JOSM Styles

The JOSM map display (MapPaint) uses XML style files to convert the user provided tags to a map like display including e.g. colouring, line thickness and icons.

Alternative Styles

By changing the XML style file (or files) you can customize your JOSM's map display as you like. It is even possible to show more features (e.g. 'maxspeed' values) in the editor's map by adding a special style file.

URLs for new style files can be entered by editing this page and then are automatically available in JOSM mappaint preferences (after a few minutes).

short description	author	description	version
​Coloured Addresses	simon04	Style to ease mapping of addresses by colouring streets and houses ​More details
​Conscriptionnumbers/streetnumbers	jose1711	Style useful when mapping addresspoints in Czech and Slovak republic (​http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/CS:WikiProject_Czech_Republic/Address_system). It makes addr:housenumber optional	0.1
​Iceland	Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason	Custom JOSM mappaint style for Iceland	0.1
​JOSM internal, no labels	Attila Szasz	Modified JOSM internal style which doesn't show any labels.	20110312
​SeaMap FreieTonne	FreieTonne	Seemap/ Seamarks from Project FreieTonne ​More details	2013-05-20_04:40:44
​Hide nodes	Felis Pimeja	Simple style to hide nodes in JOSM (may be handy to observe objects on low levels)	1
​Mapnik (true)		MapCSS variant of the OSM Mapnik style (as close as possible to the original). It is not very suitable for real mapping in an editor because nodes and lines without a style are hidden and opaque areas may cover each other. This file is optimized for JOSM and may need some minor changes to work properly with other MapCSS implementations.	0.1
​NaPTAN bus stops	Vclaw	Highlight bus stops (and taxi ranks) from Naptan import (UK), and whether they have been verified	0.1_2011-05-16
​OpenAviationMap	Morten Olsen Lysgaard	OpenAviationMap styling of aviation related data. ​More details	0.0.2
​railway.mapcss
​OpenSeaMap	OpenSeaMap	Seamarks for OpenSeaMap ​More details	2011-02-13
​Watersports	openseamap.org	Visualization of some water sports tags	1.0_2012-02-18
Address Tags Validator	Antisida, CupIvan, Felis Pimeja, Zverik	Coloring of buildings with or without addr:street, addr:housenumber	1.12_2013-04-10
BesideTheRoad_Speed	kudrdima	Visualization of traffic signs, road characteristics, some of the road infrastructure, traffic restrictions and prohibitions ​More details	0.7_2011-09-28
British map overlay	Ulf Lamping	Special rules to take differences in the british area into account (e.g. traffic signs).	1.2_2011-02-25
Coloured Buildings.de	geozeisig	Style to classify buildings More details	1.05_2013-01-31
Coloured Postcode	geozeisig	Style to ease mapping of Postcode by colouring streets and houses and nodes More details	1.11_2013-01-31
Coloured Streets	geozeisig	Coloring of buildings in the color of the street More details	1.011_2013-05-02
Coloured Suburb	geozeisig	Coloring of buildings with addr:suburb depending on the first letter of the suburb More details	1.05_2013-01-19
Cycleways	cmuelle8	Standalone style to visualize cycleway=* and bicycle=* of objects, fade everything else. Please turn off JOSM internal style to use it. More details	1.4_2012-05-25
FIXME Highlight Warnings	pierzen	This MapCSS style highlights ways/Polygons that contain Fixme attribute and unnamed highways. This style may be used alone or combined with other styles such as Potlatch2 and Mapnik (Tested in JOSM only).	0.6_2012-09-06
EPCI (France)	Don-vip	Display French local authorities (known as EPCI)	1.3_2011-07-09
Paddenstoel guidepost	vsandre	Show a special icon for a paddenstoel guidepost. More details	1.5_2011-05-20
Boundary_Stone	ajoessen,lutz	Visualization of some historic=* tags	0.6_2012-07-06
Japan Impassable Ways	cmuelle8	Dash out ways tagged with barriers, visualize practicability=* More details	1.5_2011-03-22
Japan Tsunami POIS	PierZen	POIS related to Tsunami plus Surface / Roads with damages, obstacles More details	1.20_2011-05-15
