Google Earth Desktop going away

Since you’re already familiar with it, I’d recommend leaning into Caltopo more. With the Pro subscription, you can access 3D visualization and a bunch of other cool planning features/layers. the 3D visualization isn’t quite as good as Google Earth, but it’s pretty good and getting better. You can also overlay all of Google’s standard layers. The Caltopo app is also great, and has become my go-to choice for in-the-field reference. The Pro subscription is $50/year, well worth it in my opinion.

GE desktop will not turn off overnight. They will simply stop doing updates starting around June of 2026. But if you have it installed at that time, it will continue to work… until it doesn’t. One issue for Mac owners is that GE never ran natively on the Apple OS and I think Apple announced it was dropping support for the emulator GE needed. This could speed the demise, but I may have some details wrong here. I have some software titles that are very old and are still chugging along. Our marine navigation program is from 2009 and still works [mostly] perfectly.