Basemap Style
The basemap is the picture under everything else: satellite imagery, coastline and place names from Mapbox. Pick one of nine looks in Preferences. It is not a nautical chart, and open water looks empty in the satellite views.
Updated by Mapbox on its own schedule
More detail
How to change it. Open Preferences. On the iPhone app it is in the account menu. The setting is called Basemap Style on the iPhone app and Basemap style, under Map, on the website. The nine choices are Satellite Streets, which is what the app starts with, Satellite, Dark, Light, Standard, Outdoors, Streets, Navigation Night and Navigation Day. The website shortens the last two to Nav Night and Nav Day. Your choice follows you to your other devices.
Which to pick. Dark is a plain dark map, so the ocean layers are easy to read on it. The two satellite styles show the coast as a photograph. Light, Standard, Outdoors, Streets and Navigation Day are pale. On those the iPhone app switches the lettering on contour lines and waypoints to dark.
Place names. The switch beside the style, Basemap Labels on the iPhone app and Show basemap labels on the website, hides or shows the place, road and water names. Unlike the style, it is saved on that device only.
The iPhone app keeps the map flat and north-up; the website lets you rotate and tilt it.
Limits. Mapbox updates its imagery when and where new pictures become available, not on a set schedule. So a new rig or a dredged channel can be missing from the picture. The basemap covers the whole world and keeps drawing past the edge of the water the ocean layers cover. To see what you must not use the app for, see Safety, limits and contacting us. For the bottom, use the Depth button and the Seafloor Relief shading. For structure, use the Waypoints button.
Who makes it. Mapbox, a commercial map company.
The numbers
| How often it updates | On Mapbox's own schedule |
| How fresh it usually is | Mapbox updates its pictures when and where new ones become available |
| How detailed it is | The website zooms in to a fixed limit; the iPhone app zooms in closer |
| Where it covers | Worldwide |
| Observed or modeled | Neither. It is a picture |
| What you see on screen | Imagery, coastline, place names and roads |
Source: Mapbox.