Getting started

Requirements

Caution

Advanced Maps requires Obsidian 1.13.1 or newer with Bases enabled and the first-party Maps plugin installed. It adds to that native view instead of replacing it: Maps still supplies MapLibre, backgrounds, controls, markers, popups, and its built-in options. If the Maps view is unavailable, Advanced Maps skips the affected enhancements and leaves Obsidian usable.

Install

Advanced Maps is in Obsidian’s community plugin store.

1. Open Settings → Community plugins.
2. If Obsidian is in Restricted mode, turn it off. Obsidian first explains what a community plugin can do on your device, then asks you to Allow community plugins.
3. Beside Community plugins, select Browse, and search for Advanced Maps.
4. Select Install, then Enable.

The store listing is also readable on the web at community.obsidian.md/plugins/advanced-maps.

Installing a build the store does not have yet

• Release: copy main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from Releases into <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/advanced-maps/, then enable the plugin.
• BRAT: add Jin1c-3/obsidian-advanced-maps as a beta plugin.

On mobile

Advanced Maps runs in the Obsidian mobile app, and draws there what it draws on the desktop: note markers with their icons and colours, GPX, GeoJSON, KML and TCX routes with direction arrows, photo thumbnails at the positions their EXIF gives, the tape measure, and inline ![[track.gpx]] maps with their statistics and elevation profile.

A phone has no mouse, so two words in this guide need translating as you read.

• Long press wherever a page says right-click. That opens the map’s own menu, and a file’s menu in the file explorer.
• Tap wherever a page says hover. A tap opens a route’s popup and moves the elevation profile’s cursor. Two of them go further than a hover did: a tap on a note’s marker opens that note instead of previewing it, and a tap on a photo opens the photo itself, which carries Open note inside it.

An offline basemap draws here as well, from a pack on the device’s own storage; that page says which platform the claim was measured on.

How a Base becomes a map

A Base filter is the boundary of a map. Advanced Maps expands each matched note into its linked tracks and photos. A supported photo or track file can also be a Base result itself, which is what makes whole-folder photo atlases and file-oriented route collections possible.

The snippet below is a complete .base file. Save it as atlas.base in the root of your vault, replace the two folder paths, open it, and choose its map view. You can keep editing filters and view options in the Bases interface.

filters:
  or:
    - file.inFolder("places")
    - file.inFolder("assets/onedrive/Pictures")
views:
  - type: map
    name: Atlas
    coordinates: coords
    trackWeight: 4
    trackOpacity: 85
    fitMaxZoom: 16

The first branch supplies notes whose coords property becomes a normal marker. The second supplies photo files directly. JPG, JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, HEIF, and AVIF are supported.

“Every photo” means every photo with readable GPS metadata. A file with no GPS remains in the Base results but gets no fabricated marker. A photo with GPS but no usable embedded thumbnail still gets a plain dot.

View keys added by Advanced Maps

The last three keys in the example are options the plugin appends to the Bases interface under Tracks and Coordinate system. Leave them out to follow the plugin settings.

Key	Option in the view	Meaning
trackWeight	Line width	Track stroke width
trackOpacity	Line opacity	Track stroke opacity
fitMaxZoom	Max zoom when fitting	How far automatic framing may zoom in
coordSystem	Tile coordinate system	Blank follows the plugin default

Where to go next

• Use Photo maps for linked photos, external folders, display controls, and the photo index.
• Use Tracks and areas to choose between a normal link and an inline map.
• Use Around and navigation to configure one reusable Base for note navigation.
• Use Coordinates and services when the basemap datum or an external service matters.