Discover places and change your view

You can use Google Earth to travel the world and explore new places. You’ll find exotic cities, landmarks in 3D, and buildings up close.

Learn how to experience places in Street View.

Tips:

Not all Google Earth locations can be seen in 3D.
To understand where the map images come from, learn how Google creates 3D Earth data.

Navigate in Google Earth

On your computer, open Google Earth.
Choose an action:
- To find a specific place: Click Search .
- Move around: Drag with your mouse.
- Zoom in and out: At the bottom right, use +/- or right drag the mouse.
- Explore around your location: Hold Ctrl + drag the screen.

Turn on latitude & longitude gridlines

You can turn on gridlines to learn about geographic coordinates and get your approximate location on the Earth’s surface.

On your computer, open Google Earth.
On the left, click Map Style .
Turn on Gridlines.

Tip: Turn on gridlines to show the 5 major circles of latitude: The Equator, Arctic Circle, Antarctic Circle, Tropic of Cancer, and Tropic of Capricorn, as well as the Prime Meridian.

Show 3D imagery

To turn 3D buildings and trees on or off:

On your computer, open Google Earth.
On the left, click Map Style .
Turn Enable 3D buildings on or off.

Tip: Turn off 3D buildings to possibly show newer imagery and increase the overall performance of Google Earth.

Change the view

Switch between top-down view and orbiting 3D view: At the bottom right, click 3D . If you're already in 3D view, you’ll find 2D instead.
Reset your globe to face true north: At the bottom right, click the compass.
Tip: When your globe doesn't face true north, the compass icon appears.
Fly to your current location: At the bottom right, click My Location .

Choose your map style

At the top, click Menu .
Click Map Style .
Choose a view:
- Clean: Imagery only — no borders, labels or roads.
- Exploration: Imagery plus most places of interest, like borders, labels, and roads.
- Everything: All of the above plus landmarks, businesses, public transit, and more.
- Custom: Choose which features you want to find when you use Google Earth.

Troubleshoot places that load slowly

Sometimes, places take time to show in Google Earth. To experience Earth images on your device more quickly, you may need to change your image quality settings.

On your computer, open Google Earth.
On the left, click Menu Settings.
Under "Memory cache size," choose a size:
- To load images more quickly, increase the cache size.
  Tip: It's easier to increase the cache size on newer devices.
- If you have a slower computer, you can lower the cache size and load images more slowly.
  Tip: This may make Google Earth run more smoothly.
Click Save.