rooot viewer

PMTiles viewer

View PMTiles files (.pmtiles) on a 3D map in your browser. A modern static-tile container served via HTTP range requests — no tile server needed. No account, no install, no upload until you decide to convert or hand off to the rooot.it route planner.

Open the viewer → or jump straight to a conversion:

About PMTiles

PMTiles is the cloud-native single-file successor to MBTiles, designed by Protomaps. A .pmtiles file holds the same tile-data-plus-metadata content as an MBTiles SQLite database, but is laid out so that a browser or MapLibre client can fetch individual tiles from a static URL via HTTP range requests. No tile server, no SQLite — just a static file behind a CDN.

Typical producers: pmtiles CLI (Go), tippecanoe + pmtiles, go-pmtiles.
Typical consumers: MapLibre GL JS (via pmtiles protocol), protomaps/pmtiles JS, QGIS plugin.

How to view a PMTiles file

  1. Open the viewer.
  2. Drag your PMTiles file (.pmtiles) onto the page, or click the + in the Places panel.
  3. The file renders on a 3D MapLibre globe. Use the right-hand panel to toggle background layers (borders, labels, roads, buildings, transportation, places, terrain).
  4. Click features for details, or use the bottom toolbar to convert to another format.

PMTiles viewer FAQ

How do I view a PMTiles file?

Drop the .pmtiles on rooot viewer. The browser reads it directly via the protomaps `pmtiles://` MapLibre protocol handler — the file never leaves your machine. Vector PMTiles (MVT) and raster PMTiles (PNG/JPEG/WebP/AVIF) both render on the 3D globe.

Does PMTiles upload my file to a server?

No. PMTiles is designed for HTTP range requests, and rooot viewer leverages the same machinery against a Blob URL of your dropped file. The bytes stay in your browser.

What metadata does rooot viewer extract from PMTiles?

Spec version, tile type (MVT / PNG / JPEG / WebP / AVIF), tile compression (none / gzip / brotli / zstd), bounds, min/max zoom, and centre point. All parsed from the 127-byte v3 header. Plus `vector_layers` from the metadata block, used to colour vector layers separately.

Can I convert PMTiles to MBTiles or GeoJSON?

Not from rooot viewer. Use the Protomaps pmtiles CLI (`pmtiles convert`) for PMTiles ⇄ MBTiles conversion. Decoding to a single FeatureCollection is lossy because vector tiles are zoom-level-simplified.

Is rooot viewer free?

Yes. No account required. There are no per-conversion or per-view charges.

Does rooot viewer upload my files?

Files are parsed server-side for rendering but are not persisted unless you click Convert or Open in roooute. Persisted files are deleted within 24 hours.

Privacy

Files dropped on the main viewer are parsed server-side for rendering but are not persisted. Persistence happens only when you click Convert or Open in roooute; persisted files are deleted within 24 hours. Direct conversions through the per-format converter pages do not persist anything at all.