The 7 Best Live Beach Cameras to Watch Right Now

Sun, surf and palm trees — live and in real time. These beach cameras are the fastest way to escape to the coast without leaving your chair.

There is a particular kind of calm in watching a beach you are not standing on. Somewhere the tide is coming in, a lifeguard tower is throwing a long shadow, and a swell that started days ago in open ocean is finally arriving. You can have that on a second screen while the rain runs down your own window.

Live beach cameras are the least demanding travel there is. No booking, no packing, no jet lag. Point the app at a coastline, and the coastline gets on with its day.

Seven stretches of coast worth keeping open

1. Waikiki, Oahu. The gentlest famous surf in the world, with Diamond Head closing off the eastern end of the sand. Watch in the afternoon and you get catamarans pulling up onto the beach and beginners falling off longboards in slow, forgiving sets.
2. Bondi Beach, Sydney. A near-perfect crescent with the Icebergs ocean pool cut into the rocks at the southern end. The best hour is the early swim, when the sand is still empty and the water is doing all the work.
3. Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro. A long sweep of sand against a wall of apartment blocks, with the wave-pattern mosaic promenade running its length and Sugarloaf at the far end. Rarely still, at any hour.
4. Nazaré, Portugal. The serious one. An undersea canyon funnels swell straight at Praia do Norte, and in the autumn and winter months the waves that arrive there are among the largest surfed anywhere. The headland lighthouse gives the whole thing scale.
5. South Beach, Miami. Pastel lifeguard towers, flat turquoise water and a horizon of cruise ships. The palette alone is worth the tab, and the light in the last hour before sunset is absurd.
6. Costa Adeje, Tenerife. Atlantic swell meeting volcanic coastline, with dark headlands between the beaches and, on a clear day, Mount Teide behind the town.
7. Brighton, England. The counter-programming. Grey-green Channel water, a pebble beach that crunches, the Palace Pier lit at dusk and the skeleton of the old West Pier standing offshore.

How to watch them in MAPAS

1. Open MAPAS and go to the live cameras view.
2. Search for the beach by name, or pan the map along a coastline and see which cameras appear.
3. Tap a camera to open the feed full screen, then turn your phone sideways. Most beach cameras are wide, and landscape is what they were framed for.
4. Switch to the 3D map for the same spot to see where the camera actually sits. Half the time it is on a hotel roof or a headland you can then go and find in Street View.
5. Drop into live Street View at beach level to walk the promenade the camera is pointing at.
6. Keep two or three saved for the times of day that suit them, so there is always one in daylight.

Getting the timing right

Brighton, Nazaré and Tenerife sit close enough to UK time that their sunsets land in a normal European evening. Miami and Rio come alive when Europe has gone to bed. Bondi is the reliable morning feed for anyone in the northern hemisphere watching after dinner, and Waikiki is the one for insomniacs.

Season matters as much as the clock. Nazaré is a spectacle in the colder months and a quiet fishing town in summer. Bondi is at its fullest from December to February. Brighton is arguably better in a winter gale than in August, if what you want is weather rather than sunbathers.

What a live camera is actually good for

Beyond the calm of it, there are practical uses. Surfers read the sets before deciding whether to go. Anyone with a trip booked can see the beach in the season they are actually travelling, rather than in a brochure shot taken at dawn in perfect conditions. And if you are choosing between two coastlines, a week of watching both tells you more than any review.

The trick is to pair the camera with the map. A feed shows you the water. A 3D flyover of the same bay shows the headlands, the walk from town, and whether that sand is backed by a promenade or a cliff.

Questions people ask

Are these feeds genuinely live?

Most public beach cameras stream continuously through daylight and keep running after dark, though the picture is then usually a lit promenade rather than the sea. A few refresh as still images every few seconds instead of streaming video.

Why has a camera gone dark?

Almost always nightfall in that time zone, so check where the beach sits in the world before assuming a fault. Weather and maintenance take feeds offline too, and cameras are occasionally moved or retired by whoever runs them.

Can I see the beach at street level as well?

Yes. Live Street View lets you walk the promenade and the streets behind it, so you can go from the camera's wide view to standing on the seafront in a couple of taps.

Does watching cost anything?

No. MAPAS is free on the App Store, works on iPhone and iPad, and needs no account to start browsing cameras.

Pick one coast, leave it running in a corner of the screen, and check back at sunset.