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Look Around in iOS 13 – Apple’s take on Google Street View

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Apple has added a cool new ability to the Maps app in iOS 13. Look Around lets you view detailed 3D imagery of select cities, helping you better visualise your destination.

Here’s a brief rundown of Look Around in Apple Maps for iOS 13, including how to use it.

What is Look Around?

Look Around is a new feature of Apple Maps in iOS 13 that lets you freely look around a virtual, photorealistic version of a city on your iPhone or iPad.

It’s very similar indeed to Street View on Google Maps. Just like that rival effort, you can touch and drag to explore your environment. Apple’s Look Around implementation is way smoother and more seamless than Google Street View, if not anything like as extensive at present.

Apple plans to have the whole of the US added by the end of 2019, however, and will start adding other countries in 2020.

How to access Look Around

It’s extremely easy to access Look Around in Maps.

Just open up Apple Maps and head to a city like San Francisco, Las Vegas or Honolulu (the first three supported cities). Look for the ‘Look Around’ tag and tap the image thumbnail.

You’ll be zipped into an interactive first person view of that location.

How to use Look Around

Once in Look Around, touch with one finger and drag to move your view around 360 degrees. Pinch to zoom if you want a closer look at anything.

Tapping on roads, meanwhile, will move you along the route in that direction.

If you want to navigate quickly or precisely to a different location in the city, tap the minimise button in the top corner of your device and scroll around on the map view. Pinch on the map to zoom in and you’ll receive a live and interactive Look Around view in the minimised window.