Google’s Santa Tracker is live when Christmas starts around the world. 5 fun ways to use it

As Christmas rolls around the world, Google has activated its Santa Claus tracker to follow Jolly St. Nick as he delivers gifts around the world.

The Santa tracker site has a real-time “tracker” of Santa’s path, with Kris Kringle leaving Madagascar around 11am PT. Beyond following the trail, Google also has a “gifts delivered” counter and an updated “next stop” list for where Santa is going. In a nod to reality, Santa wears a purple mask to support himself and others. safe from COVID-19 (although it apparently already has a vaccine dose).

The site is quite similar to NORAD’s Santa Tracker, the long-running annual project of the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

Google’s crawler works as a cute way to entertain kids with a handful of mini-games, including one called Elf Glider where, on a computer, you use a keyboard to act as one of Santa’s elves on a hang glider, pressing the space bar to drop appears in chimneys avoiding obstacles. It’s a lot of fun before the holidays.

For those wondering, according to Google’s tracker, Santa is expected to arrive in the United States in about nine hours.

5 fun ways to use Google’s Santa tracker on Christmas Eve and Christmas

1. Access Santatracker.google.com on your mobile or desktop browser. Mobile users can tap to add Santa to your home screen.

2. You can passively view Santa’s current location and explore the world. If you go too far tap the santa hat icon to immediately return to the merry in his sleigh

3. Click or tap the “hamburger” menu of three horizontal lines in the upper left corner of your screen to interact with Santa and his friends in different ways. For example, you can make Santa presentable for a selfie and get into a snowball fight.

4. Keep the sound on to hear festive music and elf laughter as Santa makes his way around the world, or click or tap the mute button if you prefer to enjoy Santa in silence.

5. Keep scrolling down to play winter and Christmas related games with animated elves. Google’s website says the site will remain active until December.