do these damn projects even push the proposed edits up back to openstreetmap?insanely shameful if not

yeah, so were LibreOffice and OpenOffice relying on the .odt formatCoMaps forked out of OrganicMaps after a row about money

All these apps rely on the data provided by OpenStreetMap (OSM). It is a Wikipedia-like project where anybody can contribute edits.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.openstreetmap.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.openstreetmap.org&#x2F;</a>

I&#x27;ve been making some custom maps for both Osmand and Comaps. The main big positive for Comaps I&#x27;ve seen is Android Auto being available freely (but you have osmand+ so moot point). But having used both, the tooling for osmand is far more mature. Creating an obf file (osmand file type) is a lot easier than the process for an mwm file (comaps file type). Far more routing or ui customization options in osmand and routing.xml files for even more advanced custom time penalties&#x2F;weighting profiles.

I ditched osmand because the interface is so
convoluted. Ridiculously so. Plus theres a facebook pixel in there somewhere, at least there was when I dropped it 10 years ago.CoMaps seem sincere.For Nordic&#x2F;outdoors, outcomes using either osmand&#x2F;comaps&#x2F;etc in practice are going to be very similar.

I have used OsmAnd+ for well over 15 years by now, which also uses OSM data, just like these. And I have used JOSM on my PC to fix the OSM data myself.Does Organic maps &#x2F; CoMaps offer anything OsmAnd+ doesn&#x27;t for someone who uses it for car navigation (especially on back roads in the wilderness) as well as hiking? (All in the Nordic countries.) I also record tracks with it.

I&#x27;m working on something that is best described as Komoot meets Mastodon. Self hostable and federated. It&#x27;s pretty early, and the UX is pretty bare bones still.If you&#x27;re keen on checking it out you should be able to find it in my recent Github contributions, following the link in my profile.

There is a federated application called Endurain [0] that can be self-hosted, and is compatible with Strava and Garmin Connect. Not a phone app, but a web front-end. I don&#x27;t know how well that works on mobile.[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.endurain.com&#x2F;gallery&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.endurain.com&#x2F;gallery&#x2F;</a>

You can record tracks with (I think) both Organic Maps and CoMaps. If you are interested in the social aspects of sharing tracks <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wanderer.to&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wanderer.to&#x2F;</a> and a few others offer imports of GPX and other track formats.

Do you mean tracking your workout? If so there&#x27;s Fitotrack on Android.

Any recommendations for an OSS maps app that provides tracks like Strava,l and Komoot?

There’s actually work ongoing on live traffic support from various public sources!<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;codeberg.org&#x2F;comaps&#x2F;comaps&#x2F;projects&#x2F;21877" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;codeberg.org&#x2F;comaps&#x2F;comaps&#x2F;projects&#x2F;21877</a>

I&#x27;ll preface this by saying I can&#x27;t speak for India. I live in the US. Use your own discretion to decide what here might apply to you.I&#x27;ve been using Organic Maps for almost 3 years. I lived in Chicago during this time, as well as some smaller American cities. I go back and forth between Organic Maps and GMaps depending on the situation.I&#x27;ve found that Organic Maps&#x27; lack of traffic data isn&#x27;t a big deal for me. It doesn&#x27;t always give you an accurate ETA, sure, but it isn&#x27;t any worse at actually getting you to your destination.The thing with GMaps is that everyone has traffic data, so nobody has an advantage. Google&#x27;s alternative routes end up equally saturated as the main routes, meaning a &quot;dumb&quot; maps app that always takes the main route will get you to your destination in basically the same amount of time. This is backed up by my own personal experience, and some academic research [1].Now, when I do need an accurate ETA, I go back to GMaps. I&#x27;ll also use GMaps to route to businesses sometimes, because OSM doesn&#x27;t have up-to-date info about businesses throughout most of middle America.[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;trid.trb.org&#x2F;view&#x2F;1495267" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;trid.trb.org&#x2F;view&#x2F;1495267</a>

There’s Magic Earth which uses OSM map data but also integrates live traffic information. Not sure whether it works in India, though.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.magicearth.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.magicearth.com&#x2F;</a>

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.

What do you mean by &quot;scene lifecycle support&quot;?
In general, I like cleaning up old code bases. But I don&#x27;t see how that relates to testing?

Comaps works for free with android auto.I did buy OsmAnd a long time ago, but have since used the OsmAnd~ and needed an OSM client for a car.I like OsmAnd because it is very powerful, but comaps is more elegant.

