In game
When you load into a round of a singleplayer game, you will see the interface pictured below.

In a moving game there are several techniques for moving around. The most common is to click on the road in the direction you want to move towards. You can also use the movement arrows at the centre of the screen, these are particularly useful in rounds where the movement does not work properly. Finally you can also use the letters W and S to move forward and backwards respectively. You can use the arrows or the keyboard keys when you want to move with precision one panorama at a time.

You can pan around by clicking and dragging the mouse and zoom in and out with the scroll wheel. Alternatively, you can use the zoom buttons in the bottom left. It is also possible to pan with the A and D keys, as well as the right and left directional arrows.

In moving games you also have a few useful buttons in the bottom left. The “Return to start” button (hotkey R) sends you to the initial location of the round. This is a very important tool in moving games since you need to guess the initial location, not the one you are on when you make the guess. The “Set checkpoint/Return to checkpoint” button (hotkey C) allows you to set a checkpoint at a location you have moved to, press the button again to return to the checkpoint. The “Undo move” button (hotkey Z) sends you back to your previous location after moving. This is especially useful when you accidentally move from a main road into a side road and it would be time consuming to go back with the normal movement.

Hovering over the minimap opens it in a bigger size and you will see three new buttons on the top left, two arrows and a pin. You can use the arrows on the top left to resize the minimap. The pin button locks the minimap so it does not minimize after moving the mouse away.

When you are ready to make your guess you can use the Guess button or press space to lock it in.

Since the game is based on Google Street View, the countries that show up will correspond to the countries covered on Street View. Knowing what countries have coverage and which ones don’t is a basic piece of information to have, since there are some areas of the world, such as Africa and central America in which only a few countries will appear ingame.



You can check the extent of the Street View coverage in this website[sv-map.netlify.app].

The compass is one of the most important tools in order to properly pinpoint a round. Knowing the direction of a coastline, a mountain range, or a city skyline are very basic ways to make an educated regionguess, and knowing the exact angle of the road you are on is often crucial for finding the 5k.

By default you will have the compass at the top of your screen, this compass is centred on the direction you are looking towards. You can turn on the classic compass in the settings menu. In the classic compass the red arrow points towards north and the white one towards south, relative to the direction you are looking at. When you look directly east, the compass will be perfectly horizontal with the red arrow pointing left. Which compass to use is a matter of personal preference.

Geoguessr offers the option to show both compass at the same time, and we recommend using this setting. The classic compass is easier to read at a glance for most players, and the new compass offers more precision when trying to line a road up.

A common technique to find the road angle is to look straight down with the compass pointing exactly north. Then the road on the map should be parallel to the direction of the road you see on your screen. The roadlines are usually the easiest way to compare the angle.
An example of lining up the road in Uruguay.

This technique can also be used to find plausible roads or sections of road in a region if you do not know exactly which road you are on. Highways or coastal roads are some examples of locations where looking for the right road angle can lead to very close guesses.
In this round there is information to know you are between the cities of La Paz and Oruro in a big divided road. With the road angle you can make an educated guess that you are likely in the green section, with a chance of being somewhere in the yellow section. You can discard the sections highlighted in red because the angle of the road is very different.

In the Geoguessr context, a map is just a collection of locations published in the form of a playable map. Every gamemode, including those that do not specify it, uses locations exclusively from one map at a time.

Geoguessr’s own official maps are not good for a variety of reasons. One of the most common complaints being how some small areas often are extremely over-represented in the official maps. Locations such as the Midway Atoll[maps.app.goo.gl] come up more often in "World"[www.geoguessr.com] than entire countries. Luckily there is an active map making community that is constantly producing and updating high quality maps that we recommend playing instead.
This corner of the Midway Atoll runway is one of the best known locations in the game due to it being extremely over-represented in Geoguessr’s official “World” map.

If you want to learn about specific countries or "metas" then head over to the PlonkIt Guide[www.plonkit.net], where you can learn about all countries and how to recognise them.