GeoPackage Viewer

Open a GeoPackage without QGIS

A GeoPackage is a single SQLite database file, defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) in 2014, that can hold many vector layers, raster tiles, plain attribute tables and even the QGIS styles of a project. QGIS saves to it by default, and more and more agencies publish open data as .gpkg. Without QGIS or ArcGIS Pro, though, a .gpkg is hard to look into: Windows has no program for it, and a database browser shows tables of binary geometry instead of a map. This page opens the file in your browser with GDAL, the library QGIS itself uses for GeoPackage, and shows each vector layer on a map, every field in a table you can search and sort, how many points, lines and polygons there are, and the coordinate system of the data. If the recipient needs shapefiles, one click writes every layer as a shapefile set with .prj and .cpg in one .zip. The file never leaves your computer, so a project with client data or unpublished plans can be checked safely. The pages linked below explain the conversions to and from GeoPackage.

How to open a GPKG file

1. Drop a .gpkg file on the page, or click to select it.
2. Look through the layers on the map and in the attribute table; search or sort the table by any field.
3. To hand the data on as shapefiles, optionally enter an EPSG code and click Convert to Shapefile.

What the viewer shows and what it leaves out

Only vector layers are shown

Raster tiles stored in a GeoPackage (orthophotos, scanned maps, elevation) are not drawn, and tables without geometry are skipped; the status line names them. The summary lists only the vector layers, so a file that seems empty may hold only rasters or plain tables.

The map is in WGS84, the data is not changed

The map shows the layers in longitude and latitude, reprojected from the coordinate system stored in the GeoPackage for each layer, such as ETRS89 / UTM 32N or British National Grid. The attribute table and a shapefile download keep the original coordinates unless you enter another EPSG code.

Large layers are previewed in part

To keep the browser responsive, the map draws at most the first 20,000 features of each layer, and the table shows 1,000 rows at a time; search or sort to reach the others. The shapefile download always contains every feature.

A copied file without its -wal file can be out of date

While QGIS has a GeoPackage open, recent edits can sit in a project.gpkg-wal file next to it. A copy made at that moment without the -wal file lacks those edits. Close the project in QGIS before you copy or send the .gpkg.

Shapefiles cannot hold everything

When you save as shapefiles, each layer becomes one shapefile per geometry type, field names are cut to 10 characters and date-and-time values become text. GeoPackage has none of these limits, so keep the .gpkg if the recipient uses QGIS or ArcGIS Pro.