Working with Objects

Using objects you can add a great deal of information to your map for use in your game. They can replace tedious alternatives like hardcoding coordinates (like spawn points) in your source code or maintaining additional data files for storing gameplay elements. With the addition of tile objects, they also became useful for graphical purposes and can in some cases replace tile layers entirely, as demonstrated by the « Sticker Knight » example shipping with Tiled.

To start using objects, add an Object Layer to your map.

Placement Tools

Each type of object has its own placement tool.

Since Tiled 1.2

A preview is shown of the object you’re about to place when you hover over the map. While placing an object, you can press Escape or right-click to cancel placement of the object. Press Escape again to switch to the Select Objects tool.

Insert Rectangle

Shortcut: R

The rectangle was the first type of object supported by Tiled, which is why objects are rectangles by default in the TMX Map Format. They are useful for marking rectangular areas and assigning custom properties to them. They are also often used for specifying collision boxes.

Place a rectangle by clicking-and-dragging in any direction. Holding Shift makes it square and holding Ctrl snaps its size to the tile size.

If the rectangle is empty (width and height are both 0), it is rendered as a small square around its position. This is mainly to keep it visible and selectable.

Since Tiled 1.1

Insert Point

Shortcut: I

Points are the simplest objects you can place on a map. They only represent a location, and cannot be resized or rotated. Simply click on the map to position a point object.

Insert Ellipse

Shortcut: C

Ellipses work the same way as rectangles, except that they are rendered as an ellipse. Useful for when your area or collision shape needs to represent a circle or ellipse.

Insert Polygon

Shortcut: P

Polygons are the most flexible way of defining the shape of an area. They are most commonly used for defining collision shapes.

When placing a polygon, the first click determines the location of the object as well as the location of the first point of the polygon. Subsequent clicks are used to add additional points to the polygon. Polygons needs to have at least three points. Click the first point again to finish creating the polygon. You can press Escape to cancel the creation of the polygon.

When you want to change a polygon after it has been placed, you need to use the Edit Polygons tool.


Polylines are created by not closing a polygon. Right-click or press Enter while creating a polygon to finish it as a polyline.

Polylines are rendered as a line and require only two points. While they can represent collision walls, they are also often used to represent paths to be followed.

Since Tiled 1.2

You can extend an existing polyline at either end when it is selected, by clicking on the displayed dots. It is also possible to finish the polyline by connecting it to either end of another existing polyline object. The other polyline object needs to be selected as well, since the interactive dots only show on selected polylines.

The Edit Polygons tool is used to edit polylines as well.

Insert Tile

Raccourci: T

Tiles can be inserted as objects to have full flexibility in placing, scaling and rotating the tile image on your map. Like all objects, tile objects can also have custom properties associated with them. This makes them useful for placement of recognizable interactive objects that need special information, like a chest with defined contents or an NPC with defined script.

To place a tile object, first select the tile you want to place in the Tilesets view. Then use the Left mouse button on the map to start placing the object, move to position it based on the preview and release to finish placing the object.

Since Tiled 1.0

To change the tile used by existing tile objects, select all the objects you want to change using the Select Objects tool and then right-click on a tile in the Tilesets view, and choose Replace Tile of Selected Objects.

Since Tiled 1.1

Insert Template

Shortcut: V

Can be used to quickly insert multiple instances of the template selected in the Templates view. See Creating Template Instances.

Insert Text

Shortcut: X

Text objects can be used to add arbitrary multi-line text to your maps. You can configure various font properties and the wrapping / clipping area, making them useful for both quick notes as well as text used in the game.

Select Objects

Shortcut: S

When you’re not inserting new objects, you’re generally using the Select Objects tool. It packs a lot of functionality, which is outlined below.

Selecting and Deselecting

You can select objects by clicking them or by dragging a rectangular lasso, selecting any object that intersect with its area. By holding Shift or Ctrl while clicking, you can add/remove single objects to/from the selection. Press Escape to deselect all objects.

When pressing and dragging on an object, this object is selected and moved. When this prevents you from starting a rectangular selection, you can hold Shift to force the selection rectangle.

Since Tiled 1.0

By default you interact with the top-most object. When you need to select an object below another object, first select the higher object and then hold Alt while clicking at the same location to select lower objects. You can also hold Alt while opening the context menu to get a list of all objects at the clicked location, so you may directly select the desired object.

Since Tiled 1.2

You can quickly switch to the Edit Polygons tool by double-clicking on the polygon or polyline you want to edit.


You can simply drag any single object, or drag already selected objects by dragging any one of them. Hold Ctrl to toggle snapping to the tile grid.

Hold Alt to force a move operation on the currently selected objects, regardless of where you click on the map. This is useful when the selected objects are small or covered by other objects.

The selected objects can also be moved with the arrow keys. By default this moves the objects pixel by pixel. Hold Shift while using the arrow keys to move the objects by distance of one tile.


You can use the resize handles to resize one or more selected objects. Hold Ctrl to keep the aspect ratio of the object and/or Shift to place the resize origin in the center.

Note that you can only change width and height independently when resizing a single object. When having multiple objects selected, the aspect ratio is constant because there would be no way to make that work for rotated objects without full support for transformations.


To rotate, click any selected object to change the resize handles into rotation handles. Before rotating, you can drag the rotation origin to another position if necessary. Hold Shift to rotate in 15-degree increments. Click any selected object again to go back to resize mode.

You can also rotate the selected objects in 90-degree steps by pressing Z or Shift + Z.

Changing Stacking Order

If the active Object Layer has its Drawing Order property set to Manual (the default is Top Down), you can control the stacking order of the selected objects within their object layer using the following keys:

  • PgUp - Raise selected objects
  • PgDown - Lower selected objects
  • Home - Move selected objects to Top
  • End - Move selected objects to Bottom

You can also find these actions in the context menu. When you have multiple Object Layers, the context menu also contains actions to move the selected objects to another layer.

Flipping Objects

You can flip the selected objects horizontally by pressing X or vertically by pressing Y. For tile objects, this also flips their images.

Edit Polygons

Raccourci: E

Polygons and polylines have their own editing needs and as such are covered by a separate tool, which allows selecting and moving around their nodes. You can select and move the nodes of multiple polygons at the same time. Click a segment to select the nodes at both ends. Press Escape to deselect all nodes, or to switch back to the Select Objects tool.

Nodes can be deleted by selecting them and choosing « Delete Nodes » from the context menu. The Delete key can also be used to delete the selected nodes, or the selected objects if no nodes are selected.

When you have selected multiple consecutive nodes of the same polygon, you can join them together by choosing « Join Nodes » from the context menu. You can also split the segments in between the nodes by choosing « Split Segments ». Alternatively, you can simply double-click a segment to split it at that location.

You can also delete a segment when two consecutive nodes are selected in a polygon by choosing « Delete Segment » in the context menu. This will convert a polygon into a polyline, or turn one polyline object in two polyline objects.

Since Tiled 1.2

It is possible to extend a polyline at either end, either by right-clicking those nodes and choosing « Extend Polyline », or by switching to the Insert Polygon tool and clicking on either end of an already selected polylines.

Future Extensions

Here are some ideas about improvements that could be made to the above tools:

  • Some improvements could still be made to the support for editing polygons and polylines, like allowing to rotate and scale the selected nodes (#1487).
  • The tools could put short usage instructions in the status bar, to help new users without requiring them to carefully read the manual (#1855).

Si vous aimez au moins un seul de ces points, s’il-vous-plaît aidez-moi à y arriver plus vite en devenant un mécène. Plus je recevrai de soutien, plus j’aurais les moyens de passer du temps à améliorer Tiled !