Google Maps lets you zoom in only to a certain level, but what if you want to zoom in more? Is there a way to bypass this restriction imposed by Google? That’s where a Reddit user “xythrowawayy“, has shared a simple trick to zoom in closer than what is allowed on Google Maps. This trick requires you to edit the URL for a given location, which lets you zoom in a level or two. Let’s dig deeper and learn how this works.
To get started, open Google Maps and zoom in as far as it is allowed by clicking on the “+” button. Don’t go into Street view, even if the location supports this view. Zoom out a little bit if it goes to Street view.
Now that you’ve zoomed in the map, click on the small “link” button which is located next to the Print button. Copy this link and paste it into your browser’s address bar but don’t hit Enter at this moment as we’ll be tweaking this URL.
Click on the address bar and move your cursor to the far right of the long URL. To do this, you can press the “End” button from your keyboard. You should now be able to see something like “&z=20.” This number at the end of the URL is your current zoom level. Increase it to one number higher and see if Google Maps has imagery for that zoom level. Not every location will support this high zoom imagery, which means you might not find this trick working for every location. Sometimes, the image might get blurry because of the zoom.
That’s all you need to do. Zoom in using this trick so that you can look closer than what is normally allowed by Google.
