A few months back we covered the news that the Google Street View app was being shut down. It’s now officially gone. It’s no longer available in the App Store, and if you still have it sitting on your phone from before, it won’t open or let you interact with it at all.
Since then, we’ve been asked the same question over and over: if the app is gone, how do you actually get 360 photos posted to a Google Business Profile or Google Maps listing? The good news is there are still four solid ways to do it, and every one of them is free. Here’s exactly how each one works.
1. Google Business Profile Dashboard
Most people still know this as Google My Business, and for a long time the mobile app was the easiest way to manage it. Unfortunately, Google has discontinued that app as well, so opening it now just redirects you to the online dashboard instead.
To use this method, log into your account (or your client’s account) and go to the Google Business Profile dashboard through a browser. It looks and functions a lot like an organic Google search result page. Inside the dashboard you’ll find a Photos or Posts section where you can upload panoramas and other images directly.
It takes a little getting used to compared to the old app, but once you’re familiar with the dashboard layout, it’s actually a more complete way to manage the listing than the app ever was.
2. Virtual Tour Software
If you’re already using a platform like Matterport or CloudPano to host your tours, both give you a built-in way to publish 360 photos straight to Google Maps and Google Business Profile. This is worth setting up properly if you haven’t already, since it ties your finished tour and your Google listing together in one workflow instead of uploading images twice.
3. Google Maps App
This is the most straightforward option of the four. Download the Google Maps app, go to Contribute, then Add Photo. From there you can upload a 360 photo, a 360 video, or even a standard 2D still, and publish it immediately. As soon as you hit post, it’s live on the listing.
4. Google Street View Studio
Street View Studio is Google’s newer tool, and on paper it sounds like the natural replacement for the old app. In practice, it’s currently the weakest option of the four, since it still only accepts 360 video uploads rather than finished panoramic photos. For an industry built around stitched panoramas, that’s a significant gap.
It’s reasonable to expect Google will expand this to support photo uploads at some point, but there’s no confirmed timeline for that yet, so it’s not something to rely on right now.
Which Method Should You Use?
All four of these options are free, and using them together covers most situations. For day-to-day posting, the Google Business Profile dashboard and the Google Maps app are the two fastest routes. If you’re already running tours through virtual tour software, publishing from there keeps everything in one place. Street View Studio is worth keeping an eye on, but it’s not yet built for photographers who work primarily in panoramas.
Losing a single, dedicated app for this is genuinely frustrating, especially for photographers and agencies who were used to one simple upload flow. Until Google consolidates these tools, spreading your workflow across these four methods is the most reliable way to keep client listings updated and keep those panoramas working for you.
If you’d rather have a team handle the photography and the publishing end to end, that’s exactly the kind of work we do for clients, and you can see examples of it on our virtual tour photography services page.
What’s working best for you out of these four methods? Let us know, and we’ll keep sharing updates as Google continues to change how this all works.
