Converting Vector Tiles to Editable GIS Layers — What QGIS and GDAL Can Actually Do
The question comes up constantly: you’re in QGIS, you’ve added a vector tile layer from a basemap service or loaded a .mbtiles file, and you want to export those features to a Shapefile or GeoJSON for editing. You right-click the layer and look for “Save Features As” — but the option is either missing or produces empty output. This is not a QGIS bug. It’s a fundamental property of the vector tile format, and understanding it is the difference between a working extraction workflow and hours of confusion. ...