1 yr. ago • 97%

Organic Maps: An Open-Source Maps App That Doesn't Suck

hardfault.life Organic Maps: An Open-Source Maps App That Doesn't Suck

Organic Maps impressed me with its elegant UI, effective routing, and good ethics.

cross-posted from: https://psychedelia.ink/post/526072

My impression of Organic Maps immediately improved when I started driving. It talks! It knows exit numbers! It can tell you which lanes to use! Sure, it isn’t as polished as Google Maps, but all of the functionality is present. The UI is high-contrast and easy to read, although I wish the text showing exit numbers/street names was a little bigger. When you’re simply on the road and following directions, Organic Maps feels every bit as intuitive as Google Maps.

As my fiancee and I prepared to set off into the boonies, I plugged in the address of our hotel. About 45 seconds later, Organic Maps returned the 300-mile route to our destination. It can take a lot longer to calculate longer routes using your phone’s processor instead of a huge cloud server. It didn’t really bother me though; 45 seconds is nothing compared to the 6-hour trip ahead. If that’s the cost of using a maps app that doesn’t spray your personal data all over the internet, I’ll pay it.

67 comments

And don't forget that organic maps uses osm for the map data and you can make the map better for everyone by using a very simple app called street complete, that let you add shops, street address and a lot more.

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- I like OrganicMaps' editor more than streetcomplete. I think streetcomplete focuses a lot on things that don't matter.
  
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  Use what works best for you! I will say I love how I can customize StreetComplete so that the things I think are important can be asked first.
  
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  Does OrganicMaps have editing abilities?
  
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  Have you tried Street Complete Expert? You can edit directly poi with this one too, and you can even enable the option in the settings to view the satellite version of the map
  
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- Is there a street complete community on Lemmy or a magazine on kbin? I'd like to exchange thoughts with fellow mappers.
  
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  Dunno but there is an openstreetmap community on lemmy!
  
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- Absolutely agreed.
  
  The underlying map is great, the interfaces are great (especially on OrganicMaps), the way it can give me offline access to everything is great but in that crucial moment getting off a train/bus/whatever and thinking - hang on, which direction did I need to go? - the search just undoes everything else because often you literally can not find the location you need. Then it's hand-scrolling to roughly where you think it is, putting down a general pin and then eye-balling the actual location.
  
  Don't get me wrong, it's fun in a sort of 90s-unfolding the city-map kind of way but not if you actually have an appointment somewhere.
  
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- OSMAnd+ is a feature beast. It seems like you can customize EVERYTHING.
  
  I find search improved a lot tho.
  
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- Not open source, but qwant.com/maps leverages OSM data and makes things searchable.
  
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My problem with all of the OSM-based navigation tools is the lack of realtime data. I am trying to move away from Google in general, but 50% of my Google Maps usage is for traffic and closures along routes I know.

20
- Just move to my country, where traffic is so bad and unpredictable that not a single navigation app can be trusted.
  
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- Traffic... That's a sticking point for some people. Closures, I find OSM is more up to date than google on that front these days.
  
  I don't need traffic data. I live somewhere without bad traffic, deliberately. Traffic is one of the top criteria for me when choosing where to live.
  
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Apparently someone made a community for the app !organicmaps@sopuli.xyz. I haven't used Organic Maps myself so I can't say anything about it.

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I know it's a personal preference but I hate talking maps. Google Maps is unbearable.

"In 100 m at the roundabout take the third exit and follow A-345 direction Fukington"

5 second later...

"At the roundabout take the third exit and follow A-345 direction Fukington"

Just shut up...

My favourite is Magic Earth. I don't now how they did it but I can use it without voice directions. I think it goes down to couple of things:

super smooth animations: I always places me at the right spot, even at the roundabouts I can see where I am in relation to the exit. OSMAnd+ completely sucks here, it cannot put me correctly even on the road. Google Maps often hangs up right at the roundabout when you most need it. Super irritating.

great zoom: it just does it right. Zooms out when driving faster, zooms in at turns and when I slow down. Even Google Maps doesn't have such a nice zoom, don't know why

lane indications: when showing the path it only marks the correct lane. So if there are 3 lanes that go to 3 different exists it will show you which lane to follow, not just which exit to take. It's always clear where I have to be. With Google Maps I always need extra clues like I have to check the name of the exit on the map and compare with the signs.