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 editsThere’s a fork from one year ago, CoMaps, that is gaining different featuresE.g., I am adding CarPlay Dashboard support that you can test by joining the TestFlightWe 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!<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.comaps.app&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.comaps.app&#x2F;</a>
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;codeberg.org&#x2F;comaps&#x2F;comaps" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;codeberg.org&#x2F;comaps&#x2F;comaps</a>

&gt; a small group of shareholdersThis is sketchy. The entity at the bottom of the page is Organic Maps OÜ, which is an Estonian private limited company. Estonia has non-profits (MTÜs). The fact that this isn&#x27;t organised as one makes it a commercial venture, except one that asks for donations.

This assumes that OP would make a different app choice if OP knew this context. And it also assumes OP does not know this context. Neither are supported by the evidence, since HN links are posted without OP commentary. Not everybody cares so much about this sort of thing and perhaps OP was drawn to the app for other reasons. HN is not a monoculture.

Thank you! This is highly relavant. I wish OPs would put a bit more research into what they post<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;itsfoss.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;organic-maps-fork-comaps&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;itsfoss.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;organic-maps-fork-comaps&#x2F;</a>&gt; Despite being advertised as a community-driven project, key decisions, including financial management, partnerships (with Kayak, for instance), and the inclusion of proprietary components in the code were made by a small group of shareholders, often without input from the broader contributor community.

Maps.me was sold and the acquiring company moved to a new proprietary code base. The quality dropped considerably. That&#x27;s what motivated the original Maps.me founders to start Organic Maps.

And Organic Maps is itself a fork of Maps.me, started ...due to concern over the governance of Maps.me (introduction of commercial elements I think?).This app has had quite a history.

Unfortunately I have yet to find an OSM app that offers a properly usable modern interface. Most are passable if you are a nerd who doesn’t mind being inconvenienced and can work around the quirks; my non techy friends open the app once and immediately delete it. We really need an Apple or Google maps clone.

CoMaps does have this exact UX flow actually. Unfortunately it is somewhat flaky and frequently falls back to not doing it.

Just downloaded CoMaps. Why does it start with a zoomed out view of the entire world, especially given that I gave it location services and it shows my current location (in North America). The very first UX experience this app gives is &quot;I am primarily for people interested in maps and geography&quot;Contrast this with Apple Maps - when you open it, there are 4 big tap controls for actions like &quot;Home&quot; &quot;Work&quot;, a search bar, and a map that covers a 1-mile radius around you .I&#x27;d encourage your UX flow to go something more like: request location services &gt; if granted, immediately start downloading their local tileset in the background &gt; zoom to a 20-mile radius around the user

They tried to put ads into Organic Maps, and they only backed down because CoMaps sprung up in response.Others in the thread highlighted other issues, like Organic Maps&#x27; proprietary license for some parts of the repo: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;organicmaps&#x2F;organicmaps&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;DATA_LICENSE.txt" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;organicmaps&#x2F;organicmaps&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;DATA_...</a>.

Some parts of the server were closed source for a bit. No longer the case. Also people got upset that the developers used the product funding to pay for their personal expenses. The idea is folks want the developers to isolate all the money they make from this project and use it to only pay expenses directly related to this project. If they need to eat or something they should get a job, presumably.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.comaps.app&#x2F;news&#x2F;2025-04-16&#x2F;1&#x2F;?ref=itsfoss.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.comaps.app&#x2F;news&#x2F;2025-04-16&#x2F;1&#x2F;?ref=itsfoss.com</a>

what are the concerns over governance of organics maps ?

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.

So sad. I imagine 99.9% of organic maps users will never know.

There is also CoMaps (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.comaps.app&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.comaps.app&#x2F;</a>) which is a fork of Organic Maps, after concern over the governance of Organic Maps <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;itsfoss.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;organic-maps-fork-comaps&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;itsfoss.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;organic-maps-fork-comaps&#x2F;</a>

Thanks for the heads up, I wasn&#x27;t not aware of that. I never got a single ad in OM though

I would recommend people use comaps instead which is the actual FOSS fork. OM has a long history of malicious behaviour like quietly adding ads, turning a part of its previously open sourced code proprietary and misappropriating donations. OM has lost most of its community a year ago to comaps and are now rushing vibe coded features to compensate.

&gt;Plus the code that&#x27;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.

OrganicMaps rolled their own &#x27;data license&#x27; for the actual map files: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;organicmaps&#x2F;organicmaps&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;DATA_LICENSE.txt" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;organicmaps&#x2F;organicmaps&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;DATA_...</a>Plus the code that&#x27;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&#x27;t use it without relying on their proprietary map files.

Organic mentions Open Source, but I just saw that FDroid mentions the following: &quot;This app contains non open source components - compiled binary data files (including but not limited to .mwm map files) under a non FLOSS license&quot;Anyone has context on the following not hidden over Git-* issues (I was left thoroughly confused trying to understand it)?

I wonder if that one lets you add flock cameras. I can&#x27;t find the option in Streetcomplete.

For the more experience OSM contributors, there is also a fork called SCEE[1] that adds some extra &quot;quests&quot; and a ton of UI customisability![1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.openstreetmap.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;SCEE" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.openstreetmap.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;SCEE</a>

I noticed that when I used one of these OSM based nagivation apps (I forget which one now), it suggested I leave my house by heading over my retaining wall, driving down a wooded hill, through a swamp, and then onto a nearby road. But because it was OSM based, I was able to discover the problem, fix it, and then when the app updated their data, the issue went away.I have since noticed, to my frustration, that whatever map data Uber uses has the same issue, and will send Uber drivers to this road behind my house that doesn&#x27;t actually have any access. Trying to explain this to Uber and get it fixed is basically impossible.

Yeah, especially accessibility-related data (especially especially crosswalk info) is apparently sorely lacking in OSM, given that every time I fire up StreetComplete in a new place the vast majority of the questions are things like “Do both ends of this crosswalk have tactile paving?” or “Does this crosswalk have an island?”.

This is a good way to get outside and do challenges like jogging every single street in your town. I figured that OSM was basically complete, but info was severely lacking for my area. It’s really easy to make local maps MUCH better.

iOS has Every Door[1] and there’s also MapComplete[2] which works as a PWA.[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;every-door.app" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;every-door.app</a> 
[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mapcomplete.org" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mapcomplete.org</a>

StreetComplete is one of my favorite apps. It&#x27;s like Pokemon Go mixed with Wikipedia because it gamifies contributing to OpenStreetMap, which powers (all?) mainstream opensource maps.Looking forward to iOS support so more people can use it.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;streetcomplete.app&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;streetcomplete.app&#x2F;</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.openstreetmap.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.openstreetmap.org&#x2F;</a>

Cool; but this is one of those instances where I wish the wonderful and benevolent FOSS developers of the world would consolidate efforts behind existing projects to make fewer better things instead of many never-finished forks. Especially since there is not yet a single open source map ui that is polished enough to compete with enterprise maps.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.openstreetmap.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.openstreetmap.org&#x2F;</a> has a good web client :)

Desktop could some attention as well because both Organic and CoMaps have a rather basic custom interface that feels imo off

Yes it&#x27;s planned. Should work in theory, but no one tried before.Maps are so often done as native apps that to my knowledge no one tried to just use the PWA capabilities to cache tiles on the Web. Of course what&#x27;s hard is cache invalidation. Does the user want to update the tiles ? Never ? Daily, weekly ? Only some regions ? Or manually ?Here&#x27;s an issue about that : <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;codeberg.org&#x2F;cartes&#x2F;web&#x2F;issues&#x2F;1078" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;codeberg.org&#x2F;cartes&#x2F;web&#x2F;issues&#x2F;1078</a>It&#x27;s in French, unfortunately Codeberg has no auto-translate capabilities yet.

Would you consider using cache storage for enabling offline capabilities? Maybe I am in the minority but I usually go to organic maps for offline usage.

Organic Maps and its fork Comaps still lack a Web client.We&#x27;re this on <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cartes.app" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cartes.app</a>, trying to push the Web further (even on mobile devices) so that you don&#x27;t even need an app for most use cases.

&gt; I think they should stick with toponyms, instead of trying to be some sort of political arbiter.This can mostly work for sub-national names, but doesn’t really address cases such as Taiwan, Cyprus, etc.

Organic Maps finally made Hong Kong a region this year. Previously they required you to download the entire “China South” region, which was an extremely weird and wasteful choice.Next it should standardize region naming.For example, the new region is called “China Hong Kong” (every online ordering form out there does simply “Hong Kong”). Simultaneously, Taiwan is just “Taiwan”, so it’s clearly not about following a party line. Simultaneously, places like Falklands (not without its own disputes), South Georgia, Saint Helena have no mention of UK in their respective region titles, while Hawaii and Puerto Rico both lead with USA.I think they should stick with toponyms, instead of trying to be some sort of political arbiter.

I used comaps on a hike. It really is good at not draining your battery.I&#x27;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&#x27;s not possible to import a planned route or similar. Has anyone here any idea for how to solve this?

In the old times, I bought a Nokia smartphone (5230) because it shipped with offline maps – Nokia had the license for satellite data before Google Maps existed. I also drive a VW with built-in GPS and map loaded from SD card.Offline maps are an obligatory &quot;survival&quot; tool. Most people trust too much they&#x27;ll have connectivity, but it&#x27;ll be the first thing to go down when it&#x27;s most needed (extreme weather, blackouts, conflicts, etc).Thank you for the tip on the app!

There are no tiles. All geometry is loaded and rendered directly from an SQLite database on every render.Geometry is stored as TWKB (Tiny Well-Known Binary) to reduce storage and transport size. During decoding, they do clever work using aggregate functions and reusing buffers across rows to reduce allocations.There is real potential in the tech, but unfortunately little momentum behind it.

IIRC it usually means it stores the vectors and draws it clientside.

I am curious: is it called &quot;tileless&quot; because it uses tiles, but offline? Or does it somehow not use tiles?

There is also <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gitlab.com&#x2F;tilelessmap&#x2F;tilelessmap" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gitlab.com&#x2F;tilelessmap&#x2F;tilelessmap</a> with some of the same focus areas.&gt; 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.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=org.tileless.map.play">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=org.tileless.m...</a>

the original developers of MM then just started to do the same to OM by equally aggressively ask for money :p

Maps.me got sold to a series of subsequent owners. It was those subsequent owners who enshittified the app, not the original developers mentioned in your quotation. The original developers only later returned to the codebase, because it was freely licensed, and forked it in a different direction.

&gt; the same people, who created MapsWithMe&#x2F;Maps.Me appAh, the same people who I bought Maps.Me from in 2012 - that when I went to use it recently now bombards me with &quot;sale ending in 4 hours!&quot; pro subscription ad popovers in order to restore functionality (more than 10 offline map areas) that existed at the time I bought the app? No thanks.

it depends what type of waterways you’re after.
for the sea, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;map.openseamap.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;map.openseamap.org&#x2F;</a> is very good (but no route planning sadly - for that you’d need opencpn and some charts obtained.
For inland waterways i can only speak for the English canals, for which i recommend <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;opencanalmap.uk&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;opencanalmap.uk&#x2F;</a> which uses data from both OSM and the Canal and River Trust. Again, sadly no route planning but for that I use <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;canalplan.org.uk&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;canalplan.org.uk&#x2F;</a>

The OSS tool for nautical charts is OpenCPN.

The plugin is just part of why OsmAnd is good for nautical use, there is also an alternate view in the configure map menu for nautical use.

For some reason osmAnd was the only GPS map that would work on a flight for me.

OsmAnd has a nautical map plugin you can enable.

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.

People at Apple are not left-handed, they don&#x27;t drive, they don&#x27;t work out, and they don&#x27;t seem to go out in the cold very much. Oh, and they definitely don&#x27;t play video games.

IDK, my hypothesis is that they only go anywhere by car. The way they hide public transportation and pedestrian-only streets sucks.

I&#x27;m very pleased to see open source mapping&#x2F;navigation systems. I have had the hypothesis for a while that many of the UI&#x2F;UX designers on the google maps team do not actually drive a car.

+1 That, and it works in mountainous areas like the Alps or Pyrenees, where you&#x27;re lucky to have GPS and most definitely can&#x27;t rely on 4G for Google Maps

I actually think the search feature rocks, because you have high fidelity OSM maps to query. Can&#x27;t search for drinkable wells in Google Maps!But then, it of course isn&#x27;t Google Maps. It is likely to be more out of date and will not understand &quot;natural&quot; 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.

I guess it depends on how you use Google Maps, but I mainly navigate to addresses, and Comaps works fine for that.

This is more about OSM than Organic Maps, and I agree that looking for businesses it&#x27;s not great. But looking for mapped features such as toilets, water taps, benches, fountains, etc. is far superior.

We the FOSS world just have 100 to 10000 less budget to implement this feature. It&#x27;s a hard problem, and you can&#x27;t ignore that lots of other features are missing. E.g. street view or place comments.I&#x27;m working on <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cartes.app" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cartes.app</a> and we&#x27;re well aware that search is not on par, far from it. But we have hundreds of other features and bugs to fix. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;codeberg.org&#x2F;cartes&#x2F;web" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;codeberg.org&#x2F;cartes&#x2F;web</a>

I thought I updated the app before my recent backpacking trip in Europe, but I will give it a try again.

search greatly improved in the past couple years. try it again?

