Map Controls & Tools¶

The Controls menu toggles two kinds of on-map helpers: the built-in MapLibre map controls, and the component panels that add tools like Measure and Bookmark. A check mark next to an item means it is currently shown.

Map controls¶

These are the standard MapLibre controls that sit in the map corners:

Component tools¶

These are interactive panels provided by the MapLibre components plugin:

The Print Layout composer lives under the Project menu.

Measuring distance, area, and heading¶

Controls → Measure draws a line or polygon on the map and reports it in the Measure panel. Beyond distance and area, the panel adds two further sections:

• Heading — the direction of the measured line, as degrees plus a 16-point compass label (for example 310° NW). This is a true great-circle initial bearing, not the angle the line makes on screen: on a Mercator map Washington to London looks due east, while the real initial bearing is about 50°. On a path with more than two points, the heading is the overall first-to-last direction rather than one row per segment.
• Final heading — the bearing arriving at the far end. A great circle changes direction along its length, so this row appears only on lines long enough for the convergence to reach a degree; short measurements stay a single row.
• Terrain (3D) — slope-following distances when 3D terrain is enabled. This section hides itself when no elevation data is available; the heading rows do not, because a bearing is pure geometry on the measured coordinates and needs no DEM.

Right-click quick actions¶

Right-clicking the map opens a context menu built around the coordinate you clicked:

Quick analysis from a clicked point¶

The Quick analysis submenu runs a tool on the coordinate you right-clicked, with no dialog and no need to first create a point layer:

Results are added as new layers, and a banner reports progress and any failure with a link to the run's entry in Processing History.

The same Quick analysis submenu also appears in each vector layer's actions menu in the Layers panel, where it operates on the whole layer instead of a point: Buffer all features by …, Centroids, Convex hull, and Bounding box.

Viewshed from a clicked point¶

Quick analysis → Viewshed from here computes the terrain visible from the clicked point and drapes it over the map as a translucent overlay.

• No DEM to prepare. The elevation comes from the same public terrain tiles the map's 3D terrain control uses, fetched on demand for the square around your point. You do not have to find, download, or load a DEM first, and 3D terrain does not have to be switched on.
• Observer height is 1.8 m — a standing person — above the ground elevation at the clicked point.
• Radius is one of the three presets, from 2 km to 15 km. The underlying tool accepts anything from 100 m up to a 50 km ceiling.
• The result is an image overlay layer named Viewshed (5 km) or similar, so it gets opacity, reordering, zoom-to, and removal like any other layer, and it is saved with the project.

Camera, overlay, and recording tools¶

The Controls menu also carries tools that move the camera, drape live data over the map, or capture what you see:

Annotations and the Elements panel¶

The annotation tools draw on top of the map: Text, Arrow, Rectangle highlight, Ellipse highlight, Freehand highlight, Pin marker, Sticky note, and Placed image. Each has a color, and the stroked shapes (Arrow, Rectangle, Ellipse, and Freehand) also honor the line width. You can delete the last annotation or clear them all.

Annotations are saved with the project, and the Elements panel lists them so you can find and manage each one instead of hunting for it on the canvas. Most elements are anchored At Point — a geographic coordinate they move with. Placed image additionally offers Pinned to Extent, which stretches it across a bounding box so it scales with the view.

Review comments¶

Comments are anchored notes for review and feedback, kept separate from annotations because they are a conversation rather than map decoration.

• Activate the comment tool from the Comments panel on the right sidebar, then click the map to drop a pin and write the note. GeoLibre asks for your name once and remembers it.
• Each pin opens a thread you can reply to, resolve, reopen, or delete.
• Filter the panel by Open, Resolved, or All. Resolved pins are hidden from the map while the Open filter is active.
• In a live collaboration session, adding, replying, resolving, and deleting all sync to the other participants.

Comments are stored in the .geolibre.json file, so they travel with a shared or saved project even when no session is running.

GPS tracking¶

Controls → GPS Tracking... follows a live position on the map, records a track log, and can digitize new features straight from the feed. Pick one of two entries under Position source:

• This device — the browser or OS geolocation API. This is the default and needs no extra hardware.
• NMEA receiver (serial or Bluetooth) — an external GPS/GNSS receiver, for survey-grade or high-rate positions. Choose a baud rate and use Connect serial or Connect Bluetooth; the dialog then reports the device name and a running count of parsed sentences and fixes.

Controls → Field Collection... is the related tool for capturing observations against a custom form. See Features.

Map navigation basics¶

• Pan: drag the map, or use the arrow keys while the map has focus.
• Zoom: scroll wheel, pinch, the navigation control, or the + / - keys.
• Rotate: hold the right mouse button and drag, use the compass, or Shift + ← / →.
• Tilt: hold Ctrl/Cmd and drag to tilt the map into a perspective view, or Shift + ↑ / ↓.
• Reset the view: press N for north up, U for a top-down view, or R to reset both pitch and bearing. See the interface guide for the full shortcut list.