Google Maps users discover ‘heartbreaking’ forgotten feature to see family homes & lost loved ones after TikTok trend
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PEOPLE have discovered a way to go back in time and see lost loved ones on Google Maps Street View after a viral trend on TikTok. Users have shared touching moments on the video sharing app, from finding their grandparents innocently gardening long before they passed away, to visiting childhood homes back when they used to live there.
![[Users feel emotional after finding family who have since passed away]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/d803ed60-d700-4116-98ea-24d27643433f.jpg?strip=all&w=567)
The forgotten feature allows users to switch the images on Street View to older ones in the Google archive. Google routinely updates the tool with newer snaps so people have up-to-date information. But you can go back as far as 2007 to the company's first batch of Street View images, depending on whether your road was filmed.
"Screaming, crying, throwing up. This trend is killing me," one TikTok user wrote after finding her grandparents outside their house on there. "I would be lying if I said I didn't tear up when I first saw this streetview," another wrote on discovering her mum's car parked on the driveway and her dad's garden shed still in tact way back.
"Somewhere on google maps it's May 2013 and my dad is alive still waving at every car that passes by.. even the google street view car," a third wrote. "It's a sunny day, life is good and forever is frozen in time.". If you fancy a nostalgia trip, you can try out your street using the instructions below.
You can go back in time on Google Maps Street View on a desktop, or via the Google Maps app on iOS and Android. Be warned, not every address will be available, given that Google has spent years driving around millions of roads across the world to make Street View.
