Google Maps' Historical Street View Is Coming to iOS and Android

The feature lets you see how a place has changed over time.

Attila Tomaschek

Attila is a Staff Writer for CNET, covering software, apps and services with a focus on virtual private networks. He is an advocate for digital privacy and has been quoted in online publications like Computer Weekly, The Guardian, BBC News, HuffPost, Wired and TechRepublic. When not tapping away on his laptop, Attila enjoys spending time with his family, reading and collecting guitars.

Expertise Attila has nearly a decade's worth of experience with VPNs and has been covering them for CNET since 2021. As CNET's VPN expert, Attila rigorously tests VPNs and offers readers advice on how they can use the technology to protect their privacy online and

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Mary King Associate Editor

Mary is an associate editor covering technology, culture and everything in between. She recently graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she served as an editor at The Daily Tar Heel and reported for newspapers across the state. You can usually find her decked out in UNC merch and streaming lo-fi hip-hop while she writes.

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Mary King

May 25, 2022 8:37 a.m. PT

Google built its new Street View camera to help capture images from remote corners of the world.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Google Maps' Street View has been around for 15 years. To mark the occasion, the tech giant on Tuesday unveiled a new camera and announced it's bringing historical Street View to Android and iOS.

Historical Street View allows you to view historic imagery from a location and see how a place has changed over time, dating back to 2007 when Street View first launched. The feature has been available on desktop since 2014, but you can now use it on iOS and Android devices.

To try out historical Street View, tap anywhere on an image, then tap See more dates. You can then scroll through a carousel of images showing the location at various points in the past.

Historical Street View can show how buildings and other landmarks have changed over time, like the Vessel in New York City.

Google

As for the newly announced camera system, Google says it's roughly the size of a house cat and, weighing only 15 pounds, is designed to be "ultra-transportable" -- while including all the power, resolution and processing capabilities of an entire Street View car. Though the new camera is still being piloted, Google expects to fully roll it out next year to help map and capture imagery from remote corners of the world, including the Amazon jungle.