Record & play tours

You can use Google Earth 5 and up on your computer to record a tour of the world that you can share with others.

Choose a flight path, speed & file size

1. Open Google Earth.
2. In the top menu bar, click Tools  Options (Windows) or Google Earth  Preferences (Mac).
3. Click Touring.
4. Below "When creating a tour from a folder," choose settings for:
   • Time Between Features: how fast the viewer flies to each location
   • Wait at Features: how long the tour stops at each location
   • Fly along lines: follow a specific flight path
   • Show balloons when waiting at features: place a balloon at each site when the tour pauses
5. Under "When creating a tour from a line," set your:
   • Camera Tilt Angle: perspective you’d like people to see the location from
   • Camera Range: how much of the location or site they can see
   • Speed: overall speed of the tour
6. Under "When creating a tour from a track," choose:
   • Speed: how fast the tour runs overall
   • Seconds Between Key Frames: length of a pause between images
7. Under "When recording a tour:," slide the slider to the:
   • Left to create a "Smaller File."
   • Right to create a "Higher Fidelity" file (higher quality and takes up more memory).
8. Click Apply  OK.

Record a tour

1. Open Google Earth.
2. Click Add  Tour, or, in the bar above the globe, click Record .
3. To start recording, go to the lower left corner in the media player and click Record/Stop .
4. To record audio, click Microphone .
5. Navigate to each place you want to visit or go to the left-hand panel under "Places" and click a placemark to fly to that location.
6. When you finish recording, click Record/Stop .
7. In the lower right corner, a media player will appear and your tour will start playing.
8. To save the tour, in the media player, click Save .
9. In the box that opens, enter a title in the "Name" field.
10. To add more info about the tour, use the Description and View tabs.
11. Click OK.

Find out how to narrate your tours or create KML tours.

To play a tour: Go to the left-hand panel under "Places" "My Places." Then, click the tour you want to watch.