How to Play Google Minesweeper
Google Minesweeper is the easter egg built into search: type “minesweeper” and a playable board appears at the top of the results, with rules identical to classic Minesweeper. Here is how to open it, how the gestures work, and when to reach for a fuller version.
Last updated：2026-09-03
How do you open Google Minesweeper?
The fastest way: search for "minesweeper" on Google. A playable board is embedded at the top of the results — click and play. It comes from Google's easter egg / Doodle series: no app to install, no account to sign in.
What are the rules?
Identical to classic Minesweeper:
- Numbers: an opened number counts the mines in the 8 cells around it.
- Flagging: mark cells you know are mines to protect against misclicks.
- Safe first click: like most modern implementations, your first click never hits a mine.
- Winning: open every non-mine cell to win; the page tracks your time.
How do you flag in Google Minesweeper?
Right-click a cell on desktop; long-press a cell on mobile or tablet. Flags matter beyond preventing misclicks: when the flags around a number equal the number itself, its remaining neighbors are all safe.
Chording — opening those remaining neighbors at once — is triggered by double-click in most Minesweeper implementations. Where a version lacks the gesture, mid-game slows to one cell at a time, which is a big reason players eventually move to dedicated Minesweeper sites.
Playing without a mouse (trackpad users)
On a laptop trackpad, "right-click" usually means two-finger click, and chord-style "press both buttons" is miserable. Two options:
- Live with system gestures: two-finger tap for right-click, and pay for it in speed.
- Switch to a trackpad-first version: Meathill Minesweeper drops right-click entirely — when flags match a number, double-click it to open the rest, tuned for single-button Apple mice, Mac trackpads and phones.
Where Google Minesweeper falls short: fun to play, hard to learn
As a casual distraction it is great. For players trying to improve, three things hurt:
- No probability hints: coin-flip moments stay coin flips, and you never learn how close the call was.
- No replay: a loss is just over — you cannot revisit the turning point.
- No saved stats: times and win rates do not persist across devices, so progress is invisible.
If that matters to you, play a round of Meathill Minesweeper: Learn Mode overlays a live probability heatmap, scores every decision, and the post-game replay chart plots efficiency and mine probability at real click times — turning guessing into calculating.