How to Blur Your House on Google Street View and Apple Maps

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Anyone with an internet connection can type your address into a map and stand, virtually, on your pavement. They can see your front door, your windows, the car on your drive and the layout of your garden. If that bothers you, both Google and Apple let you ask for your home to be blurred — but the two requests work very differently, and one of them cannot be undone.

Direct answer: To blur your house on Google Street View, open your home in Street View, click Report a Problem, choose My home, prove you own or rent the property with a proof-of-address document, and submit it. Google says the blur is permanent and cannot be undone. Apple Maps has its own Look Around request, made in the app or by email.

A Street View blur is, in one clean sentence, a request to have a specific street-level photograph of your home permanently obscured so that the building, and anything in front of it, appears as an unreadable smudge instead of a clear image. It is not a deletion, it is not a cloak of invisibility, and it is not instant. This guide walks through both routes — Google Street View and Apple Maps Look Around — with the current steps verified against Google’s and Apple’s own help pages, a worked example, and an honest account of what a blur does not fix.

What is a Street View blur, and why should you pause before requesting one?

The single most important fact about a Google Street View blur is the one Google puts first in its own help page: when Google receives and applies a blur request, the blur is permanent. There is no undo button, no cooling-off period and no form that reverses it. That permanence is the whole point of this section, and it belongs before any steps, because everything else in this guide is easy to redo and this is not.

Think about the trade-offs before you submit. A blurred house stands out. On a street where every other home is sharp and clear, a large smudge draws the eye and tells anyone looking that the occupant cares about privacy — which is, paradoxically, a signal in itself. Some homeowners decide the trade is worth it, particularly after a burglary, a stalking concern, or a period of unwanted attention. Others decide that a clear photograph of an ordinary semi-detached house reveals very little that a passer-by could not see from the pavement anyway. Both are reasonable conclusions; the mistake is submitting the request on impulse and discovering afterwards that it cannot be taken back.

There are practical consequences too. If you sell the house, the blur stays with the property, not with you, and the next owner inherits a blurred listing photograph on every map service that applied it. Estate agents photographing the property for a sale will still take their own pictures, and a map blur does nothing to those. And because Google says the newly blurred image is excluded from generative AI prompting from that point onward, the blur also affects how the image can be used in Google’s own AI features — a benefit if you want the image kept out of AI tools, but another reason to be sure before you click submit.

One more thing to settle before you start: check that you are eligible. Google states plainly that only the home owner or tenant is eligible to request a house blur. You cannot ask for a neighbour’s house to be blurred, a house you used to live in, or a property you merely admire. Apple takes the same position in practice: its Image Collection page invites you to ask for your own house to be blurred, and its reporting system ties the request to your Apple Account or email address. If you rent, you are covered — Google’s wording includes tenants — but you will still need the proof of address described in the next section.

How do you blur your house on Google Street View?

To blur your house on Google Street View, use the Report a Problem form on the exact Street View image that shows your home, choose the “My home” option, upload proof of address, and submit. The form works on one image at a time, so the first step is always to find the right photograph, not the right menu.

Google’s own help page for blurring Street View imagery sets out the desktop and mobile steps, and they are the same on both. Follow them in order:

1. Find your home in Google Maps. Search for your address and open the map result.
2. Open the Street View image you want blurred. Drop the Street View pegman onto your street, or click the Street View thumbnail, and navigate until your house is clearly visible. Check the capture date shown on the image: Street View keeps older captures, and the form applies to the image you have open.
3. Click “Report a Problem” in the bottom right. On a phone, the same option appears in the Street View menu.
4. Choose “My home”. The form also offers your vehicle or your full body, which is the route for blurring a car or a number plate — covered later in this guide.
5. Tick the box certifying that you have the authority to make the request. This is the eligibility check: you are confirming that you own or rent the property.
6. Upload your proof of address. This is the step most older guides get wrong, because Google now requires it. The document rules are set out below.
7. Enter the address of the residential location to be blurred. If your home has no formal street address, tick the box that says so; Google states that people without a formal street address can still request blurring through the same verification process.
8. Complete the form and submit it. Google says it will review your report as fast as it can, and that if you entered an email address it may contact you for more information or to update you on the status. Google publishes no promised turnaround time, so do not plan around a date.

What proof of address does Google need?

