How to use Google Street View app to take 360 photos for ThingLink

Note: Google Street View app has been deprecated in March 2023.  If you have the app installed, you may be able to continue to use it. 

If you do not have the app, check out our new PanoTo360 feature that allows you to convert panoramas to 360° photospheres here: New feature: convert panoramas to 360° images.

• How to take 360 photos using Google Street View
• Exporting photos to ThingLink
• Examples
• Possible issues

Taking 360 photos with Street View

Please see this Google Support article.

Before saving the photo, make sure that the 'Done'/tick button is green:

If the tick button is orange, you've taken an incomplete 360 image which won't be compatible with ThingLink. The orange line around the button is the progress bar.

Exporting photos from Street View to ThingLink

Please note that the steps below work exclusively with the photos tied to your Google account. At the moment, it is impossible to export a high-resolution image from Google Street View unless you are the author of said image.

If you already have a photo you want to use with ThingLink, follow the steps below.

1. Open the 'Private' tab
2. Select a photo you'd like to publish
3. Tap the 'Share' button
4. Tap the 'Share privately' option
5. Select preferred sharing option
6. Upload the image to ThingLink

While there are many sharing options, we recommend making sure that the image exports in the highest quality. One of the easier ways to achieve this is using email & selecting the 'Actual Size'.

Examples taken with GSV

Possible issues

If you are getting an error when trying to upload your photo to ThingLink, please make sure that:

1. The aspect ratio (the ratio between the image's width and height) is exactly 2:1. If it's not, it is highly likely that you have captured an incomplete 360 image as described above.

2. The image resolution does not exceed the maximum allowed limit of 8192 x 4096 pixels. Newer smartphones may produce higher-resolution images.
You can resize your image in most image editors, including Paint, GIMP and others. Make sure that you do not change the aspect ratio when resizing your image.

Check out the images attached to this article (below) to understand what your 360 photo should look like as a flat image.