11 Essential Tips for New QGIS Users

If you're new to QGIS you might find it a little intimidating and confusing when you first jump in. We want to share a few tips with you that we found helpful in our journey learning QGIS. If you’d prefer a video, watch 11 QGIS Tips for Newbies on Felt’s YouTube channel.

Help Documentation

Our first – and possibly most helpful – tip is how to access the online documentation. You can select Help > Help Contents from the menu bar, or you can use the keyboard shortcut F1 to take you directly to the QGIS documentation website. If you're new to the world of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as well, you can scroll down on the left side and select the Gentle Introduction to GIS. We found this to be incredibly helpful when we were first learning about GIS.

Add a Map

One of the first things you might notice when jumping into QGIS is there's no pre-existing map. To get around this, go down to the coordinate system box and simply type in the word “world” and hit enter. This is going to add an existing GeoPackage (a format for geospatial data) that's automatically placed on your local drive when you install QGIS.

Precision Zoom Controls

The hand tool allows you to pan the map around. You can simply click and drag to pan, or use the arrow keys to change your viewpoint. Use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out. But if you want finer zoom control, hold the control (Windows/Linux) or command (MacOS) key as you zoom in. For faster zoom movements, hold the shift key as you're zooming.

Zoom to Full

If you've gone way too far in or way too far out and don't know where your map is anymore, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + F/Cmd + Shift + F to zoom back to the full view of your map.

Customize the Interface

If you want to customize the interface, you can click and drag panels to move them around. For example, you can put the layers panel above the browser panel or make them tabs. To further customize, go to Settings > Options. Under General, you can adjust the style, UI theme, icon size, and font. After making changes, you need to restart QGIS for the changes to take effect. If you regret your changes, you can reset the user interface to default settings under the System tab in the Options menu.

Tighten up the Toolbar

At the top of the UI, there are several rows of different symbols. As a new QGIS user, this can be confusing and takes up a lot of space. The toolbar is a collection of smaller toolbars that you can customize. Right-click on an open area of any row to see the active panels and toolbars. Turn off the visibility of some toolbars to free up space. The tools are still accessible via drop-down menus and can be re-added as you learn their functions.

Select Features

To grab an individual country on your world map, use the select features tool to select individual features. (If it’s not visible, go to View > Toolbars and turn on the selection toolbar.) Click-and-drag or shift-click to select multiple features.

Identify Features

If you want to see the attributes of a feature, use the identify features tool to click on a feature and bring up the identify results panel with its attributes. (If it’s not visible, go to View > Toolbars and turn on the attribute toolbar.) Click-and-drag to identify multiple features.?

Open Attribute Table

To see the attribute table for an entire layer, right-click on the layer and select Open Attribute Table.

Work with Plug-ins

Plug-ins are a big part of QGIS. To find and install them, go to the Plugins drop-down menu and select Manage and Install Plugins. You can filter by installed or not installed and search by keyword. For example, “Quick Map Services” is a popular plugin for adding basemaps. Once installed, you can add various basemaps like satellite imagery or terrain.

Share Maps to the Web

We have our own plugin called “Add to Felt” which allows you to share your QGIS maps to the web and collaborate with colleagues seamlessly. If you’d like to see how it works, watch How to Share QGIS Projects.

We hope you found this list of tips for QGIS useful. If you want to see more posts like this, or if we left out any tips that you think are crucial, please leave them in the comments — we’d love to hear your suggestions and learn more about QGIS. Thank you!