There are cases where you will see that the ruler button has been greyed out, and right off the bat, this is not because your PC can’t run it. The ruler feature works on all the devices that support Google Earth, which completely rules out the incompatibility issue. So then what causes this?
Let’s take a look –
Table of Contents
Google is working on a critical change for the feature
This is a very rare occurrence, but the feature could get greyed out if Google themselves are working on a change for this feature, or have spotted bugs in this feature that may have far reaching consequences. Usually, if the feature is getting an upgraded, Google will still keep the older version running, but on the off chance that the feature is totally broken, it will be greyed out until a fix can be obtained.
If you are in Street View
If you are exploring a place on earth in street view, then what you are essentially looking at is images that have been stitched together, and this is not really a clean frame of reference to calculate distances between two places, compared to the more authentic satellite imagery. Thus, in order to discourage inaccurate distance calculation, this feature get greyed out when you enter street view. So, if you are in street view and want to calculate distance between two places, just exit street view and the feature should be re-activated instantly.
