Posts by OPENGIS.ch blog

What is the QGIS Sustainability Initiative?

At OPENGIS.ch, we believe that the long-term health of the QGIS ecosystem depends on more than just adding new features. Critical work like bugfixing, code reviews, codebase maintenance, and quality assurance often goes unnoticed, yet it is essential to delivering the stable, reliable software that thousands of organisations depend on every day. That is why we launched the QGIS Sustainability Initiative (#sustainQGIS). For every support contract of more than 10 days, we donate development time to the initiative. In addition, all unused hours at the end of the year of each contract are also donated. This ensures that buying an OPENGIS.ch support contract directly helps enable the long-term, sustainable development of the QGIS and QField ecosystem.

2025 at a glance

In 2025, our team invested a total of 168 hours into the QGIS Sustainability Initiative, spread across five key areas of work. On the wider QGIS project, we contributed 553 comments and 294 merged pull requests throughout the year.

_{*In addition to these sustainability hours, OPENGIS.ch dedicated 105 hours to QGIS bugfixing funded by QGIS.org.}

Sustainability work by category – 168 hours

Our team

OPENGIS.ch on QGIS in 2025

Beyond the sustainability initiative, OPENGIS.ch had a significant presence in the QGIS codebase throughout 2025. In total, our team contributed 773 commits, 221 merged pull requests, 384 PR reviews, and helped close 122 bugs, plus 126 hours of dedicated bugfixing (21h from the sustainability initiative + 105h funded by QGIS.org).

Why It Matters

Every hour invested in the QGIS Sustainability Initiative strengthens the foundation that thousands of organisations rely on. By choosing an OPENGIS.ch support contract, you are not only getting expert support for your projects, you are directly contributing to a healthier, more sustainable open-source GIS ecosystem.

Thank you for being part of this journey.

At OPENGIS.ch, we create open-source software.
We are contributors, maintainers, and in the case of QField, the team that builds it.

That comes with a responsibility we take seriously: giving back.

“Give back” is not a slogan. It is our first core value, and the very reason the sustainability initiative exists.

Open-source is a garden. If you eat from it, water it, and keep seeding.

The Importance of seeding opening keynote, FOSS4G 2023

What is the #sustainQGIS initiative?

Open-source software has a well-known problem: the work that keeps it healthy is largely invisible. Bug fixes, code reviews, refactoring, test coverage, onboarding new contributors: none of these appear in a feature list, but without them, the software eventually degrades. Proprietary projects can budget for this work directly. Open-source projects mostly rely on whoever finds the time.
We wanted to change that, at least in our corner of the ecosystem.

The model is simple. For every support contract we sign that exceeds 10 days, we donate a portion of those days to the initiative. Any unused contract hours at year-end also flow in. That pool of time gets spent on exactly those invisible tasks: triaging and fixing bugs that affect stability, reviewing pull requests so good contributions actually land in the codebase, and doing the unglamorous maintenance work that keeps QGIS’s core solid.

Why we do it

We built a successful company around QGIS and QField. We write code (custom features, plugins, processing algorithms, entire applications) on top of these platforms every day. When a client needs something that cannot be done out of the box, we build it. And we build it inside the project whenever that makes sense, not in a private fork that nobody else benefits from.

Pushing changes upstream instead of maintaining private forks, sponsoring the QGIS project financially, and donating hours are all expressions of the same logic: the ecosystem is a shared asset, and shared assets need shared investment.

I chair the QGIS.org foundation, so I see directly how much the project depends on companies like ours showing up. A bug that slips through costs every QGIS user time. A code review that never happens means a useful feature sits in limbo for months. And a small group of core maintainers carrying the full load eventually burns out. These are not abstract problems. They affect users and the community on a daily basis.

What this means when you work with us?

When you sign a support contract with OPENGIS.ch, you are not just buying expert help with QGIS and QField. A slice of that contract goes back into the project itself. Your investment in solving your own GIS challenges also helps keep the platform reliable for everyone.

We think that is a good deal. It is the way we want to do business.

If you want to know more about the initiative or are ready to make a difference, get a support contract.

Open-source is a garden.
If you eat from it, water it, and keep seeding.

We’re genuinely excited to co-organise the upcoming QGIS User Conference together with QGIS User Group Switzerland, and to do so in Laax, right here in the Swiss Alps.

