Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
TL;DR Google’s device-tracking Find Hub currently only lets you see the default Google Maps street view.
In a new beta, the app is working on adding support for satellite and terrain imagery, as well.
With all three views, you’ll also be able to toggle on traffic density data.
Google Maps is one of the most useful tools the company has ever created, and it’s all too easy to take what it offers for granted. Sure, we had stuff like MapQuest before it, but from basically the moment Google Maps arrived it started showing everyone else how mapping should be done. In the years since, its 3D imagery and first-person Street View photography have made distant corners of the world accessible in ways they never were before. And now, it looks like Google’s finally getting around to letting the Find Hub tap in to more of these fantastic Maps assets.
When you can’t remember where you left a device, Google’s Find Hub is your best friend, supporting everything from our phones to dedicated tracker tags. Once you pull up the Hub, you’ll be able to see where your missing hardware last pinged its location — and, of course, Google uses Maps to display those surroundings.
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But so far, though, we’ve only had a very limited version of Maps to access within the Find Hub, giving us a basic vector-graphic street map view. And while that can be perfectly adequate for tracking down your missing gear, there are other times when we can’t help feel like it might be a little more useful to be using another Maps view — like maybe satellite imagery? Especially if you’re out in a rural area, positions of trees and shrubs might prove a whole lot handier than any nearby roads.
Luckily for us, Google appears to be working to correct this oversight. In version 3.1.485-2 of the Find Hub, we’ve identified some early work towards giving the app a toggle to switch between the normal map, satellite view, terrain, and even traffic density — just like in stand-alone Google Maps.
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