Maurice
1f66ef1d32
CARTO stamps an "API KEY REQUIRED" watermark onto every basemap tile fetched without a key since 26.08.2026, and both CartoDB presets plus the built-in fallback are CARTO. The key is free and needs no account, so add it as a setting rather than dropping the provider. carto_api_key sits next to mapbox_access_token: per user in Settings/Map, instance-wide under Admin/User Defaults, encrypted at rest, injected from CARTO_API_KEY on managed instances. Unlike Mapbox it never switches the map provider, since a raster key says nothing about the renderer. The key is appended as ?key= at render time instead of being stored in the template, so a saved URL stays portable and survives a rotation. That is also what reaches the four maps that pinned CARTO and ignored the user's tile setting: atlas, collections, the public trip share and the public journey. The two share pages read it from their token-gated payload, the same way baseCurrency already travels. Also lifts the release notice above page chrome. Its overlay sat at z-index 50, under the Vacay mode toolbar at 61, so the dialog was neither on top nor modal. Adds a six-step layer scale to index.css and moves the three notice shells onto it. Closes #2054 Closes #2052
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Map Settings
The Map tab controls which map engine and tile source TREK uses in the Trip Planner and Journey maps.
Note: The Atlas view always uses Leaflet regardless of this setting.
Where to find it
Open the user menu in the top navigation bar, select Settings, then the Map tab. Unlike the General tab, changes here are not saved as you make them — click Save Map when you are done.
Map provider
Choose the rendering engine:
| Provider | Description |
|---|---|
| Leaflet | Classic 2D renderer. Works with any raster tile URL. No token. |
| Mapbox GL (Experimental) | Vector tiles with 3D buildings and terrain support. Requires a Mapbox access token. |
| MapLibre GL | Vector tiles from OpenFreeMap. No access token required — this is the reason to pick it over Mapbox GL. |
Each GL provider stores its style in its own slot (mapbox_style for Mapbox GL, maplibre_style for MapLibre GL), so switching providers never clobbers the other one's style.
Leaflet — tile source
When Leaflet is selected, pick a preset or enter a custom tile URL.
Built-in presets:
| Name | URL |
|---|---|
| OpenStreetMap | https://tile.openstreetmap.org/{z}/{x}/{y}.png |
| OpenStreetMap DE | https://tile.openstreetmap.de/{z}/{x}/{y}.png |
| CartoDB Light | https://{s}.basemaps.cartocdn.com/light_all/{z}/{x}/{y}{r}.png |
| CartoDB Dark | https://{s}.basemaps.cartocdn.com/dark_all/{z}/{x}/{y}{r}.png |
| Stadia Smooth | https://tiles.stadiamaps.com/tiles/alidade_smooth/{z}/{x}/{y}{r}.png |
You can also type any XYZ tile URL directly into the text field.
Admin: The admin can set a default map tile URL for all new users via the User Defaults tab in the Admin Panel. See Admin-Panel-Overview.
CARTO API key
Since 26 August 2026 CARTO stamps an API KEY REQUIRED watermark onto every basemap tile fetched without a key, so both CartoDB presets need one. The key is free and no CARTO account is required: request it at carto.com/basemaps/apikey with an email address, the domain you run TREK on and a one-line description of your project. It arrives by mail, there is no approval queue. The free allowance is 5 million tile requests per calendar month.
Paste it into CARTO API key in Settings, Map. TREK appends it as ?key=... to every CARTO tile request, which
covers the Trip Planner, Journey maps, Collections, Atlas, Studio and the offline tile download in one go. The key is
never stored inside the tile URL itself, so switching keys later does not break a saved template.
Admin: User Defaults in the Admin Panel has the same field as Shared CARTO key. It applies to every user who has not entered one of their own, which clears the watermark for the whole instance at once. It is stored encrypted at rest.
Other providers are unaffected. If you would rather not register at all, switch the template to OpenStreetMap, which needs no key. Note that the OSM tile servers do not permit bulk pre-downloading, so offline maps stay a CARTO feature.
