Mapbox Style Specification

The MapboxMapboxMapbox is a robust platform that equips developers with tools to create highly customizable, interactive maps for web... Style Specification is an open, JSON-based document format that describes every aspect of how a map should look. A style document references one or more tile sources (vector, raster, or GeoJSONGeoJSONGeoJSON is an open standard format for encoding geographic data structures using JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). I...), defines layers with type-specific paint and layout properties, specifies fonts and sprite sheets for labels and icons, and controls camera parameters like center, zoom, bearing, and pitch. Originally created by Mapbox for use with Mapbox GL JS, the specification has been adopted by the broader open-source community through MapLibre GLMapLibre GLMapLibre GL is an open-source map rendering library forked from Mapbox GL JS. It provides GPU-accelerated vector tile... JS and MapLibre Native, making it the dominant styling language for GPU-accelerated vector tileVector TileVector tiles package geographic vector data into a grid of small, efficiently encoded tiles that are transmitted to t... maps. Tools like Maputnik and Mapbox Studio provide visual editors for creating and modifying styles without writing JSON by hand. The specification supports data-driven styling through expressions—a functional language embedded in the JSON that evaluates feature properties, zoom levelZoom LevelA zoom level is a discrete scale step in a web mapping tile system that determines the amount of geographic detail di..., and other runtime variables to compute visual values dynamically. This enables sophisticated cartographic effects such as smooth zoom-based transitions, feature-state highlighting on hover, and conditional visibility. Style documents are portable, versioned, and can be shared as URLs, making it easy to collaborate on map design and deploy consistent styling across web and mobile platforms.