Faint airplane noise in a video can reveal where it was filmed

A creator named Colsto has shown that the faint sound of airplanes in a video's audio can help reveal where the video was filmed. Developer Simon Willison shared the work on November 3, 2026, and called it a genius piece of OSINT. That is short for open source intelligence, meaning finding facts using public information.

How it works

Colsto pulls out plane sounds that are almost too quiet to notice in a video's soundtrack. A plane's pitch changes as it flies past, rising as it approaches and dropping as it leaves. This is called the Doppler effect. The shape of that change shows how fast the plane is moving and how far away it is.

Those patterns are then compared with ADS-B data, which is public flight tracking information. The speed, the distance and the gaps between different flights together point to the exact spot where the video was recorded.

What is not clear

The material does not say how often this works, how close the match gets with everyday clips, or whether a noisy background defeats it. It also does not say whether any app or site has tried to block it.

The basic point is still simple. A clip from home can give away more than the picture shows. Anyone who wants to keep their address private may want to think before posting videos recorded there.