This is the part that trips people up, and it is worth getting right first time, because a rejected document means starting again. Google’s help page lists the accepted and rejected documents precisely, and the rules are stricter than most people expect.

Google accepts a letter, a utility bill or a bank statement that contains the address of the location to be blurred, provided it is dated within six months of the blur request. Leases are also accepted, even if they are older than six months, which is useful for long-term tenants. Homeowners insurance and property tax records are accepted as well. In the UK, a council tax bill or a recent utility bill is the natural choice, since both are letters that show the address; Google’s help page sets no country restriction on the proof-of-address requirement in its text, so the same document rules apply whether you are in the UK, the US or elsewhere.

Just as important is what Google rejects. Any document that does not match the requested location will be rejected, and any document that only shows a PO box will be rejected. Google also states, in bold on its own help page, that you should not send handwritten documents or government IDs — so do not upload a passport or driving licence, however official it feels. Before you upload anything, redact the sensitive parts: Google instructs you to redact identifiable information except for the address and the date of the document, and warns specifically against submitting documents that contain unredacted account numbers, your legal name, or payment or health information. In practice, that means blacking out your name, account numbers and any payment details, and leaving only the address and the date visible.

Two technical limits apply to the upload itself. Google states that all uploads must be under 10 MB in size and in PNG, JPG or PDF format only. And there is a privacy reassurance worth knowing: Google says all documents will be permanently deleted from all systems after 60 days. That is a Google-stated figure, and it means the proof you send is not kept indefinitely.

What if Google rejects your blur request?

A rejection is usually a document problem, not a refusal in principle, so work through the checklist before assuming the answer is final. First, check the date: a utility bill or bank statement more than six months old will fail, so use a newer one, or switch to a lease, which has no age limit. Second, check that the address on the document matches the address you entered exactly — a flat number, a postcode or a spelling difference is enough to fail the match. Third, check that you did not upload a PO box address, a handwritten note or a government ID, since Google rejects all three. Fourth, check the file itself: it must be under 10 MB and in PNG, JPG or PDF format.

If the document is right and the request still fails, submit again with a different accepted document — a bank statement instead of a utility bill, for example — and double-check that the Street View image you reported is the one showing your home. Google’s help page lists no appeal step or alternative contact route for a rejected house blur, so the practical route is to correct the document and re-submit rather than to look for a human to argue with. Keep a copy of what you sent and the date you sent it, so you can say exactly what changed if you need to try again. And remember that a blur request covers one image: if an older Street View capture of the same house is still visible, open that capture and report it too.

How do you blur your house on Apple Maps Look Around?

Apple Maps Look Around is Apple’s equivalent of Street View: street-level photographs taken by Apple survey vehicles and, in some pedestrian areas, by people carrying backpack cameras. Apple says it blurs faces and license plates on images published in Look Around, and its Image Collection page invites you to contact Apple if you would like to request that a face, a license plate or your own house be blurred. There are two ways to make that request, and the in-app route is the one most guides still get wrong.

The in-app route runs through the Report an Issue menu in Apple Maps. The menu names below come from Mashable, writing on 8 October 2026, and Tom’s Guide, writing on 9 October 2026, which agree on the path — Apple’s own pages confirm that the request exists and give the email route, but do not list these menu names. Follow the steps as the guides describe them:

1. Search for your exact home address in Apple Maps. If Look Around does not cover your street, there is no street-level photograph of your home for Apple to blur, and you can stop here.
2. Open Look Around. Tap the binoculars icon to enter the street-level view. On a Mac or in a desktop browser, click the small photo preview at the bottom of the screen instead.
3. Open the report menu. On an iPhone, swipe up from the bottom of the Look Around view, or tap the address, and choose Report an Issue. On a desktop, use the three-dot menu to find the same option.
4. Choose Privacy Concerns. This is the category for imagery and privacy reports.
5. Choose “Obscure imagery of my home”. Both guides agree on this exact option. If the problem is a visible number plate or another personal detail rather than the house itself, the same menu offers an “Obscure personal information” option instead.
6. Check the street address, enter your email address, and submit. If you are signed in with your Apple ID, the address may fill in automatically and a receipt is saved to your account history.

Apple does not publish a guaranteed turnaround time for these requests, and it does not clearly state whether an approved home blur stays in place after future imagery updates. Tom’s Guide reports that Apple processes the requests manually rather than applying an automatic toggle, and that Apple may email you asking for verification or proof of homeownership before the blur is finalised. Expect a wait of days rather than minutes, and watch your inbox for a follow-up message — including your spam folder — before assuming the request was ignored.

