Map Style Sheets

Note

Bing Maps SDK for Android and iOS retirement

Bing Maps SDK for Android and iOS is deprecated and will be retired. Free (Basic) account customers can continue to use Bing Maps SDK for Android and iOS until June 30th, 2025. Enterprise account customers can continue to use Bing Maps SDK for Android and iOS until June 30th, 2028. To avoid service disruptions, all implementations using Bing Maps SDK for Android and iOS will need to be updated to use Azure Maps Web SDK by the retirement date that applies to your Bing Maps for Enterprise account type.

Azure Maps is Microsoft's next-generation maps and geospatial services for developers. Azure Maps has many of the same features as Bing Maps for Enterprise, and more. To get started with Azure Maps, create a free Azure subscription and an Azure Maps account. For more information about azure Maps, see Azure Maps Documentation. For migration guidance, see Bing Maps Migration Overview.

The Bing Maps SDK supports both default and custom Map Style Sheets. A Map Style Sheet represents a set of rules that define the style of the map in a map view.

Via the MapStyleSheet static methods you can create and combine multiple style sheets, where later sheets override settings set by earlier sheets.

Default Map Style Sheets

The pre-built Style Sheets establish the fundamental mode that a map view will render in. Available options are specified in MapStyleSheets:

Style Sheet Description
Empty A map style with an empty canvas. Useful if you want to display a custom set of tiles with no underlying map data.
Aerial A photorealistic map style with no markup.
AerialWithOverlay A photorealistic map style with labels, roads, and borders.
RoadDark A road map style with a dark theme.
RoadLight A road map style with a light theme.
RoadCanvasLight A road map style with a low-contrast light theme (some details such as hill shading disabled).
RoadHighContrastDark A road map style with a high-contrast dark theme.
RoadHighContrastLight A road map style with a high-contrast light theme.

Custom Map Style Sheets

You can create your own Map Style Sheet by writing custom JSON that overrides the default settings. Usually a default base map style is combined with custom JSON to change the appearance of the map.

The style sheet JSON API is described in Map Style Sheet Entries.

The style sheet JSON can also be created interactively using the Map Style Sheet Editor.

Changing the appearance of the map

See some examples for How to change the appearance of the map.

See also: