Organic Maps was my go to app for a navigation app where you can fix errors yourself immediately! So much better than having to work for free on the proprietary apps, and hope they accept your edits
There’s a fork from one year ago, CoMaps, that is gaining different features
E.g., I am adding CarPlay Dashboard support that you can test by joining the TestFlight
We are in great need of both more testers and some proper iOS devs (I am not). We’re racing to get scene lifecycle support by September, perfect opportunity if you like modernising old codebases!
Any ones which tries to avoid realtime traffic, especially in India? Also ones which detects some shortcuts as narrow, meandering roads that will be extremely slow.
This looks really solid. It's the thing that would make me switch over. 90% of the time I know exactly where I'm going but need Google Maps to tell me what's unexpectedly in the way while I'm trying to get there.
I was hoping for an offline open map with specifically tracking (My tracks from Google or now 3rd party) so I can log my adventures. bonus if I can save a printable thing for my wall or something...guess I know what this weekends project is.
OSMAnd is similarly OSM-based, offline, and FOSS (available from F-Droid) and does tracking. It is not typically recommended in pists like these because its wealth of options is daunting to the general public, while Organic Maps and CoMaps are more streamlined.
I use OrganicMaps a lot for long walks and it's great. Works perfectly offline if you have downloaded the map of the region beforehand, which is helpful if you are in an area with poor reception or just want to conserve phone battery by turning off data. And being OSM, it is great for showing less prominent paths/trails and other useful info like drinking water sources, picnic benches etc. And supports importing GPX trails. So IMO it's way better than Google Maps for this use case.
It's also very easy to edit some basic data through the app so if you notice an error in the map it's usually possible to fix it right there and then.
Organic mentions Open Source, but I just saw that FDroid mentions the following: "This app contains non open source components - compiled binary data files (including but not limited to .mwm map files) under a non FLOSS license"
Anyone has context on the following not hidden over Git-* issues (I was left thoroughly confused trying to understand it)?
Plus the code that's necessary to generate the map files that OM relies on is no longer openly published. So while true that the actual app code is open source, you can't use it without relying on their proprietary map files.
> TilelessMap is an open, offline-first mapping engine designed for critical field use,
such as forestry, emergency services, and humanitarian work.
Built with C and optimized for mobile performance, TilelessMap enables full local map
rendering without relying on cloud infrastructure — even in areas with poor or no
internet connectivity.
They have an Android app with maps of Yellowstone, Sweden and Norway.
I'm very pleased to see open source mapping/navigation systems. I have had the hypothesis for a while that many of the UI/UX designers on the google maps team do not actually drive a car.
I remember over 15 years ago my wife and I were honeymooning in Europe (rom the US). While we had iOS devices that could use maps, the data services then were terrible, and GPS was effectively useless
We ended up taking screen shots of Google Maps where we zoomed in on local streets, on an ad hoc type atlas. I wish we had this app back then
I used comaps on a hike. It really is good at not draining your battery.
I've wanted to run it on my wear OS watch, but while you can sideload the APK, wearOS does not have a file browser, so it's not possible to import a planned route or similar. Has anyone here any idea for how to solve this?
Is there a nautical map equivalent of osm or organic maps? One that emphasizes waterways by drawing them thicker when zoomed out like regular maps draw roads thicker? Plan routes over the water? Even google maps lacks a nautical layer.
Always loved this. There are still parts of the UK where you’ll have no data offline navigation is great, and the walking paths are better than you can get elsewhere.
Organic Maps a great app in many ways, but I still don't get how people can actually use it every day and say it replaces Google Maps when its search feature totally stinks. I know it's a hard problem, but this is the number one thing that needs to somehow be fixed. I can't tell if I'm just too dumb or if FOSS/degoogle fanboys are just pretending. I just know I've tried to use it exclusively many times and always had to give in to Google Maps because the search totally failed.
I actually think the search feature rocks, because you have high fidelity OSM maps to query. Can't search for drinkable wells in Google Maps!
But then, it of course isn't Google Maps. It is likely to be more out of date and will not understand "natural" search queries as Google does. I believe it just takes some getting used to. There is overlap between the two, each service has its strengths and weaknesses, but also unique features.
+1 That, and it works in mountainous areas like the Alps or Pyrenees, where you're lucky to have GPS and most definitely can't rely on 4G for Google Maps
This belongs to a class of thing I've been predicting for a while: as non-volatile storage (not RAM but flash etc.) gets cheaper and cheaper, offline snapshots of quantities of information that used to require an Internet connection to practically access become possible.
Example: a modern mid-high end phone can contain this, a complete copy of Wikipedia, and a small LLM capable of understanding natural language queries and using tools. All on board, no connection needed.
Plus it an also carry most peoples' complete music and book collections and a meaningful chunk of most peoples' movie collections.
A mid-high end laptop can carry all of it and then some. Laptop and desktop storage is gigantic by previous generation standards. Mine is a higher end laptop but has 8TB storage. 512GB to 1TB is mainstream.