Organic Maps a great app in many ways, but I still don&#x27;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&#x27;s a hard problem, but this is the number one thing that needs to somehow be fixed. I can&#x27;t tell if I&#x27;m just too dumb or if FOSS&#x2F;degoogle fanboys are just pretending. I just know I&#x27;ve tried to use it exclusively many times and always had to give in to Google Maps because the search totally failed.

My favorite renderer of OSM (and possibly other data)
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mapy.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;turisticka?x=-3.1744145&amp;y=55.9517954&amp;z=15" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mapy.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;turisticka?x=-3.1744145&amp;y=55.9517954&amp;z=1...</a>there&#x27;s an app too, some features are paid, and there are some long-standing bugs, but is otherwise quite fine. I use it when I want a map, not just uniform gray void with roads that is google maps.

I love organic maps. It’s great for hiking especially coverage through cities is really good too with small landmarks such as water fountains.

Related:Organic Maps migrates to Forgejo due to GitHub account blocked by Microsoft - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43525395">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43525395</a> - March 2025 (49 comments)Organic Maps Turns 4: The Privacy-Focused Alternative to Google Maps - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=42470155">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=42470155</a> - Dec 2024 (6 comments)Organic Maps: Offline Hike, Bike, Trails and Navigation - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=42343654">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=42343654</a> - Dec 2024 (1 comment)Maps.me co-founder tries to close down Organic Maps open-source fork - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=42343121">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=42343121</a> - Dec 2024 (72 comments)Google removed Organic Maps from the Play Store - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41272925">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41272925</a> - Aug 2024 (224 comments)Organic maps: Experimental feed based public transport mapping - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41152559">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41152559</a> - Aug 2024 (35 comments)Organic Maps is a free Android and iOS offline maps app for travelers - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39582797">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39582797</a> - March 2024 (24 comments)In 2023 Organic Maps got its first million users - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38746187">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38746187</a> - Dec 2023 (88 comments)Organic Maps - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=37347447">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=37347447</a> - Sept 2023 (485 comments)OrganicMaps is Android and iOS offline maps for travel without trackers or ads - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27576882">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27576882</a> - June 2021 (116 comments)Organicmaps: Android and iOS offline maps app for travelers, tourists, hikers - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27543012">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27543012</a> - June 2021 (113 comments)

I bought Maps.me Pro in 2012, used it while traveling then and was happy. Fired it back up for a similar trip this year and in spite of having paid for it already, I don&#x27;t have Pro features and I get aggressive &quot;Sale ending in 4 hours!&quot; popovers every time I launch the app.

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!

I believe MapsWithMe (now Maps.me) was released about that time, but I personally didn&#x27;t get an iOS device until 2013.

At that time I think I was using CityMaps2Go. Not sure if it still exists though.

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 uselessWe 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

Love this app. Simple, useful, works offline, and doesn’t feel like it’s trying to track everything I do. Really appreciate that.

This is my regular hiking and cycling map, fantastic for offline use as well!Edit: didn’t know about the ads &#x2F; proprietary server issues. I guess this is the only sort of place to find out unless users are browsing the GitHub repo.

I use OrganicMaps a lot for long walks and it&#x27;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&#x2F;trails and other useful info like drinking water sources, picnic benches etc. And supports importing GPX trails. So IMO it&#x27;s way better than Google Maps for this use case.It&#x27;s also very easy to edit some basic data through the app so if you notice an error in the map it&#x27;s usually possible to fix it right there and then.

Arcane and nerdy is a good description of OSMAnd. That&#x27;s why I love it and would never switch to anything else.

It&#x27;s a fork from Maps.me, the streamlined map app popular with normies. I myself use and love OSMAnd, but in the travel communities I am active in, most people react badly to OSMAnd as something arcane and nerdy.

And at the cost of map fidelity. Complex curves look terrible at certain zoom levels in CoMaps&#x2F;Organic Maps.

Much better performance and much less cluttered UI, at the cost of having fewer features.

Better and easier to understand and use UX.

For offline use I use pocket earth <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pocketearth.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pocketearth.com&#x2F;</a>
I&#x27;m pleased with it, it&#x27;s one of the best out there.

I had bad experience tracking my bike ride with it on iOS - seems like app offloaded and didn&#x27;t record half of the track. Strava and OutRun don&#x27;t have this problem.

