topic Custom basemap apparently contains location services? in ArcGIS Vector Tile Style Editor Questions

Custom basemap apparently contains location services?

TWChi — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 16:47:43 GMT

I created a custom basemap for my organization using the vector tile style editor a few months ago and was able to share it publicly without any issues. I recently saved a copy of it and changed a lot of the colors. When I try to share this new basemap I get an alert that Authentication is Required and that the "item may not be accessible to others because it contains location services that require authentication."

This makes no sense to me. Why would a custom basemap be using location services? How can I turn location services off in a custom basemap so that people without an ArcGIS account can see it?

Re: Custom basemap apparently contains location services?

TWChi — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 23:40:46 GMT

In case anyone runs across this post with the same issue - I was able to figure out the problem. When I made a copy of the first custom basemap, the source URL was changed from https://basemaps.arcgis.com to https://basemaps-api.arcgis.com. I'm not sure if this is the default behavior, but it made it impossible to share the map publicly. I tried making another copy of the first custom basemap and the same thing happened.

To fix the problem, I went into the JSON code and copied the source URL from the original custom basemap into the new custom basemap so that it is no longer pointing to https://basemaps-api.arcgis.com. Now I can share the new custom basemap publicly.

Hopefully that will help someone!