Laax is home to OPENGIS.ch and the place where QField was born. It is a setting that has shaped how we work, how we collaborate, and how we think about building open-source tools that are meant to be used in the real world.

Bringing the global QGIS community together in such a place feels just right. People and ideas come together around open source, with space to exchange, reflect, and collaborate, in an environment that mirrors values that are deeply rooted in our DNA and our close connection to nature.

• Yes, the venue is reached by cable car
• Yes, it comes with breathtaking views
• And yes, there will be plenty of opportunities to hike, bike, fly, or simply enjoy great conversations

The mountains will not just be a backdrop. They will be part of the conference experience.

As Marco, our CEO and Chair of QGIS.org, puts it:

“I’ve never been more excited about a QGIS conference location announcement. Welcoming the community to my hometown in the Swiss Alps feels very special. This is where OPENGIS.ch is based and where QField was born, and it is a perfect place for meaningful exchanges and shared experiences.”

We’re very much looking forward to organising this conference and to welcoming the QGIS community to Laax for what we hope will be a memorable and inspiring QGIS User Conference.

Updates and details can be found at conference.qgis.org

Just in time for the end of 2025, QField 4.0 is now available in a virtual store near you. This release brings significant improvements and marks an important usability milestone, worthy of a new major version. It’s truly never been easier to get started with QField—whether you’re a seasoned GIS professional or new to spatial data collection.

Main highlights

One of the most significant feature additions in this new version is right there on the welcome screen: a simple wizard for creating new projects. The wizard guides users through a set of questions covering the desired basemap style and actions such as note taking and position tracking. These projects can be published directly on QFieldCloud, so users can upload images, notes, and tracks that are accessible through web browsers or QGIS using QFieldSync.

The project creation framework also unlocked another feature we’re proud of: on-the-fly conversion of imported projects to cloud projects. The ability to upgrade pre-existing projects to cloud projects means that users can push spatial data and attachments residing on their devices to QFieldCloud and instantly collaborate with coworkers.

On the QFieldCloud front, we’ve done significant code refactoring to make synchronization and attachment uploads even more reliable. Users now see a progress bar showing attachment upload status.

The cloud projects list also lets users push changes and sync projects without opening them first. Indicator badges show whether you have pending local changes or if updates are available from the cloud.

A leaner, clearer, and more focused user interface

Early on in this development cycle, our ninjas decided to make a significant leap forward with QField’s UX focusing on making the user interface leaner when possible, clearer when needed, and more focused throughout. 

QField now has a vastly more readable feature form when viewing feature attributes. We’ve also made the interface more consistent by updating all editor widgets to use Qt’s Material style, so comboboxes, text fields, and other elements now have a unified look.

We’ve also simplified the user experience around positioning. The map canvas now has a single positioning button at the bottom right. Click the location marker overlay to reveal a new pie menu with quick access to positioning features: start tracking sessions, copy position to clipboard, show the positioning panel, lock the coordinate cursor to position, lock the map canvas to position, and add bookmarks at your position.

Now when users set accuracy thresholds, tracking sessions and averaged positioning will automatically filter out “bad accuracy” readings.

QField also animates transitions when jumping to your GNSS position, features, or coordinates, making navigation feel smoother and more intuitive.

Wait, there’s more

Beyond these major improvements, QField 4.0 includes tons of new features:

• Multilingual projects – a feature we added to QGIS several years ago – are now supported in QField
• When connected to the internet, QField now displays online legend graphics for WMS and Esri map services, providing crucial context for field users
• Additional feature form widgets are now supported, including the spacer widget and color editor widget, further improving interoperability with QGIS

A complete list of changes is available in the QField release notes on GitHub.

A new release cycle focused on water bodies

With the QField 4.X series, we’re introducing a new naming theme focused on water bodies.

Oceans, rivers, lakes, wetlands, and coastal waters are fundamental to life on Earth. They provide drinking water, support ecosystems and agriculture, regulate climate, and sustain communities worldwide. Yet these vital resources are increasingly under pressure from pollution, overuse, and climate change.

At OPENGIS.ch, we believe that better spatial data leads to better decisions. By making field data collection easier and more accessible, we aim to support those working to understand, protect, and manage these fragile systems. Dedicating this release cycle to water bodies reflects our commitment to using technology responsibly and connects naturally with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which we consistently strive to support through our work.

