I am working on a project that requires the use of satellite imagery. Most of the time, Google Satellite is the best free satellite imagery resources. I would like to integrate Google Satellite to my QGIS3. But, how to do that? Fortunately, there is a simple and easy way to add Google Satellite layer to QGIS3.
By integrating Google Satellite to QGIS3, we can easily browse and navigate to anywhere on earth with the satellite image. We can zoom in until the maximum resolution. It’s great huh?

Zoomed to the maximum resolution

The new QGIS 3 comes with many upgrades and improvements. Now it is possible to add Google Satellite layer directly to QGIS. With a little tweak, we can easily open the Google Satellite, Google Map, Google Satellite Hybrid to QGIS. How to do that?
Steps to add Google Satellite layer to QGIS
- Open QGIS 3
- Right-click XYZ Tiles
- Click New Connection
- Give a name and then add the following address to it
List of address
- Google Maps: https://mt1.google.com/vt/lyrs=r&x={x}&y={y}&z={z}
- Google Satellite: http://www.google.cn/maps/vt?lyrs=s@189&gl=cn&x={x}&y={y}&z={z}
- Google Satellite Hybrid: https://mt1.google.com/vt/lyrs=y&x={x}&y={y}&z={z}
- Google Terrain: https://mt1.google.com/vt/lyrs=t&x={x}&y={y}&z={z}
- Google Roads: https://mt1.google.com/vt/lyrs=h&x={x}&y={y}&z={z}

Thanks for reading this article. I hope you enjoy it and see you on the next tutorial.
The google satellite link has now changed: https://mt1.google.com/vt/lyrs=s&x={x}&y={y}&z={z}
Hi Joe,
Thanks for this update
Cheers
what about adding hybrid as ı faced the same problem.
[…] both online and offline data sources, QGIS can open them. In my previous article, we learned how to add some satellite data sources such as Google Satellite into QGIS. Basically, we can add the data source manually by adding the source one by one. In this article, […]