Classic Styles
Mapbox Classic Styles are a collection of Mapbox-designed map styles that predate Mapbox Standard. They were designed to cover common use cases — general navigation, outdoor recreation, satellite imagery, and low-distraction basemaps for data visualization. These styles use the traditional Mapbox styling model and support the full range of Mapbox Style Specification properties.
Mapbox Classic Styles are no longer actively maintained. They remain available for existing applications, but will not receive new features, cartographic improvements, or bug fixes. For new projects, use the Mapbox Standard style, which is continuously improved and supports modern features like 3D buildings, dynamic lighting, and featuresets for interactivity.
Available classic styles
| Style | Style URL |
|---|---|
A general-purpose street map featuring roads, transit, and place labels. | |
A terrain-focused style with hiking routes, contour lines, and natural features. | |
A minimal, light-colored basemap suited for overlaying data visualizations. | |
A minimal, dark-colored basemap suited for overlaying data visualizations. | |
Global satellite and aerial imagery with no labels. | |
Satellite imagery with road and place labels overlaid. | |
A high-contrast style optimized for in-vehicle navigation in daytime conditions. | |
A high-contrast style optimized for in-vehicle navigation in nighttime conditions. | |
Using classic styles
When using classic styles, you can either instantiate a map using the style URL, or clone the style in Mapbox Studio to customize it.
Instantiate a map with a classic style
Classic styles can be used with any Mapbox SDK or library by specifying the style URL when creating a map:
const map = new mapboxgl.Map({
container: 'map',
style: 'mapbox://styles/mapbox/streets-v12',
center: [-74.006, 40.7128],
zoom: 12,
});
MapboxMap(
mapViewportState = rememberMapViewportState {
setCameraOptions {
zoom(12.0)
center(Point.fromLngLat(-74.006, 40.7128))
}
},
style = {
GenericStyle(style = "mapbox://styles/mapbox/streets-v12")
}
)
Map(initialViewport: .camera(
center: CLLocationCoordinate2D(latitude: 40.7128, longitude: -74.006),
zoom: 12,
bearing: 0,
pitch: 0
))
.mapStyle(MapStyle(uri: StyleURI(rawValue: "mapbox://styles/mapbox/streets-v12")!))
MapWidget(
styleUri: "mapbox://styles/mapbox/streets-v12",
cameraOptions: CameraOptions(
center: Point(coordinates: Position(-74.006, 40.7128)),
zoom: 12.0,
),
)
Once the style is loaded, you can manipulate or hide built-in layers, add your own sources and layers, or add non-map content like markers/annotations and popups.
Clone and customize a classic style
You can use classic styles as a starting point for your own custom style. Use the Clone in Studio links above to open the style in Mapbox Studio, where you can customize the style's colors, fonts, layer visibility, and more. When you're done, publish your style and use the new style URL in your application.
Changes to cloned styles are yours to keep up to date. Mapbox will not apply cartographic updates or bug fixes to classic styles, so if you clone a classic style as the base for your custom style, you will need to manually apply any future updates to the original classic style yourself.
Classic styles support all standard Mapbox Style Specification features, including custom layers, sources, filters, and expressions.
Differences from Standard Styles
Classic styles use a different architecture from Mapbox Standard. The key differences:
| Classic Styles | Mapbox Standard | |
|---|---|---|
| 3D environment | 2D (3D extruded buildings possible) | Buildings, landmarks, trees, and terrain |
| Lighting | Static | Dynamic presets (dawn, day, dusk, night) |
| Interactions | queryRenderedFeatures by layer id | Featuresets with built-in feature state |
| Layer customization | Full access to all layers | Configuration options only |
| Custom layer placement | before layer ID | Slots (top, middle, bottom) |
| Style architecture | Monolithic style JSON | Style imports |
| Cartographic updates | Manual updates required | Applied automatically |
Migrating to Mapbox Standard
Migrating from a classic style to the Mapbox Standard style depends on whether you are using the style to initialize your map or have cloned it and are using a custom style. See the migration guide for detailed instructions on how to migrate your style and application code to Mapbox Standard.