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 iPhone or iPad, open the Google Earth app .
Choose an action:
- To find a specific place: Tap Search .
- Move around: Use one finger to touch and drag the screen.
- Zoom in and out: Pinch open to zoom in, pinch closed to zoom out. To zoom with one finger, double-tap and hold, then slide your finger up or down.
- Fly to your current location: On the bottom right, tap My Location .

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 iPhone or iPad, open the Google Earth app .
On the left, tap Map Style .
Turn Gridlines on or off.

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 iPhone or iPad, open the Google Earth app .
Tap 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: Zoom in on the map. On the right side of the screen, tap 3D . If you're already in 3D view, this icon will say 2D instead.
Face North: At the bottom, tap the compass.
Tilt the map: With 2 fingers, touch and hold the map, then move your fingers up and down the screen.
Rotate the map: With 2 fingers, touch and hold the map, then move your fingers around each other on the screen.

Choose your map style

On your iPhone or iPad, open the Google Earth app .
In the top left, tap Menu .
Tap 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.

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 iPhone or iPad, open the Google Earth app .
Tap Menu Settings Rendering Quality.
Choose a setting:
- To increase the loading speed, choose a faster setting.
- To improve the clarity, choose a higher setting.