So yeah, I know it a matter of getting used to one solution or the other but for me Magic Earth is the most natural way to use navigation.
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- Just turn the voice off in Google maps?
  
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  I do. Magic Earth is still better. I think Google Maps actually expects you to drive with the voice on so when you turn it off you need to look at all the other cues. For me just looking at the map in Google Maps is not enough to understand where it wants me to go. I have to do things like counting the lights until the turn on read indications on the signs and compare them with the map. With Magic Earth I can just see where to go.
  
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- Honestly, driving while looking at a screen to see where you need to go sounds dangerous to me. Now I don't know your setup or how you do it, so you do you, maybe it does not distract you, I know it would distract me.
  
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  So you just follow the voice commands? In my experience it's simply impossible. Most common issues are:
  
  google says "at the roundabout take the 3rd exit" but the roundabout has an exit to a short service road leading nowhere or a one way road that's not really an exit. Do I count those two? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Depends how those are mapped. Impossible to know without looking
  
  "In 50 meters turn right" but there two streets, one maybe 10 meters after the first one. Which one does it mean? If you're driving 40km/h it's impossible to tell without looking. It will say 'turn right' in almost exactly the same moment for both streets
  
  "take the exit" but the road splits right after exiting. which way do I go after exiting? Sometimes it will say "exit and keep right", sometimes no. depends on how those roads are mapped.
  
  I prefer to just look at the screen from time to time. With a good map a quick glance clarifies everything. With google maps trying to figure out what's going on when it's suddenly not clear where to go is much harder. But I probably depends on the town you're driving in and how used to it you are.
  
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- To be quite honest the routing issue you're referring to is most likely related to invalid/outdated mapping data, as opposed to the routing algorithm the mapping engine uses to navigate.
  The benefit of using OpenStreetMap data for routing is that if you spot a mistake or a route that is incorrectly mapped you can fix it yourself, or leave a note for mapping contributors to examine and resolve. You can also browse the mapping data history and see exactly who and when mapped this region and even contact them if you wish.
  OSM supports much more mapping data via tagging, which translates to more accurate driving directions. To err is human, and OSM mappers make mistakes as well, but these can be easily fixed.
  
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  Magi Earth uses OSM. I know you can update it, I do.
  
  The issue I have with OSMAnd+ is that the GPS is inaccurate to the point of making it unusable. I know probably something with how it works on my phone and not a widespread issue but still, Magi Earth just works better for me. And even when OSMAnd+ worked on my previous phone Magic Earth was still way better due to all the things I wrote about.
  
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I traveled around Europe last summer, without data and phone provider, and I can confrim Organic Maps absolutely rocks. Light, responsive, up to date, it's really solid.

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- Used it as my primary hiking tool recently (i know, I know - I had a compass and a map) and it worked a treat.
  
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I love the concept of organic maps, and do even use it occasionally, but for now I'm mostly sticking to OSMand.

The main feature missing for me is the ability to customise the map styles. I like using map apps for hiking and organic maps default (/only) style is ugly at best and unusable at worst for this.

9
- Interesting... I love the simple and clean type of Organic Maps, but it's cool that there's an app for everyone out there.
  
  The Organic Maps team is working on an outdoor style, for hiking and similar situations. They had it in a beta version some time ago, but they decided to rework it, so it is not ready yet. You can check in a couple of months if you're interested in seeing how it looks like.
  
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Osmand+ doesn't suck.

9
- Did it finally stop reversing the order you have to put in addresses then? Cause until it fixes that, it does suck.
  
  Last time I checked, someone had submitted a PR to food it, and the OSMand team rejected it, cause they liked the reverse order.
  