1. Address lookups. Many of the buildings in OSM have yet to get street addresses added, so navigating to an address is a bit hit or miss. This gets fixed with time as people update the maps and wouldn't be a show stopper.
2. Real time traffic and detour navigation. This is really needed when navigating around busy cities where a wreck on a major highway can result in significant delays. This needs a combination of an external service (separate from OSM) but also one that has enough adoption to have usable data.
Both this and addresses is something that's really easy to survey with StreetComplete.
Google has the benefit of having their own street-level imagery for house numbers and street names, Android devices for real-time traffic info, and the ability to simply scrape web pages for shop data including opening hours. but in places with a reasonable number of active mappers, OSM is so much richer and more up to date.
Yeah (2) is the killer feature especially in totalitarian shitholes (pretty much every country nowadays) full of money grab ops disguised as police checkpoints and cameras.
I wonder if we can build a decentralized version of such a reporting service.
FUCK COMAPS, they are the prototypical OSS project where everyone can "go down on Lisa and do what they like". No direction! But let's reinvent / alter the UI oh so often! No one besides dorks care about governance!
Btw they (respectively, only one guy, Konstantin!) copy code / changesets from Organic Maps, while this is not happening the other way around.
>Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
>Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
>When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
That comment is against the guidelines. You should make a new comment that avoids breaking the guidelines if you want people to see your criticism.
Organic Maps was my go to app for a navigation app where you can fix errors yourself immediately! So much better than having to work for free on the proprietary apps, and hope they accept your edits
There’s a fork from one year ago, CoMaps, that is gaining different features
E.g., I am adding CarPlay Dashboard support that you can test by joining the TestFlight
We are in great need of both more testers and some proper iOS devs (I am not). We’re racing to get scene lifecycle support by September, perfect opportunity if you like modernising old codebases!
https://www.comaps.app/ https://codeberg.org/comaps/comaps
Any ones which tries to avoid realtime traffic, especially in India? Also ones which detects some shortcuts as narrow, meandering roads that will be extremely slow.
There’s actually work ongoing on live traffic support from various public sources!
https://codeberg.org/comaps/comaps/projects/21877
This looks really solid. It's the thing that would make me switch over. 90% of the time I know exactly where I'm going but need Google Maps to tell me what's unexpectedly in the way while I'm trying to get there.
There is also CoMaps (https://www.comaps.app/) which is a fork of Organic Maps, after concern over the governance of Organic Maps https://itsfoss.com/news/organic-maps-fork-comaps/
what are the concerns over governance of organics maps ?
So sad. I imagine 99.9% of organic maps users will never know.
I was hoping for an offline open map with specifically tracking (My tracks from Google or now 3rd party) so I can log my adventures. bonus if I can save a printable thing for my wall or something...guess I know what this weekends project is.
OSMAnd is similarly OSM-based, offline, and FOSS (available from F-Droid) and does tracking. It is not typically recommended in pists like these because its wealth of options is daunting to the general public, while Organic Maps and CoMaps are more streamlined.
I use OrganicMaps a lot for long walks and it's great. Works perfectly offline if you have downloaded the map of the region beforehand, which is helpful if you are in an area with poor reception or just want to conserve phone battery by turning off data. And being OSM, it is great for showing less prominent paths/trails and other useful info like drinking water sources, picnic benches etc. And supports importing GPX trails. So IMO it's way better than Google Maps for this use case.
It's also very easy to edit some basic data through the app so if you notice an error in the map it's usually possible to fix it right there and then.
Organic mentions Open Source, but I just saw that FDroid mentions the following: "This app contains non open source components - compiled binary data files (including but not limited to .mwm map files) under a non FLOSS license"
Anyone has context on the following not hidden over Git-* issues (I was left thoroughly confused trying to understand it)?
OrganicMaps rolled their own 'data license' for the actual map files: https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/blob/master/DATA_...
Plus the code that's necessary to generate the map files that OM relies on is no longer openly published. So while true that the actual app code is open source, you can't use it without relying on their proprietary map files.
>Plus the code that's necessary to generate the map files that OM relies on is no longer openly published.
Seems like a big red flag. And another reason to migrate to CoMaps.
There is also https://gitlab.com/tilelessmap/tilelessmap with some of the same focus areas.
> TilelessMap is an open, offline-first mapping engine designed for critical field use, such as forestry, emergency services, and humanitarian work. Built with C and optimized for mobile performance, TilelessMap enables full local map rendering without relying on cloud infrastructure — even in areas with poor or no internet connectivity.
They have an Android app with maps of Yellowstone, Sweden and Norway.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.tileless.m...
I'm very pleased to see open source mapping/navigation systems. I have had the hypothesis for a while that many of the UI/UX designers on the google maps team do not actually drive a car.
People at Apple are not left-handed, they don't drive, they don't work out, and they don't seem to go out in the cold very much.