The second route is email, and it works anywhere Look Around exists, which makes it the more reliable option for UK readers and for anyone on a non-Apple device. Apple’s Image Collection page is the official home of this route: it says to contact Apple to request that your own house be blurred, and the email address Apple lists for that contact is mapsimagecollection@apple.com. Send an email to that address with your full name, the exact address, and a description or screenshot of your property from Apple Maps, so the reviewer can find the right image without writing back for clarification. Keep a copy of the email you sent.

One privacy detail is worth knowing before you file an Apple report. Apple’s privacy page for Maps reports states that information collected for reports about blurring Look Around imagery is stored in association with your Apple Account, and that your Apple Account is shown on screen before you submit. Apple says it may store information associated with your Apple Account or email address for up to two years to understand reporting trends, and for up to five years for certain reports. That is an Apple-stated retention figure, and it means an Apple blur request is not anonymous — the opposite of the Google form, where you can choose whether to give an email address at all.

Google vs Apple: how do the two blur requests compare?

Google and Apple both let you ask for your home to be blurred, but the two requests differ in almost every practical respect: what proof you need, how you file, whether the blur can be undone, and what happens to the information you hand over. The table below sets out the differences that matter before you choose where to start.

The practical conclusion is simple: do Google first if Street View is where your home is most visible, because it is the more widely used service and its rules are the clearest — but do not stop there. A blur on Google does nothing to Apple Maps, and a blur on Apple does nothing to Google. The two services photograph streets independently, keep separate images, and run separate request queues, so a home that is visible on both needs two requests. And neither service covers the other places your home’s photograph appears, which is the subject of the worked example and the final section.

A worked example: one homeowner, two blur requests

The steps above are easier to follow with a concrete case, so here is one homeowner working through both requests. This example is illustrative: the names and timings are invented to show the method, but every step and menu is real, and the outcomes are described as they vary in practice rather than as a guaranteed result.

Sarah owns a semi-detached house in Leeds. A friend mentions that her front door, her car and her house number are all clearly visible on Google Street View, and a quick check on her phone confirms it: the most recent Street View capture, dated the previous summer, shows the house from across the road, with her car on the drive and its number plate readable if you zoom in. She also finds the same house on Apple Maps Look Around, photographed from a slightly different angle. She decides to request a blur on both services, and she starts with Google because that is where most people would look.

For Google, Sarah opens the Street View image on her laptop and clicks Report a Problem in the bottom right. She chooses “My home”, ticks the box confirming she has the authority to make the request, and reaches the document upload. She chooses her most recent council tax bill, which is a letter showing her address and dated two months earlier — inside Google’s six-month limit. Before uploading, she blacks out her name, her council tax account number and the payment details, leaving only the address and the date visible, exactly as Google instructs. She saves it as a PDF under 10 MB, enters the address, adds her email address so Google can contact her, and submits. Google gives her no date for a decision, so she notes the date she submitted and moves on to Apple the same evening rather than waiting.

For Apple, Sarah opens Apple Maps on her iPhone, searches for her address, and taps the binoculars icon to open Look Around. She swipes up, chooses Report an Issue, then Privacy Concerns, then “Obscure imagery of my home”, checks that the street address matches, and submits with her email address. Three days later — the timing here is illustrative, since Apple publishes no guaranteed turnaround — she receives an email asking for proof that she owns the home. She replies with the same redacted council tax bill she used for Google. A few days after that, she receives a confirmation email, and when she checks Look Around again, the house is obscured. She then checks Google Street View again: the blur has appeared there too, though on a different day, because the two services process requests on separate timetables.

Two details in Sarah’s case are worth copying. First, she used one document for both requests, redacted the same way, which kept the job to a single preparation step. Second, she checked the older Street View captures before she finished: an earlier capture from three years before also showed the house clearly, so she reported that image too, because Google’s form works on the image you have open. The lesson of the example is not that the process is quick — it is not, and neither company promises a date — but that it is a single evening of preparation followed by waiting, and that doing both services in the same sitting stops the second request from being forgotten.

What a map blur does not hide — and what to do about the rest

A map blur is a narrow tool, and treating it as a complete privacy fix is the most common mistake in this whole area. It hides one photograph, on one service, in one view. Everything below is still visible afterwards, and each item needs its own fix.

