Getting Started

1. Install the CLI

The pmtiles CLI tool is a single binary you can download at GitHub Releases.

2. Find the latest daily planet

Go to maps.protomaps.com/builds and find a recent daily basemap build.

Use the pmtiles CLI to inspect that archive:

pmtiles show https://build.protomaps.com/20241220.pmtiles

...
planetiler:osm:osmosisreplicationtime 2024-12-20T05:00:00Z
...

The above metadata shows that the file contains OpenStreetMap data up to that day.

3. Extract any area

We can now create a subset of the planet file, my_area.pmtiles, with just tiles matching the bounding box 4.742883,51.830755,5.552837,52.256198 centered around Utrecht, Netherlands.

pmtiles extract https://build.protomaps.com/20241220.pmtiles my_area.pmtiles --bbox=4.742883,51.830755,5.552837,52.256198

Note: You can find the bounding box of your own area, using tools, such as http://bboxfinder.com/

We can also create a subset of the whole planet that is only zoom levels 0 to 6 and ~60 MB:

pmtiles extract https://build.protomaps.com/20241220.pmtiles planet_z6.pmtiles --maxzoom=6

4. View the basemap

maps.protomaps.com is a viewer for basemaps. Drag our file my_area.pmtiles or planet_z6.pmtiles onto the Drop Zone to view the map:

Next Steps

• Upload your tiles to cloud storage: Cloud Storage
• Change the appearance or theme of the basemap: Basemap Styles
• Bring your own datasets: Creating PMTiles