topic Re: Publish tile layer to be used as layer, not basemap in ArcGIS Online Questions

Publish tile layer to be used as layer, not basemap

abrown8 — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 12:43:09 GMT

Hi all

I am wanting to publish a PNG image as a tile layer to be used in a map but not as a basemap, I want to keep the Topographic basemap and switch the PNG tile visibility on/off. Ideally without consuming any credits.

From ArcGIS Pro I have tried publishing the image as a Tile Layer with caching locally but when I add the tile to the Map Viewer in AGOL the only option is to have it as a basemap. The tile package is fairly small size (45mb with levels of detail street to county)

Is there something that I am doing wrong or an alternative process I'm not aware of?

Thank you!

Re: Publish tile layer to be used as layer, not basemap

RhettZufelt — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 18:19:47 GMT

In Map Viewer, make sure you select the Layers icon, then select Add:

Once you find the published tile layer, you can click the + Add button:

which should add it as a data layer, not a basemap.

Or, you can click on the tile layer itself and choose where to add it:

This will add it to the layers and can be moved above/below other layers, and toggled on/off:

Re: Publish tile layer to be used as layer, not basemap

KevinFreibergerJA — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 01:44:09 GMT

@abrown8 I am experiencing the same issue. My Tile Layer is defaulting to the basemap even though I simply click "Add to map" and not "Use as basemap".

Re: Publish tile layer to be used as layer, not basemap

abrown8 — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 11:16:00 GMT

@KevinFreibergerJA I did manage in the end, I think it was when publishing from ArcPro to check what the coordinate system of the raster is and ensuring that you set the tiling mechanism to ArcGIS Online.

Re: Publish tile layer to be used as layer, not basemap

David_Murphy — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 15:50:21 GMT

I'm having the same issue. I reprojected the raster layer to EPSG 3857 to match ArcGIS Online, but the layer only gets used as a basemap. If I have a basemap open, then add my raster to map, not as a basemap, the basemap disappears, and I actually lose all basemap options to add.

Re: Publish tile layer to be used as layer, not basemap

EllieLinden — Thu, 22 Aug 2024 12:44:39 GMT

This is happening to me as well, even though I'm following the same workflow of adding a Tile Layer I used a month ago where it worked fine, it's now adding it as a Basemap. I've tried different combinations of how to add a layer to a web map, but am wondering if this may be a bug.

Re: Publish tile layer to be used as layer, not basemap

SarahHall3 — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 00:13:42 GMT

This is also happening to me, has anyone found a solution?

Re: Publish tile layer to be used as layer, not basemap

CSchwartz614 — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 17:38:15 GMT

I am currently experiencing the same problem. Any solutions or workarounds as of November 2024?

Re: Publish tile layer to be used as layer, not basemap

RhettZufelt — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 17:58:50 GMT

Solution is to not mix coordinate systems. The basemap of the web map sets the coordinate system.

If you are adding Tile layers in the same coordinate system, then my post above is still working.

Otherwise, not sure there is a solution. One of the reasons I don't mix CS's.

Re: Publish tile layer to be used as layer, not basemap

mforsyth — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 19:11:16 GMT

I think the issue for some might be even if you have everything set to the AGOL default WGS 84 Web Mercator, you still need to go into the settings before uploading to AGOL and set the tiling scheme to AGOL/Bing/Google. We found that even though our raster was using WGS 84 Web Mercator like AGOL wants, the tiling scheme when uploading was defaulting to our map frame which was in our local state plane. Even if your map frame was in WGS 84, I would still recommend you change the tiling scheme to the the AGOL/Bing/Google scheme to make sure everything is using WGS 84 Web Mercator.

Re: Publish tile layer to be used as layer, not basemap

FloraTiley — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 11:55:29 GMT

Hello! I just had this problem and tried a few different things to no avail.

What has seemed to work in the end is sharing the raster layer as a Web Tile layer and then on the Configuration settings, ensuring that ArcGIS Online Bing Maps / Google Maps is selected.

Re: Publish tile layer to be used as layer, not basemap

DebapriyaPaul — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 20:04:43 GMT

Hi @abrown8 , thank you for posting this question. Great suggestion by @FloraTiley. Using the same tiling scheme as ArcGIS Online basemaps would allow us to add the tile layer as an operational layer in the map.

Additionally, if we want to visually overlay an image in a web map and have control over enabling or disabling the visibility, we could also use the Add media layer workflow.

Hope this helps!