How to use Google Street View
Five steps, and then the parts people get stuck on. Everything here applies to the explorer on this site and to Street View anywhere else, on a computer or a phone.
- 1
How do I see a Street View of an address?
Type the full address into the search bar and press Go. The view opens on the closest photographed point, which is normally the road directly outside. You do not have to be exact: anything within about a hundred metres finds the same panorama. A postcode, a city or a landmark name works the same way, and clicking anywhere on the map jumps to the nearest captured point without typing at all.
- 2
How do I look around in Street View?
Drag with the mouse, or swipe on a phone, to turn on the spot. Scroll or pinch to zoom. The image is a full sphere, so you can look straight up at the buildings and straight down at the road. Nothing is loading in the background while you do it; the whole panorama is already there.
- 3
How do I move along the street?
Click the arrows on the road ahead of you, or double-click a point in the distance to jump straight to it. Each click moves to the next captured position, usually ten to fifteen metres away. On a phone, tap the arrow. When the arrows stop appearing you have reached the end of what was photographed.
- 4
How do I share the exact view I am looking at?
Press Share. The link that is copied carries the coordinates plus the direction and angle of the camera, so whoever opens it lands facing the same way you were. This is the difference between sending a link and sending an address: an address drops them on the street, a Street View link drops them looking at the thing you meant.
- 5
How do I save a Street View location?
Press Save and the place goes to your saved list, where you can rename it. It lives in your browser rather than in an account, so nothing is uploaded, nothing follows you between devices, and clearing your browser data clears the list.
What do the blue lines on the map mean?
When you drag the little figure onto a map, roads with coverage light up blue. A solid blue line is a road captured by car. Blue dots are individual panoramas, often photographed on foot or contributed by other people, and they are how you get inside parks, along footpaths and occasionally into buildings.
Orange or dotted coverage usually means user-contributed imagery rather than Google's own. It is worth exploring, because it goes places the car cannot, but the quality varies considerably.
Why does Street View look older in some places?
Because every street is a single capture from a single day. Google reshoots major cities every couple of years, but a residential street in a small town might be five or six years old, and the two can sit side by side. If you cross a junction and the season changes, that is two different passes meeting.
Why do some places have no Street View at all?
Private roads are the most common gap, followed by rural areas with few roads and countries where mapping is restricted. There is no way around it from the outside: if the imagery does not exist, no site can show it to you. What a good explorer can do is say so clearly, which is why this one tells you when there is no panorama rather than showing grey.
How do I get to Street View on Google Maps?
On a computer, drag the small orange figure in the bottom right of Google Maps onto any road that has turned blue. On a phone, tap and hold a spot on the map, then tap the Street View thumbnail that appears at the bottom of the screen. On this site there is no figure to drag: searching an address opens Street View directly, which is the step most people are really looking for when they ask this.
How do I see an older Street View of a place?
Where a street has been photographed more than once, a small clock or a date appears at the top of the view. Opening it gives you a slider through the earlier passes. How far back it goes depends entirely on where you are: American cities go to 2007, most of Europe to 2008 or 2009, and anywhere first captured recently has nothing behind it. If no date control appears, that place has only ever been shot once.
Where to go next
If you want somewhere to start, the city guides each have ten spots chosen for a reason. If you would rather be surprised, the random teleport picks from places known to have coverage. For getting more out of the controls, the tips page covers the parts that are not obvious.
Common questions
How do I use Google Street View?
Search for a place or click the map, then drag to look around and click the arrows on the road to move along it. Scroll to zoom. That is the whole interface, and it works the same way on a phone with swipe and tap.
How do I share a Google Street View location?
Use the Share button, which copies a link containing the coordinates plus the camera heading and pitch. Sending somebody a plain address loses the direction you were facing, which is usually the part you wanted them to see.
How do I save a Google Street View location?
Press Save. On this site that writes the place to your browser's local storage and it appears on the saved places page, where you can rename it. No account is created and nothing is sent to a server.
Why is there no Street View at my location?
Because Google has not photographed it. Private roads, gated communities, many rural areas and some entire countries have no coverage. When that happens the explorer says so rather than showing a blank panel, and moving to a nearby main road usually finds imagery.
Can I see older Street View imagery?
In places that have been captured more than once, yes. Google's own historical imagery control lets you step back through previous passes, which is how people watch buildings go up and shops change hands.
How do I see a Street View of my house?
Type your address into the search bar and the view opens on the road outside it. If the imagery is old, the date in the corner tells you so. If your building appears blurred, somebody requested that, and Google's own tools are where you ask for it to be blurred or unblurred.
How do I get to Street View on Google Maps?
Drag the orange figure in the bottom right onto a road that has turned blue, or on a phone tap and hold a point on the map and then tap the Street View thumbnail. On this site you skip that step: searching an address opens Street View straight away.
Does Street View work on a phone?
Yes. Swipe to look, pinch to zoom and tap the arrows to move. The controls on this site float over the map so they do not eat the screen on a small display.