Easy update for basemaps

Hi everyone,

Our organization has a large number of tablets running with Android that are used on a daily basis. Users can consult the projects we update remotely on our QFieldCloud server.
Many of our projects will use the same basemaps. That’s why we’d like to use QField’s shared local datasets (Shared local datasets - QField Ecosystem Documentation).
However, we cannot retrieve each tablet individually to install the shared dataset in the following location : :/Android/data/ch.opengis.qfield/files/QField/basemaps. And it would be even more complicated if they had to be updated regularly. Moreover users aren’t trained for this task, we’d like to find a solution so that the local installation happens automatically, without their intervention (or just by downloading a new version of a projet).

Here are our questions:

  • Is it necessary to manually copy files to the specified location on each tablet, or could a QField project perform this task for the user? If it’s possible, when updating basemaps on the QFieldCloud server, can QField automatically overwrite the old file with the new version?
  • In the event that this isn’t possible, is it possible to imagine a project containing all the basemaps, being downloaded by the user on the app, and the others projets being able to retrieve the relevant files from their location (even if this is different from :/Android/data/ch.opengis.qfield/files/QField/basemaps)?

Thanks in advance for your help !

Some technical information:

  • QGIS 3.34
  • QField Cloud 0.32.5
  • QField Android 3.5.4

Imported from GitHub discussion by @sigsdis30 on 2025-04-01T11:44:54Z

Hello, sigsdis30 . We are developing a basic support of shared (localized) datasets on QFieldCloud in the upcoming weeks that will cover basic usage. For more advanced configuration and more info more work shall be undertaken. You can search for the development progress in the respective repositories on QField/QFieldCloud/QFieldSync.

If you want to know more, support the further development of this feature, or support long-term stability of the on-premises installations, please drop us an message at info [at] qfield.cloud .


Imported from GitHub comment by @suricactus on 2025-04-15T16:30:39Z