Glen Urquhart drops down from the west to meet Loch Ness, and the river Enrick runs the length of the glen before flowing into the loch at Drumnadrochit's eastern edge. The river meets the river Coltie just before reaching the loch. The village sits on the A82, the road that runs the length of the Great Glen from Fort William to Inverness, with the A831 branching west toward Cannich and Glen Affric. The local hill, Craigmonie, draws walkers up for a view back over the loch. Telford's bridge—the second one, after the 1818 flood—remained the village's defining structure until the late 19th century brought the Caledonian Bank building in 1895 and, a few years later, a village hall funded by the American industrialist Bradley Martin of Balmacaan House. The hall celebrated its centenary in 2006.

Much of Glen Urquhart was once part of the Balmacaan Estate, owned by the Grant family of Seafield from 1509 until 1946. For a stretch in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the estate was rented to Bradley Martin, the wealthy American industrialist who became Glen Urquhart's most generous outside benefactor. The estate flourished in the 1880s and 1890s but declined after the 1920s. By the 1940s it was changing hands often enough that the matter was raised in Parliament. World War II claimed the best forestry stands, and in 1946 the estate dissolved. Balmacaan House, the great mansion of the estate, was abandoned soon after. Bunloit Farm was separated out that same year to form Bunloit Estate around the small settlement of Balbeg, four miles south on the loch's north-west shore. A small strip of original estate land still survives north of Balbeg, mostly used for summer cattle grazing.

Cobbs Cakes is Drumnadrochit's largest employer. The family bakery, traditionally made and distributed across the UK and Ireland, also runs the Drumnadrochit Hotel and the Clansman Visitor Centre, and bought the Loch Ness Beer brand when the brewery went into administration in 2016. The village's own Hanging Tree Brewery, a microbrewery, launched in 2018. The visitor-centre economy depends on the loch and what might or might not live in it—the Loch Ness Hub is a community-owned transport and visitor information centre, and the wider tourism infrastructure draws walkers, drivers, and Nessie hopefuls. Two long-distance footpaths converge on the village: the Great Glen Way running 73 miles from Fort William to Inverness, and the Affric-Kintail Way that begins at Drumnadrochit, passes through Glen Affric, and ends at Morvich on the west coast. The village's shops include a pharmacy, a Post Office, and a supermarket; the local Community First Responders cover nights and weekends.

Loch Ness needs lifeboats. At 23 miles long, 750 feet deep, and prone to the kind of squalls that can flatten a small craft within minutes, the loch generates marine emergencies more like a sea than a lake. The RNLI established an inshore lifeboat station at Urquhart Bay Harbour in 2008 to respond to them. Drumnadrochit is also home to Glenurquhart Shinty Club, a Bowls Club, and Badminton. The village hosts a Bonfire Night fireworks display around 5 November. Glen Urquhart High School serves the surrounding district and houses the community library. The Glen Urquhart war memorial, established after the First World War, takes the form of a column with a small ceremonial fenced garden, recording the names of villagers who did not return from a conflict that emptied Highland villages out of proportion to their populations.

Lawrence Block invented a fictional scotch called Glen Drumnadrochit for his Burglar in the Library—Bernie Rhodenbarr's preferred dram. The Family Ness, the BBC's 1980s animated children's series about a Loch Ness monster nobody could find, gave the village a permanent place in its theme song: 'You can go to Auchtermuchty and to Drumnadrochit too, but you'll never find a Nessie in the zoo.' The combination of Loch Ness Monster tourism, the Affric-Kintail Way trailhead, and a settled village population gives Drumnadrochit a year-round identity beyond the cruise-bus traffic. The Caledonian Bank building still anchors the centre. Cobbs's hotel sits on the main road. The shinty club plays at its enclosure on the edge of the village. And every season, somewhere out on the loch, someone with a camera believes they've seen something.