Everything else on the map — every well, town, hospital and military zone — sits at a position we captured and know exactly. There is only one uncertainty in the whole app, and it's your own dot. Get that right and everything the map tells you around it is right too.
- Names the town you're in
- Shows which way you're facing
- Reads road signs and landmarks to confirm it
- Puts the nearest well, shop and military zone around you
- Not a GPS-exact dot
- Needs daylight in the game
0:00
You start walking
A frame goes out roughly every three seconds. The first ones land wide — one patch of forest looks much like every other patch.
0:30–2:00
The first lock
Consecutive frames are cross-checked against each other and against walking speed, so the marker settles instead of jumping. Half a minute to two minutes of walking is typical. Standing still does not get you there, not even in the open.
After
It follows you
Once locked, it tracks as you move. If it drifts, the fastest repair is a road sign — see below.
Look at these and the map locks on fast
- Town and road signs. The strongest single fix there is — the app reads the place names, and the distances printed under them. Face the sign straight on, close enough to read, and hold for two or three seconds. Blurry or at an angle gives nothing.
- Roads and junctions. Bends, crossings and treelines along a road are far more distinctive than open ground.
- The coast. Any shoreline in frame narrows things down immediately.
- Big landmarks. Churches, castle ruins, lighthouses, factory chimneys and radio masts are recognized on sight and used to confirm a fix.
- Power lines. Pylons and street lights are catalogued too, and they help when nothing else is around.
These slow the fix down
- Standing still in deep forest. The worst case, by a distance. Trees give the match nothing to grip and staring at one weak view can make the marker wander. Walk instead.
- Night. Not "harder" — it does not work. The app needs game daylight; dusk and heavy rain cost you accuracy too.
- Indoors. Four walls could be anywhere on the map.
- Menus and inventory covering the view. Give it a clear picture of the world.
- A dim or glaring TV. The camera only gets what the screen shows it.
Short version: keep walking, and read a sign when you can. If the marker looks wrong, don't stand and wait — walk thirty seconds along a road, or find a sign and face it. That fixes it faster than anything else you can do.
Stuck on the wrong place? Press Reset. It throws the lock away and starts recognition from a blank slate — faster than waiting for a bad fix to talk itself round.
Questions
DayZ map questions, straight answers.
Is there a map for DayZ?
Not in the game — DayZ ships without one, and an in-game paper map is a rare find. ZLocator is a map locator you run beside the game: the map of Chernarus, Livonia or Sakhal is in the app, and your own position is drawn on it while you play.
How do I know where I am in DayZ?
Point the phone or tablet at the screen and keep walking. The app matches the terrain you're looking at against a million reference views of the map, then names the town you're next to and shows which way you're facing. A readable road sign is the fastest way to settle it.
Is any of it free?
The map is. Install the app and you can pan around Chernarus, Livonia and Sakhal, read the place names and see every well, military zone and hospital — offline, without an account, for as long as you like. What you pay for is the part that’s hard: the app looking at your screen and working out which of those places you’re standing in. That starts with a 3-day free trial.
Can it find the location in a screenshot someone sent me?
Yes. ZLocator reads a screen, not a game — it doesn't care whether the picture is live or a screenshot a friend sent you. Open the image on any screen you have, a monitor, a TV or a second phone, and point the camera at it the same way. The bigger and brighter the screen, the better it reads. Daylight scenes with buildings or a coastline in view are the easiest; a dark forest is the hardest.
Which DayZ maps does the locator cover?
All three official terrains: Chernarus, Livonia and Sakhal. One subscription covers every map, including the ones we add later.
Does the DayZ map locator work on Switch 2?
Yes — and on PC, PlayStation and Xbox. ZLocator doesn't care what's driving the screen, only what's on it. Handheld mode works too if the phone can see the display clearly.
How accurate is the position on the map?
Accurate enough to name the town you're next to and pick the right road out of it — we don't publish a metre figure, because the honest answer depends on where you are. The first lock usually takes half a minute to two minutes of walking. Deep forest and standing still are the hard cases; a road, a coastline, a landmark or a readable sign is what settles it. It needs game daylight.
Do I need a GPS receiver, compass or an in-game map?
No. The in-game GPS receiver, tourist map and compass are rare finds, need batteries and are usually the first things you lose. ZLocator works with none of them — it reads the picture on your screen, so it works from the first minute of a fresh spawn.
How is this different from iZurvive and other DayZ map apps?
Those are marker maps: excellent maps, but you have to know where you are before you can use them — the usual advice is to find a road sign, read the town name and look it up by hand. ZLocator does that step for you. It recognizes the terrain and puts your marker on the map, which also means it works on console, where no map mod can run.
Do I need an internet connection?
Yes, for the recognition itself — the matching runs on our servers. The map you look at is stored on the device, so panning and zooming stays smooth even on a bad connection.
What does the camera actually send?
Only what is inside the frame you locked. The game picture is straightened and scaled down on the device before anything leaves it — the rest of the camera view, your room included, is cropped away and never sent. What travels with it is the picture, an app-generated device id and the position estimate, so the next fix knows where you were three seconds ago.
Which device should I use?
A tablet in a stand, in landscape, is the setup this is built for — the map gets the room it deserves and the locked frame stays put. A phone works, but it needs a stand just the same: once the frame is locked, a device that moves has to be framed again.
Is there an iPhone and iPad version?
Yes — ZLocator is on the App Store for iPhone and iPad, and on Google Play for Android. The same subscription does not carry across stores: each store bills separately, so buy it in the store you use. A tablet in a stand is the setup it was designed around, on either platform.
Know where you are on the DayZ map.
Free for the first 3 days. Every DayZ map included.