I remember over 15 years ago my wife and I were honeymooning in Europe (rom the US). While we had iOS devices that could use maps, the data services then were terrible, and GPS was effectively useless
We ended up taking screen shots of Google Maps where we zoomed in on local streets, on an ad hoc type atlas. I wish we had this app back then
I used comaps on a hike. It really is good at not draining your battery.
I've wanted to run it on my wear OS watch, but while you can sideload the APK, wearOS does not have a file browser, so it's not possible to import a planned route or similar. Has anyone here any idea for how to solve this?
How is it different from OSMAnd?
Is there a nautical map equivalent of osm or organic maps? One that emphasizes waterways by drawing them thicker when zoomed out like regular maps draw roads thicker? Plan routes over the water? Even google maps lacks a nautical layer.
The OSS tool for nautical charts is OpenCPN.
OsmAnd has a nautical map plugin you can enable.
For some reason osmAnd was the only GPS map that would work on a flight for me.
Always loved this. There are still parts of the UK where you’ll have no data offline navigation is great, and the walking paths are better than you can get elsewhere.
Organic Maps a great app in many ways, but I still don't get how people can actually use it every day and say it replaces Google Maps when its search feature totally stinks. I know it's a hard problem, but this is the number one thing that needs to somehow be fixed. I can't tell if I'm just too dumb or if FOSS/degoogle fanboys are just pretending. I just know I've tried to use it exclusively many times and always had to give in to Google Maps because the search totally failed.
I actually think the search feature rocks, because you have high fidelity OSM maps to query. Can't search for drinkable wells in Google Maps!
But then, it of course isn't Google Maps. It is likely to be more out of date and will not understand "natural" search queries as Google does. I believe it just takes some getting used to. There is overlap between the two, each service has its strengths and weaknesses, but also unique features.
+1 That, and it works in mountainous areas like the Alps or Pyrenees, where you're lucky to have GPS and most definitely can't rely on 4G for Google Maps
I guess it depends on how you use Google Maps, but I mainly navigate to addresses, and Comaps works fine for that.
search greatly improved in the past couple years. try it again?
I thought I updated the app before my recent backpacking trip in Europe, but I will give it a try again.
E.g., in the CoMaps fork test builds there is now a change to prioritize nearby places more
https://codeberg.org/comaps/comaps/pulls/4604
This belongs to a class of thing I've been predicting for a while: as non-volatile storage (not RAM but flash etc.) gets cheaper and cheaper, offline snapshots of quantities of information that used to require an Internet connection to practically access become possible.
Example: a modern mid-high end phone can contain this, a complete copy of Wikipedia, and a small LLM capable of understanding natural language queries and using tools. All on board, no connection needed.
Plus it an also carry most peoples' complete music and book collections and a meaningful chunk of most peoples' movie collections.
A mid-high end laptop can carry all of it and then some. Laptop and desktop storage is gigantic by previous generation standards. Mine is a higher end laptop but has 8TB storage. 512GB to 1TB is mainstream.
Migrated all of my pins to Organic Maps from Maps.me when it started to aggressively monetize. Smooth process. Been a happy user for years!
This is amazing
Will this take down Big Maps?
There are two things keeping me using "Big Map".
1. Address lookups. Many of the buildings in OSM have yet to get street addresses added, so navigating to an address is a bit hit or miss. This gets fixed with time as people update the maps and wouldn't be a show stopper.
2. Real time traffic and detour navigation. This is really needed when navigating around busy cities where a wreck on a major highway can result in significant delays. This needs a combination of an external service (separate from OSM) but also one that has enough adoption to have usable data.
Agree!
CoMaps fork is adding OpenAddresses integration and traffic (linked above)!
https://codeberg.org/comaps/comaps/pulls/4162
There's one more for me: reliable store hours.
Both this and addresses is something that's really easy to survey with StreetComplete.
Google has the benefit of having their own street-level imagery for house numbers and street names, Android devices for real-time traffic info, and the ability to simply scrape web pages for shop data including opening hours. but in places with a reasonable number of active mappers, OSM is so much richer and more up to date.
Agree, which is why I added support for displaying when the hours were last updated in CoMaps
Organic Maps didn’t accept my PR with it…
https://codeberg.org/comaps/comaps/issues/688
Yeah (2) is the killer feature especially in totalitarian shitholes (pretty much every country nowadays) full of money grab ops disguised as police checkpoints and cameras.
I wonder if we can build a decentralized version of such a reporting service.
amazing
FUCK COMAPS, they are the prototypical OSS project where everyone can "go down on Lisa and do what they like". No direction! But let's reinvent / alter the UI oh so often! No one besides dorks care about governance!
Btw they (respectively, only one guy, Konstantin!) copy code / changesets from Organic Maps, while this is not happening the other way around.
>Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
>Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
>When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
That comment is against the guidelines. You should make a new comment that avoids breaking the guidelines if you want people to see your criticism.