How to Use Google Earth in a Browser

Google Earth is available as a desktop app and mobile app with lots of great features. But if you want to use Google Earth in a browser, you’re unsurprisingly going to have to use Google’s own browser, Chrome.

To open Google Earth, go to earth.google.com in your browser and click Launch Google Earth.

The first time you launch it, you can take a quick walk through to see what features are available, or you can skip right into the platform.

So what can you actually do with Google Earth in your browser?

• You can search for locations by name.
• You can search for locations by description (e.g. the capital of France or desert in North Africa).
• When you look up a location, you can read some trivia about it courtesy of Wikipedia.
• You can move around the map by dragging with your mouse. You can tilt and rotate the map by holding down shift when you drag.
• You can zoom in using the + button or double-clicking and you can zoom out using the – button.
• You can enter street view by dragging the peg man onto the map, where the feature is available.
• You can save locations to My Places.
• You can use the Voyager feature to test your world trivia through quizzes that include visual cues.

Using Google Earth in a browser, as opposed to downloading the app makes it easier to use – you can access it on any computer. And it’s less resource intensive than using the downloaded version.

You can also install one of the best Chrome extensions made by Google: Earth View from Google Earth to add a little bit more of Google Earth to your browser, by adding images from Google Earth to your new tabs.