Did you know that Apple Maps has a feature that lets you ‘look around’ as if on the ground in some regions? Indeed it does, available for iPhone and iPad.

Most of us are familiar with Google’s “Street View”, a nifty feature within Google Maps that lets you view panoramic street-level images of various cities across the globe. When Street View was first introduced back in 2007, it was ahead of its time, but today, Google isn’t the only player in this space with plenty of competition to look out for, the latest one being Apple.

The Cupertino-based company recently started rolling out a similar functionality to Apple Maps in the United States, simply called “Look Around”. Quite frankly, Apple has taken their sweet time to add this functionality, considering how it has been seven years since Apple replaced Google Maps across iOS devices with their own web mapping service.

If you’re one of those iOS users interested in trying out this feature and see how it compares to Street View, you’ve come to the right place. In this article, we’ll be discussing exactly how you can use Look Around on Apple Maps for iPhone & iPad.

How to Use Look Around on Maps for iPhone & iPad.

Currently, the new “Look Around” feature is only available for select locations and larger cities, including popular cities like Los Angeles, New York, Las Vegas, and San Francisco, but the feature will grow so it’s worth checking out other locations too. So, if you’re interested in learning how to access this feature, simply follow the steps below.

• Open the stock “Maps” app from the home screen of your iPhone or iPad.

• Type any of the supported locations in the search bar and tap search on your keyboard.

• Maps will now take you to the searched location. Here, simply zoom in slowly until you a “binocular” icon at the top-right edge of the screen.

• As you can see in the screenshot below, it’s located right below navigation icon. Tap on the “binocular icon” to proceed to the next step.

• Now, you’ll see a preview of the “Look Around” feature right at the top of your screen. The pin on the map will now be indicated by a binocular icon, which can be dragged around to get a street view preview of the pinpointed location. If you want to use Look Around in fullscreen mode, tap on the “stretch” icon at the top-left corner of your screen.

• Here, if you want to look around the streets, simply tap anywhere on the screen and pan around for a 360-degree view. When you’re ready to exit Look Around mode, tap “Done” in order switch back to regular maps.

That’s pretty much all there is to it.

If you’re lucky enough to be residing in any of the currently supported locations, you’d be glad to know that the feature works seamlessly. Significant points of interests like businesses, restaurants, landmarks, etc. are all highlighted in Look Around for quick access.

If you live in a city, region, or country where Look Around isn’t available yet, don’t fret. You could take advantage of other handy Apple Maps features like “Look Inside” that lets you access indoor maps of Airports, shopping malls and other notable landmarks while you patiently wait for its roll-out. Or you could just use Google Street View, which is a bit more ubiquitous for all sorts of global locations.

Compared to Google Street View, Apple Maps Look Around is a bit limited with fewer cities and locations supported at the moment, so it may take a while for Apple to catch up to the expectations set by Google Street View.

Apple has promised to roll out this feature to additional countries and areas over time, but we’ll just have to wait and see how fast they can expand the coverage. Look Around has been made possible with the help of Apple’s own mapping vehicles that are equipped with several cameras and lidar sensors that help capture street-level imagery as they traverse through various locations.