geolens-io/geolens

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**Turn scattered GIS files into a searchable catalog and shareable maps—on your own infrastructure.**
GeoLens brings files, database tables, service snapshots, and remote assets into one spatial catalog you control. Search metadata, preview data, and keep every dataset’s origin visible. Build maps in the browser, publish links or embeds, and keep using QGIS and open standards alongside your team’s existing tools.
No install required. Browse the sample catalog and maps without an account, or sign in with Google, GitHub, or Microsoft to try the map builder. Demo data may be wiped at any time.
The map builder: every Manhattan building extruded to its true roof height and colored by the era it was built, the subway threading beneath, built from open data with scripts/seed-showcase.py
What you can do
- **Find datasets:** search one catalog across file uploads, database tables, and imported service snapshots.
- **Build and share maps:** compose multi-layer maps in the browser, then publish a link or embed them where people work.
- **Use your existing tools:** connect QGIS, ArcGIS, MapLibre, and scripts through OGC/STAC APIs and direct tile URLs.
Or the one-line form, which runs the same script and pulls the prebuilt images:
Images are published for linux/amd64 and linux/arm64. A fresh install runs six containers at about 1.3 GB resident.
Privacy, outbound connections, and data sources
GeoLens has no telemetry and phones home to nothing, except default basemap tiles from tiles.openfreemap.org until an administrator configures another provider. Features you opt into can make outbound calls: AI assist to your chosen OpenAI-compatible endpoint or Anthropic key, OAuth/OIDC sign-in, SMTP, remote or S3 data sources, and off-site backups.
Upload files, create datasets in the browser, or register tables already in GeoLens’s own PostGIS database without copying them. WFS, ArcGIS FeatureServer, and OGC API Features imports create one-shot copies; remote STAC assets remain live references. GeoLens records each dataset’s origin, indexes catalog metadata with pg_trgm for fuzzy search, and can add pgvector semantic ranking after you configure an embedding provider and enable semantic search.
> [!NOTE]
> **API stability.** The standards surfaces (OGC API Features/Records, STAC,
> and the tile endpoints) track their specifications and are safe to build
> against. GeoLens's own REST API can still change between minor releases:
> contract changes are listed in the CHANGELOG, and breaking
> ones keep the old form working for at least one more minor release. Hit a
> rough edge? Open an issue.
Documentation
Full user, admin, and API documentation lives at **docs.getgeolens.com**. The Reference table below links each guide.
Published artifacts
GeoLens is published through the standard package registries:
Prebuilt public API and frontend images are published to GitHub Container Registry:
The latest tag tracks the newest published stable release.
Why GeoLens?
Spatial data ends up scattered: shapefiles on shared drives, tables in database schemas, rasters in cloud buckets, metadata in spreadsheets. Finding the right dataset means asking Slack or grepping file servers. Sharing it means exporting, emailing, and hoping the CRS matches.
GeoLens replaces that workflow:
- **One data hub:** upload files, create datasets, register tables already in GeoLens's database, import feature-service snapshots, or reference remote STAC assets — then search and preview them together
- **Source state, not guesswork:** see how each dataset entered the catalog, when it was last refreshed or checked, how its last refresh compares with its declared cadence (fresh, due, overdue, or unknown), and whether a remote Service or STAC origin is still reachable
- **Works with your tools:** OGC API Features/Records with server-side CQL2 filtering, STAC API 1.0, direct tile URLs for QGIS, ArcGIS, and MapLibre
- **No lock-in:** your catalog and the copies GeoLens manages stay on infrastructure you control and leave through open formats. Vector datasets export to GeoPackage, GeoJSON, Shapefile, CSV, GeoParquet, FlatGeobuf, or PMTiles; rasters download as Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF; and any OGC API client reads the catalog directly