Dress Up Your QGIS Install With this Whimsical Plugin

Caitlin Dempsey

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There is a Lithuanian proverb that says, “For every head, a hat”.  Nathan Woodrow, has captured this attitude with his QGIS plugin called QGIS Hats.  The QGIS hats plugin is a bit of fun that accomplishes no other purpose than to add a hat to the QGIS icon.

Installing the QGIS Hats Plugin

Load QGIS and then click on Plugins –> Manage and Install Plugins… from the top menu.

In the window that opens, search the QGIS plugin repository for “QGIS Hats”.





Now click on the “Install plugin” button to install the plugin.  You should see a status message at the top of the window indicating that the plugin has been successfully installed.

Now, verify that the plugin is putting a hat on your QGIS icon by taking a look at the shortcut icon.  In this example QGIS installation in a Mac OS X operating system, I have the QGIS shortcut icon installed on my dock.  The QGIS shortcut icon is wearing the designated hat for July.

The hats are downloaded from the SoManyHats folder on Github.  Users who want to create news hats can contribute by downloading the template and then uploading new hats using the following naming convention to the SoManyHats folder:

{month}-{day}.png

or just {month}.png if it’s to cover a full month.

QGIS Hats Video Tutorial

You can also watch this tutorial as a video:

Youtube video

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Caitlin Dempsey
Caitlin Dempsey is a geographer, writer, and the founder and editor of Geography Realm. She holds bachelor's and master's degrees in Geography from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as a Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) from San José State University. She has been writing about geography, maps, geographic information systems (GIS), and environmental topics for more than two decades through Geography Realm and its predecessor site, GIS Lounge. Her interests include cartography, remote sensing, environmental geography, and the relationship between people and place.