Mapbox GL — access token and style
Enter your public token (pk.*) from mapbox.com → Access tokens.
Required scopes are:
- STYLES:TILES
- STYLES:READ
- FONTS:READ
- DATASETS:READ
- VISION:READ
If Mapbox GL is selected but no token is saved, TREK falls back to the Leaflet renderer, so the Trip Planner and Journey maps keep working. Only the preview on this settings page stays blank, with the note Enter a Mapbox access token to preview.
Built-in style presets:
| Style | Tags |
|---|---|
| Mapbox Standard | 3D, Apple-like |
| Standard Satellite | 3D, Satellite |
| Streets | 3D, Classic |
| Outdoors | 3D, Terrain |
| Light | 3D, Minimal |
| Dark | 3D, Dark |
| Satellite | 3D, Satellite |
| Satellite Streets | 3D, Satellite |
| Navigation Day | 3D, Apple-like |
| Navigation Night | 3D, Dark |
You can also enter a custom mapbox://styles/USER/ID URL directly.
3D Buildings & Terrain
Enables pitch and 3D buildings on all styles. Mapbox Standard and Standard Satellite ship their own building volumes, so TREK adds no extrusion layer there; every other style gets one injected. Terrain elevation (DEM-based height) is additionally applied on Satellite, Satellite Streets and Outdoors; Standard Satellite brings its own terrain from Mapbox and is left alone. The remaining styles get buildings but no terrain — including plain Mapbox Standard, whose built-in terrain TREK switches off — because the elevation data would cause route lines to visually drift away from the HTML place markers.
High Quality Mode (Experimental)
Enables antialiasing and globe projection for sharper edges. May impact performance on lower-end devices.
MapLibre GL — style
MapLibre GL renders OpenFreeMap vector tiles and needs no token at all, so there is no token field on this provider — just a style.
Built-in style presets:
| Style | URL |
|---|---|
| OpenFreeMap Liberty (default) | https://tiles.openfreemap.org/styles/liberty |
| OpenFreeMap Bright | https://tiles.openfreemap.org/styles/bright |
| OpenFreeMap Positron | https://tiles.openfreemap.org/styles/positron |
You can also type any https://tiles.openfreemap.org/… style URL. A style that is not an OpenFreeMap URL is rejected and replaced with Liberty when you save.
The 3D Buildings & Terrain and High Quality Mode toggles are Mapbox-only and are not shown for MapLibre GL.
Where a map opens
There is no default map center or zoom setting — it was removed in v3.4.0. Instead, every map works out its own opening camera from the places it is about to draw, so a trip in Japan opens on Japan instead of starting on the world view and then flying across the planet.
For each trip map — Trip Planner, Collections and shared-trip links — TREK takes the coordinates it is given and computes the center and zoom that frame them all (the Journey maps frame themselves with the renderer's own fitBounds, capped at zoom 16 on both engines):
- Several places — the camera fits their bounding box. The zoom is capped (16 on Leaflet, 15 on the GL renderers) so a tight cluster does not open absurdly far in, and the center is taken in projected (Mercator) space rather than as an average of the latitudes, so the northernmost place does not fall out of frame.
- A single place (or several stacked on the same spot) — there is no extent to fit, so it opens at city level: zoom 12 on Leaflet, 11 on the GL renderers.
- Places spanning the date line — MapLibre GL and Mapbox GL wrap the world, so a trip covering Fiji and Samoa is framed as the 10°-wide arc it really is. Leaflet does not wrap, so it takes the plain west-to-east span instead.
- Side panels — chrome overlaying the map shifts the center, so the places stay inside the part of the map you can actually see.
- No usable coordinates — a brand-new trip with nothing placed yet has nothing to frame, so the map falls back to a world view (center
0, 0at zoom 2).
The small map preview on this settings page is the exception: it stays on a fixed city (Paris) — zoom 16 on the two GL previews, city-level zoom 12 under Leaflet — so you can judge label density, 3D buildings and satellite texture. It is not a setting and no real map opens there.