For the first release in this cycle, we chose a water body of particular significance to QField: Switzerland’s longest river entirely within the country, Aare.

As always, we hope you enjoy this new release.
Happy field mapping!

For QField 3.7, we opted for a shorter development cycle that focused on polishing preexisting functionalities from feature form editor widgets improvement through to better nearby Bluetooth device discovery. Of course, we couldn’t help ourselves and still packed in some nice functionality that we thought deserved to reach QField’s growing community as soon as possible.

Main highlights

One of the most interesting new functionalities from this development cycle has been the ability to stamp details on photos taken by QField’s in-app camera. A basic version of this has been supported for a while now; this new version offers flexible customisation of details stamping onto photos, including changing the font size, colour, and horizontal position, as well as providing users with the ability to completely change the details via expression-driven templates and add image overlays onto the photo.

The custom details stamping configuration lives within project files, allowing for individual projects to drive styling and details. The configuration interface is provided by QFieldSync and can be found in the project properties dialog by switching to the QField panel when setting up projects in QGIS:

The other significant addition in this release is the new plugin manager’s Available Plugins tab, which offers a curated list of plugins that can easily be installed with a single tap. The list makes it much easier to discover plugin-delivered functionalities such as online routing, geocoding searches, and much more.

The plugin manager can also alert users of available updates for their installed plugins, ensuring that crucial bug fixes and improvements are easily delivered. When a new version is released, users can update via a single tap. We are looking into the possibility of enabling automated plugin upgrades soon.

Long-time users of QField are probably aware of a nifty feature that allowed individual project layers to be locked, and for that lock to be driven by a data-defined property expression. For this new version, we’ve supercharged the layer lock functionality by breaking it down into four distinct vector layer permissions that can be disabled: i) feature addition, ii) attribute editing, iii) geometry editing, and iv) feature deletion. These permissions can be disabled by activating a checkbox or conditionality turned on via a data-defined property expression.

The disabling of permissions using a data-defined property expression allows for interesting scenarios when paired with QField-driven expression context variables such as the user name of a logged-in QFieldCloud account (@cloud_username), GNSS positioning (@gnss_coordinate) and more. Users can easily restrict permissions based on the user interacting with a cloud project, or form advanced geofencing-like rules based on location, time of the day, etc. For more details on available variables, read this page on QField’s growing documentation site.

Improvements all around

As mentioned above, this version focused on polishing preexisting functionality. Noteworthy improvements include:

• support for multiple column display as well as the ability to filter value relation lists;
• support for reversing the sorting order of the relationship editor’s children lists;
• smoother scanning process to discover nearby Bluetooth devices when adding external GNSS devices; and
• support for feature identification against vector tile layers (give that a try with the new OpenStreetMap shortbread vector tiles!).

Finally, life for QFieldCloud users has improved with the support for resuming large file downloads when fetching a cloud project, eliminating the need to restart from scratch after an interruption due to poor connectivity. In addition, users will notice a new notification badge on the top-left main menu button, indicating that a cloud project has pending changes ready to be pushed to the server.

We hope you enjoy this new version as much as we do delivering it to you. Happy field mapping!

This past Tuesday in Bern, the Swiss QGIS community came together for the 2025 edition of the QGIS.ch User Meeting — and we at OPENGIS.ch were proud to be deeply involved across the entire event, from presentations to hands-on workshops.

Sharing Insights and Innovation

The day began with our CEO, Marco Bernasocchi, opening the conference with an update on the QGIS project, covering exciting news about the upcoming QGIS 4 release and the ongoing website revamp (slides here). Shortly after, he took the stage again to present the latest improvements in QField, including new features, user experience (UX) enhancements, and under-the-hood upgrades that continue to enable efficient field data collection (slides here).

In collaboration with Timothée Produit from IG Group SA, our colleague Isabel Kiefer presented tools and streamlined processes for installing, managing, and updating TEKSI (and other) modules. These solutions are a testament to our mission of simplifying complex GIS infrastructure in public and private organisations alike.

Later in the morning, our CTO Mathias Kuhn gave a compelling talk on Machine Learning and AI in QGIS, showing real-world use cases and technical innovations that bridge geospatial workflows with intelligent automation.

Strengthening QGIS Security

As part of our commitment to sustainability and professionalisation in open source GIS, we are also proud to be a partner of Oslandia in the QGIS Security Project, which Vincent Picavet presented during the event. This initiative aims to ensure that QGIS continues to meet the highest standards of security — a crucial foundation for its growing adoption in critical infrastructures around the world.

