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Source limits in Mapbox Studio styles

Styles made with the Mapbox Studio style editor or uploaded to your Mapbox account have a limit of 15 sources. If you try to add more than 15 sources to your style, you receive the error message Failed to update style.

Check number of sources used​

To check the number of sources used in your style, open the style in the Mapbox Style Editor, click the sprocket Settings option in the top toolbar, and scroll to the Layer overview section.

Reduce the number of sources​

There are several strategies to reduce the number of sources in your style.

Combine sources​

The most effective way to reduce the number of sources you're using in a style is to combine data from multiple data files or tilesets into a single tileset. You can do this in several ways:

  • Data Workbench: Create a multi-layer tileset with the Data Workbench. Drag multiple files into the Data Workbench to create a multi-layer tileset. Note that dragging multiple files into Studio will create a multi-layer tileset.
  • GIS application: Use a tool outside of Mapbox, such as QGIS or ArcGIS, to merge your geospatial data before you upload it to Mapbox.
  • Tippecanoe: Use the open-source command line tool, Tippecanoe, to add multiple data files to a single tileset source, export to MBTiles, and upload them all at once to Mapbox.

Remove an unused source​

A source that is no longer needed can be removed from the style by deleting all layers using that source. To delete a layer dependent on a particular source, select the layer in the Layers panel and click the Delete button at the top of the panel. Note that not all layers can be deleted.

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