Organic Maps

by LeoPanthera • 3 years ago

1401 485 3 years ago

baz002• 3 years ago

I cannot really express how much praise I have for Organic Maps. It has got me out of the mire a couple of times due to the complete offline capability and paper maps being completely wrong. The OSM base layer is better than a lot of native maps out there.

Not only that, you can search for a toilet almost anywhere, including in the middle of nowhere in central Asia, and it found one!

shellfishgene• 3 years ago

Maybe I'm a little jaded by how the app economy works nowadays, but I find it almost suspicious how fast development seems and how well supported Organic Maps is. At least the high level of quality is explained by the fact that the lead developers seem to be the founders of the original maps.me.

biodranik15• 3 years ago

We're not alone, our community and contributors are helping us!

ihatehn21• 3 years ago

I'm a volunteer working on an improvement to the spoken directions and I can say with firsthand experience that Organic Maps' development is not suspiciously fast. It is simply a fork of Maps.ME which has gone to crap, so when you look at features per year over the whole lifespan it's really not a lot. I think OSM is growing in popularity especially as more people realize that FAANG are awful and so we're seeing more activity lately, but let's just say that it's taken me a year to get around to working on this task again (is it just easier to accomplish things during Back to School week and Christmas-New Years' week?) and in that time I have not had many merge conflicts to deal with. It's getting better, and things are happening more quickly, but certainly not suspiciously-quickly. OM has been a thing since 2021 and I've been trying to ditch Google since 2015 so I've been around for awhile seeing the progress: much slower than I'd like, but still remarkable. Certainly not comparable in any way to a VC-funded startup that can churn out a product in months, this is funded by donations and volunteer work.

rqtwteye4• 3 years ago

Organic Maps is great. I just wish OSM worked on search more. They are behind there.

mrd3v0• 3 years ago

Which should be an exciting project any person can work on, given the decent amount of metadata OSM provides.

biodranik15• 3 years ago

We're actively improving our search in every release. Stay tuned!

ihatehn21• 3 years ago

The main issue with OSM search at least in America is a lack of addresses. Anyone can help with this by importing addresses from the National Address Database: https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/watmildon/diary/400812

zikduruqe• 3 years ago

As a cyclist, I use Organic Maps to add drinking water sources, shelters, repair stations, fix biking routes and lanes using just a mobile app to update OSM when I am out and about.

orbital-decay6• 3 years ago

Thanks for that! Editing the map on a bike can be a hassle though. I tried many options and came to conclusion that a 360° camera on the helmet and a physical Bluetooth button to take audio notes is the easiest possible setup.

oregoncurtis• 3 years ago

How do you fix the routes? I just checked out the suggested route from my work to home and it doesn't stick to the bike greenways or streets with bikelanes. It actually suggested I take a very dangerous road with no bike traffic at all. How can I help improve that?

dbrgn2• 3 years ago

Organic Maps is less powerful than OSMAnd (on Android), but it's much more straightforward and easy to use. It's the go-to app I recommend to all casual map users that want offline maps.

baz002• 3 years ago

Organic maps is also 100% free unlike OSMAnd.

tangus• 3 years ago

OsmAnd+ installed from FDroid is 100% free AFAIK.

onetimeacc4• 3 years ago

I can get OsmAnd~ from FDroid for free.

Aachen4• 3 years ago

So how do they finance the servers from which you download the sizable map files, if there's no "pay to unlock unlimited downloads" like in OsmAnd?

euroderf3• 3 years ago

For offline use I've been quite happy with Maps.me (also OSM-based) but it sounds like Organic Maps is worth a try.

LeoPanthera2• 3 years ago

Organic Maps is a fork of Maps.me.

onetimeacc4• 3 years ago

Organic Maps comes from the original founders of Maps.me.

biodranik15• 3 years ago

We have created maps.me, open-sourced it, and then forked it to create Organic Maps.

