Rivers are an important source of freshwater that support societal needs and natural ecosystems, functioning as both collectors for watersheds and distributors along river corridors. Human-made infrastructure (dams, roads, canals) of various kinds have been built on and along rivers to access drinking water, generate energy, mitigate floods, and support industrial and agricultural production. However, due to the long and inconsistent history of constructing and recording these structures, we lack a globally consistent knowledge about where different types of infrastructure are. Here, we used a simple yet consistent method to visually locate and classify different infrastructures that could act as obstructions on rivers that are wider than 30 meters (total length ~2.1 million km globally). Our approach is based on Google Maps’ high resolution satellite images, which for many places have meter-scale resolution. We recently completed global-scale mapping and classifying different obstructions, and are conducting quality checks. In total, we identified ≥ 40,000 unique obstructions, including large dams and smaller weirs, control structures, partial barriers, as well as low-head dams that are often not included in other databases. This Global River Obstruction Dataset, or GROD, once fully validated, will be freely available to the public. We anticipate that it will be of wide interest to hydrological modeling, aquatic ecosystem, geomorphology, and water resource management communities.