Embed Google Photospheres

Google’s Android Camera has a pretty sweet photosphere feature that is a panoramic on steroids. You can stand in a single spot, moving 360° around, up and down, giving you a complete view of everything in your surroundings.

The problem? How can people view this in a way that makes sense and not like a poor map projection?

If you simply try to upload the image from your phone to your site, you’ll get something like this:

Ugh.

Note: The following requires making the location of the photosphere public and assumes your photos are automatically backed up to Google Plus.

To add in your own spheres, visit maps.google.com, search for a location and click “Add Photo”. After the photo has been added or to access a previously submitted one, visit Google Maps and choose the “My Contributions” link in the left popup navigation menu. Then, choose Photos, and click on your uploaded photosphere. It’ll load and at the upper-right, click on the three dot menu button to select the Share or Embed Image option.

The below is now outdated. It remains here for the record.

Instead, visit Google Map Views at https://www.google.com/maps/views/ and click on the Add Photo link in the top right.

In the modal that opens, choose your Photosphere and follow the prompts to upload, name, and locate it.

When you’ve finished, Google will tell you that the view will be pubic once approved by Google. In the mean time, you can still embed it by clicking on your name at the top of the page to take you to your profile.

Either follow the text link or choose Public Photos with Location Info:

Click the photosphere you wish to view and when it loads, you can find the embed code via the Share icon.

Then, copy and paste the embed code to your site. If you’re using WordPress, using the Text editor is best to ensure the iframe code is processed as code.

If you’re on WordPress.com, don’t fret. Since this is actually a twist on Google Maps Street View, the iframe embed code will be automatically converted to WordPress.com’s Google Maps shortcode and will work on your site.

Once your publish your post, your readers will see a wonderful Street View-powered version of your photosphere.