Tile Providers

A TileProvider works with a TileLayer to supply tiles (usually images) when given tile coordinates.

Tile providers may support compatible caching providers (including built-in caching), or may implement caching themselves.

Tiles are usually dynamically requested from the network/Internet, using the default NetworkTileProvider. Tiles can also come from the app's assets, the filesystem, a container/bundle, or any other source.

NetworkTileProvider

This tile provider uses the TileLayer.urlTemplate to get the appropriate tile from the a network, usually the Internet.

Specifying any fallbackUrl (even if it is not used) in the TileLayer will prevent loaded tiles from being cached in memory.

This is to avoid issues where the urlTemplate is flaky (sometimes works, sometimes doesn't), to prevent potentially different tilesets being displayed at the same time.

For more information, check the API documentation.

Local Tile Providers

These tile providers use the urlTemplate to get the appropriate tile from the asset store of the application, or from a file on the users device, respectively.

Specifying any fallbackUrl (even if it is not used) in the TileLayer will reduce the performance of these providers.

It will cause 23% slower asset tile requests with AssetTileProvider, and will cause main thread blocking when requesting tiles from FileTileProvider.

AssetTileProvider

This tile providers uses the templateUrl to get the appropriate tile from the asset store of the application.

Asset management in Flutter leaves a lot to be desired! Unfortunately, every single sub-directory (to the level of tiles) must be listed.

FileTileProvider

This tile providers uses the templateUrl to get the appropriate tile from the a path/directory/file on the user's device - either internal application storage or external storage.

On the web, FileTileProvider() will throw an UnsupportedError when a tile request is attempted, due to the lack of the web platform's access to the local filesystem.

If you know you are running on the web platform, use a NetworkTileProvider or a custom tile provider.

Offline Mapping

Offline Mapping