A Mapbox style is a document that defines the visual appearance of a map: what data to draw, the order to draw it in, and how to style the data when drawing it. A style document is a JSON object with specific root level and nested properties. This specification defines and describes these properties.
The intended audience of this specification includes:
Advanced designers and cartographers who want to write styles by hand rather than use Mapbox Studio.
Developers using style-related features of Mapbox GL JS or the Mapbox Maps SDK for Android.
Authors of software that generates or processes Mapbox styles.
For platform-appropriate documentation of style-related features, developers using the Mapbox Maps SDK for iOS should consult the iOS SDK API reference, and developers using the Mapbox Maps SDK for macOS should consult the macOS SDK API reference.
Style document structure
A Mapbox style consists of a set of root properties, some of which describe a single global property, and some of which contain nested properties. Some root properties, like version, name, and metadata, don't have any influence over the appearance or behavior of your map, but provide important descriptive information related to your map. Others, like layers and sources, are critical and determine which map features will appear on your map and what they will look like. Some properties, like center, zoom, pitch, and bearing, provide the map renderer with a set of defaults to be used when initially displaying the map.