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  I can search for: "street streetnumber city" or "city street streetnumber" and find the address i need
  
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Organic Maps has no traffic data

I'd gladly pay a couple €/month for a live traffic and construction data service from OM.

It wouldn't even need to be unfree as the service's value would almost entirely be its data, not the software which facilitates it.

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- The issue is mostly not about paying for the info, but rather about how to obtain said info without collecting location data of all users in an intrusive way like Google does.
  
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- You can add a traffic layer from GMaps to OsmAnd+:
  https://gripfastistech.com/index.php/blog/95-update-2020-osmand-google-traffic-live.html
  
  CC @CCatMan@lemmy.one
  
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  Does this re-route based on traffic conditions and travel times as well, or simply show the traffic conditions on the map?
  
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- Yeah, really need traffic data with route alternative.
  
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Is it on F-droid?

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- Yes https://f-droid.org/packages/app.organicmaps/
  
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- It's literally the only result if you search for "organic"
  
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I have only one complain about OSM in general, why can't I browse the bus lines a specific bus stop offers?? I can check if it has a fucking bench but can't inspect the bus lines.

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- There might be some website that offers that functionality using OSM data.
  
  One thing that we need to understand is that OSM is data. Loads of it. The ways of displaying and searching for that data are up to each website and app that uses OSM data: first the data has to be added to OSM, then someone has to develop a tool to easily view it.
  
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- Not sure which application you are using, but you can use the transport map layer of OSM and see all the bus stops. Every stop likely already has the tags for bus stop features.
  As for Organic Maps, it's optimized for driving/directions and doesn't have the advanced features that more redines apps have. That said I love it and enjoy using it for directi9ns.
  
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- OsmAnd has "public transport" option it shows you all the routes abd stops and you can choose specific one. It is great.
  
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i first considered this when maps.me went to shreds. for a while, i used both organic maps and osmand for my cycling trips. the cleaner interface of organic maps won me over. my main gripe at that time was the absence of a route import function. the dev team added that recently. now, i can import both kml and gpx formats.
now, if there is a way to save the in-app planned routes, that would be a huge help.

6
- Wait what happened to maps.me? I still have it installed but barely use it but fondly remember the days hiking with it or exploring new towns.
  
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  From Wikipedia
  
  .. until the application was sold to the payment processor Daegu Limited, part of Parity.com, which changed the application user interface and content,[7][8] which led the free software community to develop an ad- and tracker-free fork called 'Organic Maps' in response.[
  
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  last i used it, it became a slow, resource-hogging, ad-riddled, bloated mess.
  
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  It was sold and got worse into he last years. The goof news is that some of the original developers of maps.me made a fork of that application... Organic Maps.
  
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- Btw:
  
  Organic Maps is a free Android & iOS offline maps app for travelers, tourists, hikers, and cyclists based on top of crowd-sourced OpenStreetMap data. It is a privacy-focused, open-source fork of Maps.me app (previously known as MapsWithMe), maintained by the same people who created MapsWithMe in 2011.
  
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Organic maps is my daily driver for navigation and has been since 2 years. It is a great app and improving very rapidly. It's also a great app for adding POIs to openstreetmap when outside.

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- Does anyone know, will it work with Android Auto?
  
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  It's in development. I think there is beta functionalty already that you can try.
  
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  Not yet, but this feature is planned.
  
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It’s the best offline map app I’ve found so far.

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- Same. And I've tried quite a few ones.
  
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As great as all these open source gmaps alternatives are, I always end up having trouble getting directions on which bus I need to take to get somewhere. Both OsmAnd~ and this don't have bus route information for my city, which sucks. Otherwise, they work just fine.

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Sadly I can't get voice prompts working with Organic Maps on GrapheneOS. Will stick with OsmAnd+ for now

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too bad it doesn't have Android Auto support

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So what is it like compared to Guru maps? I've been using that as my primary for a while.

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"Offline Organic Maps Hike Bike"

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