Tag:place=island
 place = island
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| Description |
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Any piece of land that is completely surrounded by water and isolated from other significant landmasses. 
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| Group: Places |
| Used on these elements |
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| Useful combination |
| See also |
Status: approved
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| Tools for this tag |
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| Wikidata |
| Q23442 |
An island is any piece of land that is completely surrounded by water and isolated from other significant landmasses.
Islands in the sea
Draw a closed way counterclockwise along the coastline of the island (water is always on the right hand side). Then add the tags:
Groups of islands
See place=archipelago
Islands in waterways and lakes
Island within lakes or rivers should be mapped using multipolygon relations. The way for the island should be given the role inner, while the way for lake or river should have the role outer.
If the island has a name, it can be tagged with: place=island and name=*
You can specify the landuse, or by what it is covered with a natural=* or landuse=* tag.
Small islands
A small island (
Islet), with maximum area of 1 km², and only a few buildings (or none), located near a bigger island or the mainland, is drawn like a big island, but tagged with:
- Example: Beginish
if an island is in the middle of the sea and far away of other islands, it may be tagged as "island".
- Example: Wake Island
Large islands
Islands with coastlines having more than 2000 nodes will require a multipolygon relation to be created containing the place=island and name=* ... tags etc. See this example of the Isle of Kerrera.
Differentiating "Island" and "Islet"
Differentiation between Island and Islet (List with examples)(de).
Rendering hints
If you place an island on dry land, do not expect water to automatically appear around the island.
You need to map water area.
Standard layer
Adding this tag to an island will place an italicized label on it.
The openstreetmap.org Standard layer uses a different method to render coastlines. It takes up to a day before changes to the coastline are seen in the tiles. For more details, see Coastline.
See also
- Original proposal for this feature
- place=islet for hamlet sized or smaller islands
- place=archipelago for archipelagos
- traffic_calming=island for highway traffic calming islands