How does this compare to AllTrails for discovery, tracking and accuracy?

I tried to use it while biking but it&#x27;s extremely confusing for bike trails (colors and parallel routes display, not highlighting real bike trails). I vastly prefer mapy.com in just showing a simple red dashed line for any official bike trail. The elevation is also displayed in 50m increments which is too little for bikes.

With the important caveat though that a lot of devices use AGPS, I don’t understand in too much detail and I think on some devices it can be disabled but I think this reveals some info

They may be thinking of Google&#x27;s coarse location feature where the handset checks SSIDs in the proximity against Googles database for fast lookup.

You are largely correct about everyday location privacy but I was thinking more in the adversarial direction (read military&#x2F; GPS denied zones) when I started this work. There have been news about GPS being denied&#x2F;spoofed over european region. When your phone can&#x27;t get the GPS signal, it would try to retrieve alternative signals (A-GPS, cellular network etc) - this is where an adversary could be listening for leaks. So GPS denial could effectively be a trigger and the follow ups after that trigger could lead to leaks.

&gt; It&#x27;s not fully private if it requires GPS connection though!!How so? GPS is like FM radio: you send nothing, you only receive.Apps like organic maps or comaps let you use the maps fully offline and you can compute itineraries without GPS when your need this (from point A to point B, with as many stops as you wish).I strongly recommend you to seriously look into comaps or organic maps if you don&#x27;t know them.Now, &quot;GPS isn&#x27;t working or depletes my battery, what do I do?&quot; is an interesting topic worth looking into. It seems you are trying to automate what we all do when GPS doesn&#x27;t work well. I find that relatively easy in a city, not so much in a road on the countryside.

This is exciting!! I was not aware of organic maps until today. I use offline maps in google maps also. It&#x27;s not fully private if it requires GPS connection though!! That&#x27;s why I have been working on <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;deepanwadhwa&#x2F;anumaan" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;deepanwadhwa&#x2F;anumaan</a> for a while now. The focus is on navigating without internet and without GPS.

I had my first hiking in a route without network connection one month ago, that was the first time I used the GPS without network by Organic Maps even I knew I could do it in the past. It showed me the possibility that some feature work well without network. It&#x27;s a really good experience.

I just wished Organic Map had a better way to download many countries&#x2F;regions at once.I frequently use it in the airplane without WiFi and wish to have high definition, but downloading country by country is too cumbersome.

To further back this up, just because OSM might be a map&#x27;s data source, it doesn&#x27;t mean they use the same rendered vectors or images for the tiles.I make changes to OSM so they can be propagated to a cycling-specific mapping tool I use (it&#x27;s a commercial tool with their own custom map layers) - it takes about 3-4 weeks from when a change is made on OSM for it to be incorporated into their data set.So yeah, it&#x27;s not as simple as &quot;we all use OSM so we&#x27;ll just share all our rendered mapping values&quot;.

There&#x27;s no fundamental reason that underlying map data used by a good % of mapping apps, couldn&#x27;t be stored 1x on-device, in some standard format and shared across apps.Users could pick &amp; choose what subset(s) of map data they want to store locally. Different apps could pick &amp; choose what features to offer, how to use available data &amp; how to render it.Sad to see that such a conceptually simple problem hasn&#x27;t been addressed yet. We&#x27;re talking a good # of apps here, many millions of users, and enormous amounts of storage &amp; bandwidth wasted.Edit: I&#x27;m assuming that last bit is a problem for the app developers themselves, too.

&gt; The sillyness &amp; waste of this is obviousUntil you realise that there is not one true way to show a map, and that different apps may actually have different needs. Suddenly it becomes obvious that not all apps can use the same shared offline data.

This used to be a thing on Windows Phone, you could download maps in the settings and they would be available in the default Maps app, but also in HERE Maps, Transit, etc.

Storage constraints haven&#x27;t been on developers&#x27; radar last 20 years.

I&#x27;ll repeat a question asked in an earlier thread on OM:Do there exist apps that share their offline map data? As in: install app A, dowload offline map data for country xyz, use in app A, install app B, use same map data in app B (or C, D etc) without re-downloading the map data?As I understood, that was not the case as each app uses its own format which is some underlying public geo info (presumably too big to have on device), filtered &#x2F; processed in per-app fashion.The sillyness &amp; waste of this is obvious. So: any progress in resolving this situation?