Landcover tags	Martin Vonwald	Show landcover and some additional landuse tags	0.4.10_2013-02-28
Lane and road attributes	Martin Vonwald	Visualization of lanes, width, turn lanes, changing the lane, destination, lighting and street lamps, sidewalk, cycletracks, bicycle lanes, bus lanes, psv lanes. More details	2.0-30_2013-05-04
Lane details, right-hand traffic, arrow version	Wolfgang Hinsch	Shown tags:: lanes, turn lanes, bus lanes, changing the lane, cycleways, sidepaths and lightning	0.9_2012-11-22
Lane details, right-hand traffic, color version	Wolfgang Hinsch	Shown tags:: lanes, turn lanes, bus lanes, changing the lane, cycleways, sidepaths and lightning	0.3_2012-11-22
Less obtrusive nodes	xeen	Make nodes smaller when zoomed out. This makes navigating easier when viewing a large area. Also hides icons and text accordingly. More details	1.4_2013-01-07
Lit	cmuelle8	Show lit=yes/no settings in JOSM map display	1.3_2012-09-01
Lit Objects	achadwick	Supplementary stylesheet which highlights lit and unlit objects by surrounding them with large glows. Works well with the Potlatch 2 base style.	0.1_2012-02-01
Maxspeed	Rubke, Dirk Stöcker, Vclaw	Show maxspeed settings in JOSM map display	1.5_2011-07-24
Speedlimit Signs	Martin Koppenhoefer	Display maxspeed on nodes by Speedlimit signs.	1.7_2013-03-27
Modified objects	Sebastian Klein	Highlight modified objects	0.1.6_2011-02-24
Mountains	lzhl	Indication mountain terrain tags	0.3_2013-03-19
new parking features	Mario Schütze	Display the new parking features from "Proposed_features/parking" (see link). ​More details	1.2_2012-02-05
Streets Have No Name	Yann Coupin	Could be a U2 song: highlights where the streets have no name	0.3_2012-10-19
Numbered Cycle Node Networks	Polyglot	Highlight Numbered nodes and the routes in between them More details	1.6_2012-11-04
Numbered Walking Node Networks	Marc Gemis	Highlight numbered nodes and the routes in between them More details	1.3_2012-11-08
Osmc hiking	Martin Ždila	Highlight marked hiking trails using osmc tagging schema. Optimized for SK/CZ marking.	0.1.1_2011-11-03
Parking lanes	Sebastian Klemm, Kay Drangmeister	Parking lanes along roads and parking/stopping restrictions. ​More details	0.9_2013-02-21
plan.at ToDos	simon04	Highlight problematic objects from plan.at import ​More details	1.4_2011-05-03
potlach2 access	iav	Visualizes access tag on highways. Made only for Potlach2 JOSM style	0.2_2012-11-30
Power	Cobra	A more detailed style for various power facilities and features	0.3.2_2012-07-23
Power Mapping Additions	prabhasp	Special icons for facilitating mapping of power lines; in development. More details	0.1_2013-04-22
Public Transportation	Polyglot	Highlight important information regarding Public Transportation More details	1.5_2012-11-04
Sidewalks	Cobra	Visualizes the sidewalk attribute of highways. sidewalk=* is rendered as a thick dashed line, seperately mapped sidewalks tagged footway=sidewalk are rendered thicker. ​More details	0.2_2012-05-28
Slovakia Bicycle Routes	Martin Ždila	Highlight bicycle routes tagged with Slovakia bicycle route tagging scheme.	0.1.2_2011-11-03
Surface - Data Entry	AndrewBuck	This styling is intended for data entry of road surface tags from aerial imagery. The style not only shows the status and value of the surface tag, but also refrains from drawing directly on the road allowing a clear view of the road surface in the imagery to allow for easier editing/checking of the surface values. More details	1.0.7_2012-08-12
Surface	cmuelle8	Visualize surface=* of objects More details	1.22_2011-03-22
Tree-Crown_Diameter	AndrewBuck	This style shows which trees have a tree crown diameter entered on them and if so, attempts to show the trees relative to their size. More details	1.0.1_2012-08-22
Whitewater	pankdm	Visualization of some whitewater=* tags	0.4_2011-09-10

Note: In the settings the internal style can also be reached using "resource://styles/standard/elemstyles.xml".