Hands-on with QField – in Three Languages!

In the afternoon, OPENGIS.ch hosted a fully booked, multilingual QField workshop, attended by 25 enthusiastic participants. The session provided hands-on experience for users who wanted to take their QGIS projects into the field and was an excellent opportunity to exchange best practices and tips from real-world use cases and get some sun

OPENGIS.ch Tools in Action

Even outside of our sessions, tools developed by OPENGIS.ch were featured prominently throughout the day:

• QField played a key role in the Zermatt use case presentation, demonstrating its flexibility and robustness in alpine field operations.
• The Model Baker plugin, to which we contribute heavily, was showcased with its new multilanguage support for QGIS models — a significant step forward for the Swiss context and its multilingual projects.

A Thriving Community

As always, the QGIS.ch user meeting was a reminder of the strength and passion of the Swiss open source geospatial community. A huge thank you to the organizers, speakers, and participants who made the event such a success — we’re already looking forward to the next one!

Stay connected:
QField website
QFieldCloud
Model Baker plugin

Building on top of the last release which introduced background tracking, this development cycle focused on polishing functionalities and building on top of preexisting features. The variety of improvements is sure to make our diverse user base and community excited to upgrade to QField 3.6.

Main highlights

One of the most noticeable improvement in this version is the addition of “map preview rendering”. QField now renders partial map content immediately beyond the edge of the screen, offering a much nicer experience when panning around as well as zooming in and out. Long-time QGIS users will recognise the behaviour, and we’re delighted to bring this experience to the field

This upgrade was the foundation upon which we built the following enhancement: as of QField 3.6, using the “lock to position” mode now keeps your position at the very center of the screen while the canvas slips through smoothly. This greatly improves the usability of the function as your eyes never need to spend time locating the position within the screen: it’s dead center and it stays there!

Reminder, the “lock to position” mode is activated by clicking on the bottom-right positioning button, with the button’s background turning blue when the mode is activated.

The improvements did not stop there. Panning and zooming around used to drop users out of the lock mode immediately. While this had its upsides, it also meant that simple scale adjustments to try and view more of the map as it follows the position was not possible. With QField 3.6, the lock has been hardened. Moving the map around will temporarily disable the lock, with a visual countdown embedded within a toast message informs users of when the lock will return. An action button to terminate the lock is located within the toaster to permanently leave the mode.

Moving on to QFieldCloud, this cycle saw tons of improvements. To begin with, it is now possible to rely on shared datasets across multiple cloud projects. Known as localised data paths in QGIS, this functionality enables users to reduce storage usage by storing large datasets in QFieldCloud only once, serving multiple cloud projects, and also easing the maintenance of read-only datasets that require regular updates.

QFieldSync users will see a new checkbox when synchronising their projects, letting them upload shared datasets onto QFieldCloud.

Furthermore, QField has introduced a new cloud project details view to provide additional details on QFieldCloud-hosted projects before downloading them to devices. The new view includes a cloud project thumbnail, more space for richer description text, including interactive hyperlinks, and author details, as well as creation and data update timestamps. Finally, the view offers a QR code, which allows users to scan it quickly and access cloud projects, provided they have the necessary access permission. Distributing a public project has never been easier!

Beyond that, tons more has made its way into QField, including map layer notes viewable through a legend badge in the side dashboard, support for feature identification on online raster layers on compatible WMS and ArcGIS REST servers, atlas printing of a relationship’s child feature directly within the parent feature form, and much more. There’s something for everybody out there.

Focus on feature form polishing

This new version of QField coincides with the release of XLSForm Converter, a new QGIS plugin created by OPENGIS.ch’s very own ninjas. As its title implies, the plugin converts an XLSForm spreadsheet file (.xls, .xlsx, .ods) into a full-fledged QGIS project ready to be used in QField with a pre-configured survey layer matching the content of the provided XLSForm.

This was a golden opportunity to focus on polishing QField’s feature form. As a result, advanced functionalities such as data-driven editable flag and label attribute properties are now supported. In addition, tons of paper-cut bugs, visual inconsistencies, and UX shortcomings have been addressed. Our favourite one might just be the ability to drag the feature addition drawer’s header up and down to toggle its full-screen state