OSM has a heatmap feature. Users can contribute tracks and feed into it:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.openstreetmap.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Heat_maps" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.openstreetmap.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Heat_maps</a>

That&#x27;s possible. I use RideWithGPS, maybe a lot of people use it around here. Or maybe only two other people have ridden the route, it doesn&#x27;t say, but it&#x27;s still super useful for finding routes.

Don&#x27;t think anyone other than Strava and Komoot have sufficient user-generated trail database to be useful for your use-case.

AllTrails has a heat map feature as well. I think this feature is now paywalled.

Is it feasible for something like this to have heatmaps?Maybe the data could be shared&#x2F;distributed via hypercore or similar.I find heatmaps are my primary way of finding new mountain biking trails and routes.

Agree!CoMaps fork is adding OpenAddresses integration and traffic (linked above)!<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;codeberg.org&#x2F;comaps&#x2F;comaps&#x2F;pulls&#x2F;4162" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;codeberg.org&#x2F;comaps&#x2F;comaps&#x2F;pulls&#x2F;4162</a>

1. This is largely country-dependent with some governments being quite adamant that address data should be in the public domain, and some governments doing the opposite and selling address databases to private companies for some quick cash, where private companies then sell address lookups for some absurd per-lookup price for the next few decades. Most of the world though is probably just not rich enough to compile, publish and accurately maintain a national address database.OpenAddresses is perhaps the gold standard for open source address data compilation from government datasets. Note for the future that alltheplaces.xyz (project I contribute to) is looking like it may eventually perform the automatic address data download&#x2F;extraction&#x2F;compilation that OpenAddresses currently performs. This has the benefit that in backwards countries, alltheplaces.xyz also obtains some addresses through other means--such as advertised location of international restaurant chains. And quite often, being within +&#x2F;- 100 address numbers on a road is good enough for navigation. Google Maps obviously crawls addresses from all over the Internet AND has quite a high tolerance for errors, hence will perhaps always seem more complete than OSM.2. Some further ideas for open source mapping applications trying to determine real time traffic situations:2a. Use GTFS&#x2F;GTFS-RT feeds for bus networks to detect real time delays but also to compare planned bus route schedules for different times of the day (different traffic conditions) where buses share the road with the public. There&#x27;s already a few maps out there that overlay nearby GTFS-RT feeds for the city of interest and usefully provide a visual indication of how well public transport vehicles are currently moving.2b. alltheplaces.xyz extracts public traffic camera feeds which could be presented to users when they plan&#x2F;commence a journey as an indication of what lies ahead on the route.

While default osm data is great, I&#x27;ve been very impressed with the partnership&#x2F;collective of Overture Maps data. It&#x27;s osm + esri&#x2F;tomtom + corporate processing&#x2F;funding.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;overturemaps.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;overturemaps.org&#x2F;</a>While not updated as frequently, their releases have a pretty high quality and coverage.

Also current place names. You can sometimes find a business on OSM that has correct metadata, but in many areas the majority are missing or stale (like, closed 10+ years ago.) Solving this is an &quot;interesting&quot; problem to say the least when many businesses these days have nothing more than an Instagram&#x2F;Whatsapp handle.

There&#x27;s one more for me: reliable store hours.

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.

There are two things keeping me using &quot;Big Map&quot;.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&#x27;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.

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.

There is a desktop client but it’s kind of immature it seems to me compared to the iOS and android frontends

If there any chance for supporting AppImage for linux? Are there any plans for that?

Organic Maps was founded by two of the Maps.Me authors (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Organic_Maps#History" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Organic_Maps#History</a>).With CoMaps I don&#x27;t think, there are any original authors involved (?). In any case I prefer organic, the original. Donated and very grateful that this app works so well (except for search where I sometimes use another app).

In terms of forks, I believe it was Maps.Me -&gt; Organic Maps -&gt; CoMaps.So all forks of the same project. Maps.Me is not open source anymore (I think?), and CoMaps was started by a subset of the Organic Maps community that wasn&#x27;t happy with the Organic Maps governance.&gt; What might make me switch?Different reasons for different people, but OpenStreetMap is a great community project, for one. What I really like with those apps (I am now using CoMaps) is that they are open source, offline first and the UI is quite minimal and clean.

