A quick tweet explaining how to show older images on Google Maps Street View turned out to be one of the most rewarding things to happen to me this week.
Google Maps Street View Time Machine is hardly a Google Maps hack - it's been a core feature since 2014 - but its icon is so subtle that a lot of users just don't know it's there.
In fact, even though it's a feature I've loved for a while, I had to dive into the page code to even find out that it's called 'Time Machine'.
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| How to show old photos on Google Maps Street View Time Machine |
What I really didn't expect was the number of 'thank you' replies I would get, or the sometimes sad but always heartwarming reasons why people wanted to show old Street View imagery.
What is Google Maps Time Machine?
Briefly... Google Maps Street View is an ambitious project to provide up-to-date 360-degree imagery of roads all over the world. Over time, those images are updated with new photos taken by the fleet of Google cars with their rooftop cameras.
Google Maps Street View Time Machine is a way to 'go back in time' to display older photos on Street View that have since been replaced.
In a sense it is a Google Maps hidden feature, because a lot of people don't know about it, but the little clock icon with the circular arrow around it is plainly visible on the Google Maps desktop site.
(The icon itself features two semi-circular arrows pointing anti-clockwise around a clock face - signifying that the feature is a way to turn back time in the opposite direction to the clock itself. Cute.)
How to view old photos on Street View
Time Machine is very easy to use but is only available on the desktop version of Google Maps (i.e. not on mobile).
- Click on the Time Machine clock icon to pop-up the older photos.
- In the pop-up, drag the button left and right to any of the white dots on the timeline.
- To see the old photos full-screen, click the magnifying glass icon at bottom-right of the pop-up.
So what does this have to do with Twitter?
How it happened
I have to give credit to the awesome Fesshole Twitter account, which publishes anonymous confessions which can be anything from shocking to funny to thought-provoking.
In this case, the tweet was sweet, sentimental and just a little tragic:
I go on Google maps to the images that were dates as being taken before my dad died so I can walk around a little bit in a world where he is still with me.
— Fesshole (@fesshole) June 16, 2021
There was something in the wording "I go to the images with dates before..." that made me think this person might not know that all the images from before are available, and so I added a brief explanation of how to get to older images on Street View:
If the photos ever get updated, click the little clock icon with the arrow around it and you can go back to any previous image.
— Bobble Bardsley (@bobblebardsley) June 16, 2021
And just to make things clearer, I added the image at the top of this post, to show exactly where you need to click and what happens when you do.
What happened next
I thought my tweet might be useful to the anonymous contributor and possibly interesting to a few other people - I didn't expect to reconnect people with images of lost loved ones.
Out of respect I won't post the replies here, although they're public and visible on Twitter, but in the past day or so I've had several people reply to say that they thought they had lost a treasured Street View image forever, but have now been able to find it again using Time Machine.
Most include a Street View photo of an elderly family member who has since died, although in some cases people just want to see their old car parked outside their old house.
The beauty of Street View Time Machine is that everything is there - so whatever sentimental value an old image might have for you personally, you should be able to find it by going to the right address on Google Maps and clicking the clock icon.
Things to note
Time Machine is not available for every single address on Google Maps and obviously it depends on how often (and precisely when) the photo of your address was updated.
Some locations will have multiple images available at roughly annual intervals dating right back to the inception of Street View, whereas others might only have two or three in total, or might even only have the current image available.
Also, I've been asked can you show old photos on Street View mobile, and I think the answer is no. At least I can't find an option on Android and I haven't seen any official instructions from Google on how to show older images on Google Maps on mobile.
The likes and retweet notifications are still pinging in as I'm writing this and I hope to raise better awareness of Time Machine, as it's obviously deeply meaningful to some people who never knew it existed before.
Finally, the BBC have picked up the story and mention Time Machine in their feature too, so I'd like to think my tweet may be partly responsible for the feature finding a much bigger audience.
