For QGIS 2.2.0-Valmiera, how does one increase the label size of OpenStreetMap layer or any other basemap layer? Presently the labels are way too small to read. For example, I find that for the same zoom level of a map in www.openstreetmap.com vs the same map in QGIS2.2, the map in QGIS2.2 has labels much smaller than the one from www.openstreetmap.com. For illustration, click here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B27Gf4KIu-6-NFVhSV9zUFBDZGM/edit?usp=sharing

  • Thanks guys, for the answers. Just wondering why the OpenLayers plugin developers decided to fetch higher-than-necessary resolution OSM/Google raster maps for a zoom level that clearly requires a lower resolution for optimal viewing of labels. – cake ness Apr 10 '14 at 5:51
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    They decided for a seemless scale, taking the next greater tile and making it smaller. Taking the next smaller tile needs to expand it, which looks a bit weird. – AndreJ Apr 13 '14 at 9:20

Alternatively to the Openlayers plugin, you can call the OpenStreetmap tiles by a TMS service as described here:


The disadvantage is that the tiles only look good in the native resolution (as listed in the article), and other scales look a bit weird.


You can use the TileMapScale Plugin to snap the scale to the optimal display of tiles:


You have to fetch the zip from https://github.com/datalyze-solutions/TileMapScaleLevels and expand it manually to your .qgis2/python/plugins folder.

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    that also doesn't work with map composer – pnz Oct 18 '16 at 16:54

AFAIK you can't tune the map style itself, as the OL plugin makes use of the OSM tile maps that consist of prerendered map tiles/images.

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