In the interest of a particularly quick and simple X-ray examination, provision is made for a method for automatically positioning a positionable X-ray source (16) of an X-ray system (24) in respect of a mobile X-ray detector (15) with the following steps: —detecting the position of the mobile X-ray detector (15), —forwarding the position to the X-ray system (24), —determining a position of the X-ray source (16), aligned with the position of the mobile X-ray detector (15), for recording an X-ray image, and —driving the positionable X-ray source (16) to move into the aligned position.