GeoTIFF Viewer for VS Code

A VS Code extension for viewing GeoTIFF raster files directly in the editor. Supports LZW, DEFLATE, ZSTD, and other common compressions used in satellite imagery and remote sensing data.

Features

• Full compression support: LZW, DEFLATE, ZSTD, PackBits, JPEG, and more
• Data type support: Float32, Float64, Int8/16/32, UInt8/16/32
• Eight colormaps: Viridis, Plasma, Inferno, Magma, Jet, Terrain, Grayscale, Cool-Warm
• Interactive viewing: scroll to zoom, drag to pan, fit to screen on load
• Multi-band support: band selector dropdown; RGB composite mode with per-channel percentile stretch
• Automatic 2% percentile histogram stretch with manual Min/Max override inputs
• Histogram panel with current stretch range markers
• Statistics panel: min, max, mean, median, std dev, valid pixel count, NoData coverage %
• Metadata inspector: collapsible panel showing all TIFF file directory tags and GeoKeys
• Pixel value and geographic coordinate display on hover
• Ground resolution in the status bar tooltip (m/px or °/px)
• Export current view as PNG
• COG overview loading: reads from the appropriate pre-built overview pyramid for fast display of large files
• Status bar showing dimensions, data type, CRS, and compression for the active file
• NoData pixels rendered as transparent

Supported Formats

• .tif, .tiff, .geotiff files
• Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs (COGs)
• Standard GeoTIFF with embedded georeferencing
• Single-band and multi-band rasters (e.g., ECOSTRESS LST, DEMs, Landsat, Sentinel-2)

Installation

From GitHub Releases

1. Download geotiff-viewer-0.2.0.vsix from the latest release
2. In VS Code, open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P)
3. Run Extensions: Install from VSIX... and select the downloaded file

Or via the terminal:

code --install-extension geotiff-viewer-0.2.0.vsix

From Source

git clone https://github.com/adh1b/geotiff-viewer
cd geotiff-viewer
npm install
npm run package
code --install-extension geotiff-viewer-0.2.0.vsix

Usage

1. Open any .tif, .tiff, or .geotiff file in VS Code
2. The GeoTIFF Viewer opens automatically
3. Scroll to zoom in/out; drag to pan; click Reset View to fit the image
4. Switch bands via the Band dropdown; enable RGB Composite mode for multi-band files
5. Hover over the image to see pixel values and geographic coordinates
6. Expand the Metadata or Statistics panels by clicking their headers
7. Click Export PNG to save the current view

Known Limitations

• Read-only (no editing capability)
• Very large non-COG files (>500 MB without embedded overview pyramids) may be slow to load

Development

# Watch mode for development
npm run watch

# Open VS Code with extension loaded
# Press F5 in VS Code to launch Extension Development Host

License

MIT

Credits

Uses geotiff.js for TIFF parsing.