What the Layers panel holds#

The Layers panel is the inventory of everything on the map. It sorts itself into three sections by where each layer came from: Imports for data you loaded from a file, Overlays for images you pinned, and Annotations for shapes, labels, and measurements you drew yourself. All three sections start expanded, and a filter box at the top narrows the list by name.

Click a row to make that layer active. Active matters more than it sounds. The attribute table, the statistics panel, the export commands, and spatial query all work on the active layer and ignore the rest.

The controls on a row#

Each row carries the layer name and a count of its features, plus four controls:

• Eye: hides and shows the layer.
• Colour swatch: opens the colour picker.
• Chevron: opens the layer's styling controls.
• Cross: removes the layer.

The colour swatch opens a picker with a hex field, saturation and hue sliders, and a grid of presets. This is the layer's single solid colour, and every feature in the layer uses it until you turn on data-driven colour. Image layers show a flat swatch instead, because their appearance comes from the image.

Annotation rows carry one extra control, a pencil that opens the annotation editor. See Annotations.

Note There is no rename, duplicate, or drag to reorder in the Layers panel. Measurements are the exception: right-click one on the map and you get Rename, Duplicate, Copy as GeoJSON, Delete, and Zoom to.

Open the styling editors#

The chevron at the end of a row expands three stacked editors beneath it, and only one layer can be expanded at a time. They are:

• Colour styling, which drives colour from a property value rather than a single fixed colour.
• Render modes, which changes the drawing itself from plain features to clusters, hexagons, a heatmap, extruded shapes, or animated flow.
• Labelling settings, which draws text on the map from a chosen property.

Image and tile layers show none of these, since none apply.