Create your own style

You don't like the standard style? Change it to your own liking:

• Either use one of the above styles or the standard one as a base for own styles
• Now you can edit the file (the standard style contains a format description)
• When you made new icons, either add a path to these in mappaint.icon.sources or use absolute URL to a webspace containing the icons
• Enter your style in the JOSM mappaint preferences.
• ... restart JOSM and your new style will be used!
• When the style should be available for other users as well, then add it to the above list of this page.

Style Collection

If you have an interesting style that might be useful for others, but are not compatible with the automatic access mechanism, just add a note here. Preferred is using the automatic usage as described above (list in the source at top of this wiki page).

• The OSM2Go ​source archives of version 0.6-4 contains a potlatch like JOSM style and version 0.6-5 contains an additional Mapnik like JOSM style in the data directory. These were written for OSM2Go and have not been tested with JOSM.
• There is a style corresponding to the German hiking map for ​download (​Installation hints).

JOSM styles for newbies (HOWTO)

To make any changes to JOSM's styles, go to the preferences panel (Menu: Edit->Preferences or hit [F12]). Then click the 3rd button on the left ("Settings for map projection and data interpretation") and select the "Map Paint Styles" tab. There you can find three text boxes: "Map Paint Styles", "Defaults" and "Icon paths".

The upper one ("Map Paint Styles") contains the currently selected *special* styles, but it maybe empty if you're just beginning to tweak JOSM's map paint stye :-) The middle one contains all "Default" style sets for special purposes which are available. Let's assume that you're interested in sea maps, then you probably will make use of the style "Sea Map Freie Tonne": Just highlight this line by clicking on it and push the "Copy Defaults" button, the selected line will show up in the upper box and will be active after the next JOSM start. You can add multiple styles as well, if you want. To delete a special style you don't use anymore, just select it in the upper box and hit the "Delete" button.

Well, let's continue with advanced style usage! You created your own style (see below on this page)? Just click "Add" and enter either path and filename or URL of your style file.

Rendering

Mappaint renders the map data so it looks much more like a map (colors, icons, annotations, ...) - compared to the JOSM wireframe mode.

Nodes

Most nodes that corresponds to tags in the ​Map Features page will show an appropriate icon, e.g. a "P" on blue ground for amenity=parking.

There are some special icons for missing/incomplete things:

missing icon We don't have the right icon for every node tag in map features yet, e.g. icons for most natural=xy tags are still missing. If you encounter such a "missing icon", feel free to create a nice 16*16 pixel icon that matches the tag and send it to the talk list.

warning icon The corresponding tag was once used but is no longer recommended to be used - or - it is not suitable for a node, e.g. highway=motorway just doesn't make sense on a node. Probably not all deprecated tags will show this icon.

Ways

Most ways that correspond to tags in the map features page will get special color, thickness and line style (e.g. dashed lines for railways).

Areas

Areas are ways that form a sort of ring. Most areas that corresponds to tags in the map features page will be filled with a special color (the filling will be transparent to some degree).

Direction arrows

Direction arrows in this mode are only drawn for selected items, this gives you a a significant speedup while moving the map.

Preferences

In the preferences editor you handle new style files as well as paths to the icons. Note that styles can be either additional or individual. If a style itself has a new internal name, then switching the "standard" default to this name creates a new display. Styles with equal names are additional. If you want to change the name of a style, you need to add the new name in front of the path using a "=" as separation. The same can be used for icon paths.

You also can use the following hidden preferences:

• mappaint.fillalpha
  • alpha "opacity level", that is used to fill areas. An integer value between 0 (transparent) and 255 (solid) with the default of 50.
• mappaint.fillareas (show areas)
  • 10000000 (default) - areas will be filled with their corresponding colour
  • 0 - areas will be surrounded by lines only
  • any other number - areas will be shown in any zoom level below the given number in meters)
• mappaint.showicons
  • select whether icons are shown - same values as mappaint.fillareas
• mappaint.shownames
  • select whether names are shown - same values as mappaint.fillareas
• mappaint.strokes
  • select whether strokes or full lines are used - same values as mappaint.fillareas
• mappaint.useRealWidth
  • true - ways will change width corresponding to the real width in meters set in the elemstyle.xml file
  • false (default) - ways will have the same width on every zoom level
• mappaint.zoomLevelDisplay
  • true - elements visibility depends on zoom level
  • false (default) - all elements are displayed
• mappaint.fontsize
  • 8 - size of mappaint texts