Move your cursor. That’s the beam.
The screen starts almost black on purpose. Switch the signal on and a cone of light follows wherever you point, and five bits of text are hiding in the dark waiting to be swept over. Four of them are easy. One sits in a corner nobody thinks to check.
On a phone, drag your finger instead. Same thing, slightly more satisfying because the beam lags a fraction behind you.
The skyline redraws itself
Every reload gives you a different city. Building heights, window patterns, the gaps between towers, all generated fresh. It’s a small thing and nobody would notice if it didn’t happen, but it means the google batman screen never looks the same twice.
Rain is off by default. Turn it on and the beam picks up the streaks, which looks better than it has any right to and does make the whole thing run a bit warmer on old laptops.
Widen it if you’re impatient
The narrow beam is the fun version. The wide one turns the search into a formality. Use it when you’ve found four and the fifth is driving you mad.
Bringing up the lights
Dawn kills the effect and shows you the whole skyline flat. Worth doing once at the end to see how much of the scene you’d never actually lit up. Most people cover about a third of it.
Other dark-screen tricks
If night scenes are your thing, google matrix is the obvious neighbour and runs green instead of amber. Google black hole goes darker still and takes the page with it. Thanos snap is quicker and meaner.
Lighter fare over at let it snow google, or scan the whole shelf on google easter eggs.
