Common questions

Start with what you see. Pick the closest heading, then follow its link to the page that explains the feature. If nothing here matches, the last section says what to include in a report.

Nothing is on the map

Obsidian says to enable the built-in Maps plugin

Advanced Maps extends the first-party Maps view rather than shipping one, so that view has to exist. Check all three: Obsidian 1.13.1 or newer, Bases enabled, and the first-party Maps plugin installed and enabled. The notice appears once after Obsidian finishes loading when the view is not registered; the console records the more technical warning that the built-in Maps view was not registered. See Getting started.

The Base is a map view, but it draws nothing

Start with the Base: every marker, track, and photo comes from one of its results.

Check	Where
Does the filter return results?	The result count beside the view name
Do the notes carry a coordinate?	The map view’s Marker coordinates option names the property
Is the property really a coordinate?	39.9042, 116.4074 — a pair, in that order

If the filter matches no files, the map stays empty without reporting an error. That is expected. Getting started has a complete Base to copy and compare against.

One note draws two maps

An embed and a link mean different things, and the ! is the whole difference:

In the note	Track on base map views	Inline map in the note
![[route.gpx]]	yes	yes
[[route.gpx]]	yes	no
track: "[[route.gpx]]" (a property)	yes	no

So a note that already appears on a Base map and also renders its own map is embedding the track. Drop the ! and the track still draws on every map the note appears on, without a second map in the note itself.

The route summary and elevation profile also belong to the inline map, so a plain link removes them from the note. Either keep the embed, or write the figures into the note’s own properties with Write track statistics to properties. See Tracks and areas.

Something is drawn, but wrong

A marker is a solid circle with no icon, or an unexpected flat colour

Both usually point to an invalid value, and neither produces an error:

• A solid circle with no icon means Lucide does not have that icon name. The name has to match Lucide’s own spelling exactly.
• A marker in the theme’s text colour — near-black in a light theme, near-white in a dark one — is a colour CSS could not parse.

A missing property is different from a wrong one: with no property at all you get the default dot and the default blue. See Marker icons and colors.

Pins sit a few streets away from the road

The basemap and the saved coordinate are using different coordinate systems. Mainland Chinese providers publish GCJ-02 or BD-09; your vault holds WGS-84, which is what a GPS, a phone photo, and a GPX file record.

Set the map’s Tile coordinate system (or the plugin-wide default) rather than editing the numbers in your notes. The conversion happens at the map’s edge, and everything read, copied, or written stays WGS-84. See Coordinates and map services.

A photo is in the Base but has no marker

Only a readable GPS tag creates a location; the plugin never invents one. A photo with no tag stays a Base result with nothing on the map, and a geotagged photo whose thumbnail cannot be used still gets a dot.

If a whole album is missing, check that Show photos is on, that the files are JPG, JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, HEIF, or AVIF, and that the folder is inside the vault and indexed by Obsidian. See Photo maps.

Clearing the photo index changed nothing

That is expected. Clear the photo index discards only the derived metadata saved for later sessions; it does not refresh an open map or change a photo. Future reads rebuild the index as needed. If another program changed a photo without Obsidian noticing, clear the index and reload the vault. See Photo maps.

A command or a menu item is missing

The item was there before

Start with the feature switches. A feature that adds itself to an existing menu, map, or file type can be disabled as a unit, taking its menu item, command, and background work with it while keeping its configuration. The table in Reference and privacy lists all seven switches and what each one removes.

Use offline basemaps is the only one that starts off. An upgrade turns it on automatically when it finds a pack that was already configured.

Open in map says to set a base file

Open in map needs to know which Base to open. Set Base file — and, if the Base holds more than one view, View name — under Settings → Advanced Maps → Open in map. The other notices from that command name what they could not find: a path that no longer resolves, a view name the Base does not have, or a Base whose views are none of them maps. See Around and navigation.

Write track statistics is missing, or wrote nothing

The command appears only while the active Markdown note resolves at least one supported track. If it is missing from the palette, check the note’s link first. If it runs without writing, the notice names the cause. The common ones are:

• no figure is switched on — nothing is selected under Settings → Advanced Maps → Tracks → Track properties, so there is nothing to write.
• has no track data to measure — the linked file contains no measurable route data.

A read error or property-name collision is also reported before anything is changed. On a later successful run, an enabled figure that can no longer be calculated has its old property removed; disabled figures and unrelated properties are left alone. See Tracks and areas.

Basemaps, search and location

An offline pack draws nothing

Check these in order:

1. Use offline basemaps is off. It defaults off unless a pack was already configured.
2. The path is a URL, or does not include {z}, {x}, and {y} (or {-y}). Enter the filesystem template including the tiles’ real file extension; the plugin builds the URL itself.
3. The tiles are not on this device. A phone handed a desktop’s absolute path draws your pins over the background colour and says nothing — the path resolves, the tiles are simply not there.
4. Lowest zoom level and Highest zoom level do not match the smallest and largest z folders in the pack.

See Offline basemap, which also covers the two layouts that keep a hundred thousand tiles out of the vault’s index.

Place search asks for a key, or fails

Amap requires a web-service key. Add one under Settings → Advanced Maps → Place search, or switch to OpenStreetMap (Nominatim), which needs no key. A failure notice includes the reason reported to the plugin.

Nominatim allows one request a second, and the plugin shares that interval between the search box and the reverse-geocode command, so a search may pause briefly rather than fail. See Coordinates and map services.

Device location never comes back

The operating system answers this one—there is no key and no service of the plugin’s own. If the plugin gives up before obtaining a fix because permission was denied, no location service exists, or the first request failed, the notice names the reason and automatic filling pauses for the rest of the session. A transient failure after a successful fix does not disable later attempts. Running Fill coordinates from current location by hand resets the pause. Permissions belong to Obsidian and the operating system, not to this plugin’s settings. See Coordinates and map services.

On a phone

Advanced Maps supports the same map features in the Obsidian mobile app. Two practical details differ:

• A gesture the guide names. Where a step says right-click, long-press.
• A directory link to an external album. That is desktop filesystem setup; a phone cannot reuse a desktop’s link, and a tile pack path from a desktop resolves to tiles the phone does not have.

Each page states its own platform limits where the feature is described. The mobile overview is in Getting started.

Nothing here matches

Open an issue and include:

• the Obsidian version and the Advanced Maps version;
• what you expected on the map and what is on it instead;
• the Base’s filter and the map view’s coordinate property;
• a screenshot of the map, and the note or file that is not drawing, with any private content redacted;
• anything the console said, if a notice appeared.

Seeing the map beside the note or file that produced it often makes the cause clear.