Maps and layers

Choose Topo, Satellite, or Hybrid, then use the slope, ownership, and cell coverage layers.

In Explore, tap the layers icon at the end of the bottom bar. Tap Topo, Satellite, or Hybrid at the top of the panel, or slide your finger along them, then turn on the layers you need. Glassing remembers your choices.

Choose a base map

• Topo shows terrain, landcover, water, trails, and contours. Contours are 40 ft apart, with a heavier line every 200 ft.
• Satellite shows aerial photography, untouched. Ownership and Cell Coverage can be drawn over this base. With signal, zooming all the way in loads sharper photography over public land in states flown at 30 cm.
• Hybrid adds Topo's trails, contours, symbols, and names to the photography. Contours appear in amber.

Trails come from OpenStreetMap. Where it is missing a Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management trail, Glassing draws that trail from the agency's records, where it connects to a path or road on the map. These trails look like any other, but you can't tap them, and routes don't follow them.

When Glassing is in its dark appearance, Topo becomes a night map: the same trails, contours, and names in light ink on a dark page, easier on your eyes in a tent and readable with your screen turned down. Satellite and Hybrid look the same by day and night. In CarPlay, the map follows your car's day and night.

Use the legend

Open the layers panel and tap Legend. It shows the colors, source, and date for the visible layers. A Terrain section at the foot of the legend credits the elevation data behind the relief and the slope shading, says when the lidar under the view was flown, and states the ground distance a slope angle is measured over.

Slope

Use Topo or Hybrid and turn on Slope. It starts with Angle, which shows steepness. Tap the left side of the Slope row to reveal Angle and Aspect, then choose one. Aspect shows which direction a hillside faces. Glassing remembers your choice.

Tap the left side again to close the choices, or use the switch on the right to turn Slope off. Opening another layer's choices closes these.

Angle

Use Angle to compare off-trail routes and spot steep hillsides. In snow, it helps you identify steep slopes when planning travel in avalanche terrain.

The colors show steepness, not current avalanche danger. Check the local avalanche forecast and consider the slopes above your route too. Learn about avalanche terrain.

Dark green fades in between 15° and 20°, with different colors for steeper slopes as shown below. Shading is lighter over Hybrid so the photograph stays visible.

Zoom in if no colors appear. In Angle, unshaded ground may be below 15°, outside the data coverage, or too far zoomed out.

Aspect

Aspect colors a hillside by the direction it faces, not its steepness. Use it to pick out north-facing slopes or compare opposite sides of a drainage.

Nearly flat ground has no aspect shading: it starts above 5° and reaches full strength at 20°. Terrain relief stays visible over the colors. Open Legend to check the direction colors.

Tap a spot to read its slope and facing direction, such as 32° · NE-facing. This works even with Slope turned off. The facing direction is left off for nearly flat ground.

Both options use terrain measurements at roughly a 10 m scale. Small features may not appear. Shading does not tell you whether a slope is safe. Angle and Aspect are also available on the web map.

Forest roads

Tap a forest road to see how the Forest Service maintains it: All cars or High clearance. A seasonal road shows the last day of its season, such as High clearance · to Nov 30, and Closed until Apr 1 when it is out of season. This works offline in a downloaded map.

Tap the label to see where it came from: the vehicles the road is open to, its season, how the forest maintains it, the source and the date of the data, with a link to the Forest Service's list of Motor Vehicle Use Maps.

The label comes from the forest's Motor Vehicle Use Map, or from the Forest Service road inventory where the MVUM has no entry for the road. The inventory records how a road is maintained, not who may drive it, so Not open to vehicles there means the forest lists the road as closed and stored. Both can be out of date and do not cover every forest. A road with no label is not known to be open. Snow, damage, or a closure order can shut a road labeled open. The forest's printed MVUM is the legal document.

Terrain relief

Topo and Hybrid include shaded relief to bring out ridges and drainages. It becomes clearer as you zoom in; there is no separate switch. Switch to Satellite for the photograph on its own.

To tilt the map and see the mountains in relief, or to see sun and shade at a time of day, see 3D Terrain and Sunlight.

Ownership

Ownership colors public land by its manager and outlines private parcels in red. Public areas with restricted, closed, or unknown access use a lighter fill. As you zoom in, the public-land color lightens and then gives way to a band along its boundary so the map underneath stays readable. State land is labeled State or State trust, and company land of 40 acres or more with the company's name. Tap a spot to read its access information, with Ownership on or off. A parcel shows its owner's name only when that owner is an organization; a person, a family trust, an estate, or a trustee is never named, and the parcel shows its own street address instead.

Reservations and tribal trust lands are shown in the Tribal color, and military bases in the Other federal color, out to their boundaries. Private land inside a reservation can carry the same color. Access to tribal land is set by the tribe, so check with them before you enter.

A blank area does not mean public access. See Private land for parcel coverage and access labels.

Cell Coverage

Turn on Cell Coverage and choose AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon. The map shows one carrier at a time: darker shading for reported 5G and lighter shading for 4G LTE alone. It works over all three base maps.

Tap the left side of the row to change carriers. Use the switch to turn the layer off. See Cell Coverage for the legend, point labels, and offline use.

On the web map

The layers panel on glassing.app lists every layer under a heading: Terrain, Land, Access, Conditions, and Hunting. Check a box to turn a layer on. A layer that is on gets a strength slider, so you can make it lighter or darker. Your browser remembers each strength, and a copied link leaves them out.

The web map adds five Oregon layers. Outside Oregon their lines read Oregon only.

• Units outlines ODFW's wildlife management units, with each unit's number and name.
• Hunts outlines ODFW's hunt boundaries for one species at a time, labeled with their hunt numbers and, as you zoom in, their name. Pick Elk, Deer, Pronghorn, Bear, or Bighorn under its line.
• Far from roads shades ground by how far it is from the nearest open road, in steps at ¼ mile, ½ mile, 1 mile, and 2 miles.
• Forest roads draws open roads, solid if open all year and dashed if open only in season.
• Burns shades large wildfires since 1984. Newer fires are shaded more strongly. Drag the year in the bar at the bottom of the map to see only the fires up to that year, with that year's fires lit.

Units, Hunts, and Far from roads are in the Hunting section, which stays folded until you open it.

With Units or Hunts on, click a spot in a hunting unit. The spot opens in the sidebar with the hunts there listed, such as 6 elk hunts. Click a hunt to see its dates, bag limit, tags, success, and draw on a page of its own, and the map outlines it. In a narrow window the spot opens in a card: click the count to list the hunts, then click a hunt for its details.

Sunlight shades the ground the sun doesn't reach. Turn it on, then choose a day and a time in the bar at the bottom of the map. It works wherever the map has terrain.

The bar's day and times are local time at the middle of the map. When that differs from your computer's clock, the time names its time zone, like 7:45 AM MDT.

To get the Sunlight or Burns bar out of the way, click the ✕ at its end. It becomes a round button above the layers button, and clicking that brings the bar back. The layer stays on either way.

Thermals are visualized on the map as they'd flow on a calm, clear day: orange marks show winds flowing up sunny slopes, and blue marks drain down shaded ones and along valley floors.

Click a spot on the map or a saved waypoint, then What can I see? The map shows what you can see from that point, out to six miles.

To see it as you would standing there, click Look from here. Drag to look around, including up at the sky, then click Done. With Sunlight on, the sky follows its time.

Check Data coverage for available areas and offline layers. See Sources and limits for help interpreting the data.

Need help? Email support.