A visual map editor for editorial and casual map makers.
Open a basemap, import your data, annotate freely, export a print-ready image.
GeoCarto is a canvas-based map editor built for people who need good-looking maps without the complexity of a GIS. You get an interactive basemap, a set of drawing and annotation tools, and a direct path to a high-resolution export — all in a single window, in the browser or as a native macOS app.
The target users are journalists, teachers, designers, and anyone who today falls back to Illustrator or a constrained online tool to make a map that looks the way they want.
- Open an interactive basemap (OSM-derived PMTiles via Protomaps) — no tile server or API key required
- Switch between four built-in styles: Editorial Light, Editorial Dark, Minimal Grey, Print B&W
- Provide a custom MapLibre style URL, PMTiles URL, static image, or empty canvas as the basemap source
- Toggle individual basemap sub-layers: land, roads, places, POIs, water, land cover, landuse, buildings, boundaries
- Import GeoJSON, TopoJSON, KML, GPX, and Shapefile — drag-drop or file picker
- Inspect feature attributes; reorder, show/hide, lock, rename, and delete layers
- Place GeoJSON layers as standard vector or switch them to a GPU-accelerated heatmap (deck.gl)
- Edit imported GeoJSON — move, add, and delete vertices; draw new features; edit attributes directly in the layer
- Text — labels with font choice, size, color, and halo
- Rectangle and ellipse — filled or stroked shapes
- Line / arrow — segments with dashed stroke and arrowheads
- Polygon — closed shape with hatch and pattern fill options
- Point pin — colored map pin anchored to a geographic location
- Image — place a PNG, JPEG, or SVG raster anywhere on the canvas
- Ruler / measurement — measure distances and areas on the map
All annotation types support fill, stroke, opacity, drop shadow, blend modes (normal / multiply / screen / overlay), and geo vs. canvas anchoring ("Pin to map" / "Pin to canvas").
- Title block and source credit
- Scale bar — snaps to round distances and tracks map scale
- North arrow — follows map bearing
- Legend builder — manually editable swatches linked to layer styles
- Marquee multi-select with shift/cmd/alt modifiers
- Group and ungroup objects (⌘G / ⌘⇧G)
- Smart guides — edge and center alignment cues during drag
- Grid snap — toggleable with configurable spacing
- Undo/redo with 100+ meaningful document steps (⌘Z / ⌘⇧Z)
- Multi-project tab bar — open several maps at once, each with its own autosave session
- Save and reopen
.cartoprojproject files (plain JSON); recent projects menu - Browser autosave (configurable interval, default 10 s via IndexedDB), with per-tab draft recovery on reload
- Dirty-document guards on New, Open, Close, and restore
- Error recovery — a top-level error boundary catches render crashes, force-flushes the session to autosave, and shows a reload screen; a crash-loop guard offers "discard project" if the same document keeps crashing
- Preferences modal (General / Appearance / Editor / Autosave / Basemap) — persisted to
localStoragewith versioned migrations and reset-to-defaults - Configurable autosave interval, units, default basemap, canvas defaults, and accent color
- French and English UI — auto-detected from the browser locale with a manual override in Settings
- PNG and JPEG — 1×, 2×, or custom scale; white or transparent background; JPEG quality slider
- SVG — annotations and map furniture export as editable vector objects; basemap and imported data layers are embedded as a raster image
- PDF — raster-in-PDF sized to the composition frame
- Native macOS window via Tauri 2, with full feature parity with the web build
GeoCarto is young and moving fast. A few things to expect at this stage:
- Web Mercator is the only projection for now — editorial projections (Robinson, Equal Earth…) are on the roadmap.
- Imported data layers export as raster inside SVG and PDF; annotations and map furniture stay fully editable vectors.
- The macOS desktop app is not yet signed or notarized, so Gatekeeper will warn on first launch.
- GIS analysis (joins, choropleth, buffers) and offline basemap packs are planned, not shipped.
GeoCarto is built in phases. The browser core loop and the editorial toolset are in place — here's what's next.