&gt; What might make me switch?Google Maps will always have better POI data because they have a larger userbase and they&#x27;ve gamified adding POIs with the &quot;Local Guides&quot; badge.The main reason to switch is to have an offline-first experience. Google Maps does not provide offline maps everywhere, e.g. South Korea. And if you&#x27;ve ever tried using the Google Maps app on a weak connection, it&#x27;s frustrating because it still tries to download remote tiles instead of using the ones you&#x27;ve downloaded.Lastly any contributions you make in OpenStreetMap will show up in Organic Maps &#x2F; CoMaps for everyone.Personally, I use Google Maps on a daily basis, but have Organic Maps and regions downloaded for travel and just switch between the two. It&#x27;s good to have a reliable fallback.

Ok, but - how is Organic Maps better than Maps.ME (and is Comaps better than Organic Maps in some way other than the transparency issues)?

CoMaps is a fork&#x2F;spin-off of Organic Maps, which in turn is a fork of Maps.ME

How does Organic Maps differ from Maps.Me (which it also mentions), or PocketEarth mentiond in comments here? Or CoMaps for that matter?I&#x27;ve had Maps.Me on my phone for some years; it&#x27;s often not as accurate or polished as the commercial offerings (Google, Here Technologies), but it&#x27;s pretty nice. What might make me switch?

Yup! It is worldwide since it uses OSM data<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.openstreetmap.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.openstreetmap.org&#x2F;</a>

Is this support all countries? Specially Indian region

is there any current benefit over comaps?

Using CoMaps gave me the &quot;Oh shit!&quot; moment for the first time that the convergence of enough high quality open map data and a reasonably designed maps app to consume it was finally happening. It&#x27;s crazy to think about how much thankless work it took to the point where we have something that is in many ways at parity and even exceeding in some dimensions the user-hating map software.There is still a super long way to go until it suits everyone&#x27;s needs, but the end + even further is starting to come into sight.

This sounds like an optimistic comment from a decade ago. Cost of storage has gone up recently, as a glance at data-hoarder fora will show. Phones have less storage capacity nowadays inasmuch as many manufacturers are removing SD card slots. The idea is that normies keep stuff in the cloud; self-storage of very large amounts of data is an edge case.In my country, the typical laptop purcase from a retail chain is still 512GB or so, and moreover, few and fewer people own a laptop since it is becoming normal for a smartphone to be one&#x27;s only computing device outside the workplace (even uni students are foregoing &quot;real computers&quot; now). Anything more than such a basic laptop is a premium product, and premium products cost premium prices.

Offline-first used to be the norm before everything started requiring an internet connection for some reason. I was using OSM data offline 15 years ago on smartphones.The reason it moved to the internet was not that it wasn&#x27;t possible to stay offline-first. If the app depends on your server, then the owner can monetise that (e.g. with subscriptions) or track the users. It is more interesting for companies than allowing the users to buy a snapshot of the maps once and never come back.Offline-first nowadays comes from open source projects, not from companies.

This belongs to a class of thing I&#x27;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&#x27; complete music and book collections and a meaningful chunk of most peoples&#x27; 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.

One of the routing options in CoMaps is &quot;avoid stairs&quot;. Not enabled by default. See ≡ → Settings → Routing Options.(CoMaps is the open-source, non-profit community fork of Organic Maps.)

Honestly I&#x27;ve seen google maps suggest some absurd routes, especially to avoid 1 minute of traffic on the motorway.Always best to double check the routing suggestion.

Tried it for while, works with GrapheneOS and Android Auto well enough.What I absolutely can’t stand is the routing. It once tried to send me through residential Oakland on some Manhattan-grade staircase labyrinth instead of just taking normal streets.

&gt; Btw they (respectively, only one guy, Konstantin!) copy code &#x2F; changesets from Organic Maps, while this is not happening the other way around.Is anyone breaking any licence here? If not, then I don&#x27;t understand this complaint.

&gt;Be kind. Don&#x27;t be snarky. Converse curiously; don&#x27;t cross-examine. Edit out swipes.&gt;Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.&gt;When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. &quot;That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3&quot; can be shortened to &quot;1 + 1 is 2, not 3.&quot;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.

The offline-first approach is underrated. 
Most mapping apps assume connectivity as a given — 
Organic Maps treating it as a luxury is the right call for global users.

Organic Maps

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I&#x27;m making a platform for simple open source games you can play anywhere.Games are all just JavaScript classes and you can read the source of every game on the platform.I started working on initial &quot;games&quot; (mostly rendering tests) in 2018 and eventually built all of the platform stuff around it to make it easy to share games.There&#x27;s also an in-browser editor available for you to make and publish games all from the browser.Would love some feedback on the games and studio features as well as the platform overall. All of the code is available at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;homegamesio" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;homegamesio</a>