First, the satellite and aerial view is untouched. A Street View blur applies to the street-level photograph you reported; the overhead view of your roof, garden and driveway is a separate layer of imagery, and so is the address pin that marks your home on the map. If you want to hide your house from Google Maps entirely, a blur will not do it — the address, the pin and the satellite view all remain, because the blur was never designed to remove them.

Second, a blur does nothing about the photographs other people have published of your home. Estate-agent listing photographs are the biggest example: when a house is sold or let, the agent’s photographs of the front, the garden and often the interior sit on property portals for years, and they are usually far more revealing than a Street View frame. Those photographs belong to the agent and the portal, not to Google, so the fix is to ask the agent or the portal to remove them — and to check, when you move, whether the old listing is still live. The same applies to photographs other people have uploaded: a neighbour’s social media post, a delivery driver’s photo, or a picture on a review site. If someone has posted a photograph of you or your property without permission, our guide to what to do when someone posted a photo of you without permission works through the removal routes platform by platform.

Third, the photographs you post yourself are often the biggest leak, and they carry a hidden extra: location data. A photograph taken on your phone usually contains EXIF data, including the GPS coordinates of exactly where you stood when you took it, and posting that photograph can reveal your home address more precisely than any map ever could. Before you share photographs of your home, garden or street, strip that data first — our guide to removing EXIF and location data from photos shows how on iPhone, Android, Windows and Mac. The same discipline applies to photographs already online: if a photograph of your home is showing in Google’s results, our guide to removing your photos from Google explains how to clear it from search, starting at the source.

Fourth, map photographs are only one place your address appears. People-search and data-broker sites collect addresses from public records, the electoral roll and commercial databases, and a blurred house does nothing to those listings. A map blur is one layer of a wider routine, not the routine itself, and our complete guide to protecting your photos online sets out that routine in full — finding where your images appear, saving evidence, and taking them down at the source. For the face-search side of the same problem, our face search and photo privacy guide explains how to find where your face appears online and how to opt out of the face-search engines that index it.

Finally, there is the question of Bing. Readers following older guides will expect a third route, for Bing Maps Streetside, and there is currently no equivalent to give them. Wikipedia’s Bing Maps entry states that the Streetside feature was removed from Bing Maps in October 2025 and is no longer accessible, and we found no current route for requesting a blur of Bing street-level imagery. If Bing reintroduces street-level photographs, that will need its own guide; for now, Google and Apple are the two requests that exist.

Can you blur your car or number plate too?

Yes, and it is part of the same Google form. When you click Report a Problem on a Street View image, the form covers your home, your vehicle or your full body, so a car parked on your drive and its number plate can be reported in the same place. Google says its technology is designed to blur identifiable faces and license plates in Street View imagery automatically, and Apple says the same about faces and license plates in Look Around — but automatic systems miss things, especially plates photographed at an angle, in poor light or behind a fence. If your plate is readable, report it: choose the vehicle option on Google’s form, or the “Obscure personal information” option in Apple’s Report an Issue menu. Note that a plate blur, like a house blur, applies to the image you report; a new Street View capture may show the same car again, and that capture would need its own report.

FAQs

Can you unblur a house on Street View?

No. Google says that once it receives and applies a blur request, the blur is permanent, so there is no unblur button and no form that reverses it. That permanence is the reason to check the image before you submit. If a new Street View capture later shows your home again, that new image would need its own request.

How do I blur my home on Google Maps?

Open Google Maps, find your home, and open the Street View image that shows it. Click Report a Problem in the bottom-right corner, choose My home, tick the box confirming you have the authority to make the request, upload your proof of address, enter the address, and submit. Google reviews the report and may email you for more information.

What proof of address does Google need for a blur request?

Google accepts a letter, utility bill or bank statement showing the address, dated within six months of the request, or a lease of any age, homeowners insurance or a tax record. Documents showing only a PO box are rejected, as are handwritten documents and IDs. Redact your name, account numbers and payment details, keeping only the address and date visible.

Can I blur my car number plate on Street View?

Yes. Google’s form covers your home, your vehicle or your full body, so choose the vehicle option and describe the plate or car. Google already blurs faces and number plates automatically in Street View, according to its own help page, but the system can miss one. Apple blurs faces and plates in Look Around automatically too.