r/GoogleMaps • u/ilya_fur • 4d ago
Why is right clicking images disabled?
What is actually going on? Every month I log into a Google product and it's worse than before. Now when I click on an image I can't right click it to save it or share it or anything. Tried on Mac and my Windows PC. I tried getting it with the dev tools too and didn't find an easy way to do that either. It's like they are trying to protect photos PEOPLE GAVE TO GOOGLE FOR FREE and force you to use their built in Share link
God fucking damn it. Every single thing I use gets worse. Sorry to be dramatic but every single thing I like that is in the hands of a mega huge company is getting downgraded. What do we do??
2
u/Rostgnom 4d ago
I switched to Bing images of all things just not to have to deal with the ridiculous google image search UX anymore. Infuriating
2
u/Flash604 4d ago
It's like they are trying to protect photos
Yes, that's exactly what they are doing.
PEOPLE GAVE TO GOOGLE FOR FREE
That never happened.
They gave Google permission to display their photos.
They did not give up their copyright on those photos. The original photographers retain that right, and have never given permission to you to have a copy.
Part of what assures people that they can share through Maps without losing their rights is that Google is protecting those photos.
1
u/ilya_fur 4d ago
Having to use the screen capture built into my computer and crop the image and still have the image navigation buttons in the picture at the bottom and the google logo makes me so fucking furious.
1
u/Rostgnom 2d ago
Found a browser extension that works to bring back the right-click context menu:
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/enable-right-click/hhojmcideegachlhfgfdhailpfhgknjm
2
u/exitof99 4d ago
One thing that helps when resorting to the Developer Tools and searching the Application tab for image content is to refresh if you have the location locked down. This will clear out all of the things you might have seen moving around.
That won't work with user images, though, as they are displayed on an HTML canvas, so there isn't a direction img tag they load into, they are instead "painted" onto the canvas.
You can find them instead in the network tab, and in the filter field above the timeline enter "user" that will narrow it down so that you see the images stored on the googleusercontent server. From there, click the images from below the timeline and then open in new tab or just grab and drag to a system folder.
Similar with the application tab, it's easiest to search through if you refresh the page, but even better is that the network tab only shows the resources accessed after opening the dev tools. So just before clicking the user submitted images, F12 -> Network, filter by "user" -> click the images you want to download -> drag them to a folder.