Recently shipped (0.2.x)
- Edit imported GeoJSON: move/add/delete vertices, draw new features, edit attributes ✓
- French + English localization with auto-detection and manual override ✓
- Unified settings modal (appearance, units, canvas defaults, autosave, basemap) ✓
- Top-level error boundary with crash-safe autosave recovery ✓
Next — discoverability & desktop reach
- In-app help and keyboard shortcut reference
- Local PMTiles files and offline regional basemap packs on desktop
- Signed & notarized macOS release; Windows and Linux desktop builds
Later — cartographic depth & print
- Non-Mercator editorial projections (Robinson, Equal Earth, Winkel Tripel…)
- GIS analysis: attribute joins, choropleth wizard, proportional symbols, buffering
- Print-grade vector PDF and a templates gallery
Future — collaboration & platform
- Cloud project sync, share links, and real-time collaboration
- Interactive HTML export
- Plugin / extension API
| Concern | Choice |
|---|---|
| Framework | React 19 + TypeScript + Vite 7 |
| Desktop | Tauri 2 (macOS) |
| Basemap | MapLibre GL JS v5 + PMTiles |
| Data layers | deck.gl |
| Annotation canvas | Konva.js |
| Drawing | terra-draw |
| State | Zustand + Immer |
| UI | shadcn/ui (new-york) + Tailwind v4 + Lucide |
| Testing | Vitest + Playwright |
- Node.js 20+
- Rust + Cargo (desktop build only)
git clone https://github.com/kilianvivien/geocarto.git
cd geocarto
npm install
npm run dev # http://localhost:5173npm run tauri dev # development build with hot-reload
npm run tauri build # production .app bundleFirst launch: the desktop app isn't signed or notarized yet, so macOS Gatekeeper will block it the first time. To open it anyway, right-click (or Control-click) the app → Open, then confirm Open in the dialog. macOS remembers the choice, so afterwards you can launch it normally.
If you only see a greyed-out Move to Trash option, go to System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to the security section, and click Open Anyway next to the GeoCarto warning. On recent macOS versions you may need to do this once per build.
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
npm run dev |
Dev server at http://localhost:5173 |
npm run build |
Typecheck + production build |
npm run typecheck |
tsc --noEmit |
npm run lint |
ESLint |
npm run format |
Prettier |
npm test |
Vitest unit tests |
npm run test:e2e |
Playwright end-to-end tests |
src/
app/ App shell and platform bridge
canvas/ Map view, annotation stage, data overlay, export frame
tools/ Drawing and annotation tools
layers/ Layer model — ordering, visibility, locking
style/ Basemap style presets and editor
import/ Data format parsers (GeoJSON, TopoJSON, KML, GPX, Shapefile)
export/ Raster, SVG, and PDF exporters
project/ .cartoproj schema, load/save, autosave
state/ Application state stores
ui/ Components, panels, inspector
basemap/ Basemap integration and style presets
src-tauri/ Tauri 2 desktop shell
The project is in early development. Issues and pull requests are welcome — please open an issue first for significant changes so we can align on scope before you invest time in an implementation.
GeoCarto is built on the shoulders of these open-source projects:
| Library | License | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| MapLibre GL JS | BSD-3-Clause | WebGL vector tile renderer — the map viewport |
| Protomaps PMTiles | BSD-3-Clause | Single-file tile archive format, no tile server required |
| @protomaps/basemaps | BSD-3-Clause | OSM-derived basemap styles, by The Protomaps Authors |
| deck.gl | MIT | GPU-accelerated data layers (heatmaps), by vis.gl |
| Konva / react-konva | MIT | 2D canvas stage for annotations, by Anton Lavrenov |
| terra-draw | MIT | Map drawing and geometry editing, by James Milner |
| Library | License | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| @tmcw/togeojson | BSD-2-Clause | KML and GPX → GeoJSON parser |
| shpjs | MIT | Shapefile → GeoJSON parser, by Calvin Metcalf |
| topojson-client | ISC | TopoJSON → GeoJSON, by Mike Bostock |
| Library | License | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| jsPDF | MIT | Raster-in-PDF export |
| Library | License | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Zustand | MIT | State management, by Paul Henschel / pmnd.rs |
| Immer | MIT | Immutable state updates, by Michel Weststrate |
| idb-keyval | Apache-2.0 | IndexedDB autosave, by Jake Archibald |
| Library | License | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| React | MIT | UI framework, by Meta |
| Vite | MIT | Build tool, by Evan You / VoidZero |
| Tailwind CSS | MIT | Utility-first CSS framework |
| shadcn/ui | MIT | Accessible component primitives, by shadcn |
| Lucide | ISC | Icon set, by Eric Fennis and contributors |
| clsx | MIT | Class name utility |
| tailwind-merge | MIT | Tailwind class merging, by Dany Castillo |
| Library | License | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Tauri | MIT / Apache-2.0 | Native macOS app shell |
| Library | License | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| TypeScript | Apache-2.0 | by Microsoft |
| Playwright | Apache-2.0 | End-to-end tests, by Microsoft |
| Vitest | MIT | Unit tests, by Anthony Fu |
| ESLint | MIT | Linter |
| Prettier | MIT | Code formatter, by James Long |
MIT — see LICENSE.