KoftaBob• 3 years ago

Just a heads up for context:

"In November 2014, Maps.me was acquired by Mail.Ru Group for 542 million Russian rubles"

"On November 2, 2020, Daegu Limited bought Maps.me for 1.56 Billion Russian rubles. Daegu Limited is announced to be part of Parity.com Group"

"Parity.com Group is privately held and is headquartered in Zug, Switzerland. It was founded by Viktor Mangazeev and Alex Grebnev in 2018. "

https://markets.ft.com/data/announce/detail?dockey=1323-1473...

palata7• 3 years ago

In case the other messages are not completely clear:

If you like Maps.me, you should move to Organic Maps. It's a fork, just strictly better.

euroderf3• 3 years ago

OK, Organic Maps looks great. But how the heck do I transfer to it all my bookmarks from Maps.me ?

mpawelski2• 3 years ago

Other people have already written that it's a fork of OrganicMaps by original authors.

I'll just add that for me OrganicMaps is much better than current Maps.me which is getting worse and worse after it was sold to some Korean (or Chinese, don't remember now) company.

The UI is much simpler and in recent months you can really start to see that OrganicMaps is becoming more detailed. I used to check from time to time the difference between Maps.me and OM and and it used to not be much of a difference, but now you have: more POIs (point of interests, like physiotherapist, specific kind of shops, etc.), better rendering of walls, fences, cliffs, embankments, hedges, better rendering of parking places (very recent update!), and more!

hnben• 3 years ago

In your opinion what is the most important feature missing in organic maps (compared to OSMAnd)?

ynoxinul3• 3 years ago

Importing GPX tracks and displaying it on the map. For my bike trips I do my planning in advance on a computer using brouter or openrouteservice, then import the created file into OSMAnd.

onetimeacc4• 3 years ago

track recording

fransje262• 3 years ago

The ability to import a gpx track, for instance.

d4f0• 3 years ago

Android Auto compatibility. Although I think it's a planned feature.

Vinnl8• 3 years ago

- I miss the ability to make Wikivoyage articles (and their associated POIs) available offline, which is really useful when travelling.

- OsmAnd's flags feel more ephemeral, whereas in Organic Maps I'm just adding them as regular bookmarks under "My places", which make them harder to distinguish from bookmarks I want to keep long-term.

- Bus lines and stops are pretty useful if you're taking the bus somewhere unfamiliar.

But those are pretty minor; I've still switched to Organic Maps just because it's so much easier to use (ironically, that probably is because it has fewer features).

Also, I just keep both installed just in case, so I can always fall back to OsmAnd :)

raybb4• 3 years ago

For me the biggest missing feature is an easy way to sync bookmarks/saved places.

You can manually export it but it gives me a little stress that one day I'll just lose my phone after not having exported for a while.

At the very minimum it would be great to auto export the file every X days to a specified location so I can auto sync it with syncthing or something.

But a nice setup would also be supporting webdav (nextcloud) to just drop the file there automatically.

This is the related issue but doesn't have too much traction. https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues/622

dbrgn2• 3 years ago

- Good contour lines and hill shading! I live in Switzerland and it's considerably harder to understand the terrain without these features.

- Configurable POIs. In Organic Maps I can show POIs for a few common categories, but many are missing (for example EV charging stations). And I can only show one type of POI at once on the map. In OSMand, I can show POIs for "drinking water, EV charging stations and public bathrooms" at the same time.

- Track recording and especially live tracking (OSMand has a very nice plugin for that, which works with services like Traccar).

Occivink• 3 years ago

It's less powerful, but also orders of magnitude less bloated and faster. OSMAnd has that quintessential kitchen-sink application feeling where features is the main concern and cohesive design an afterthought.

orbital-decay6• 3 years ago

They rewrote the renderer so OSMAnd speed is tolerable now. There's still no real replacement for it for more advanced use, only alternatives for certain use cases, like Organic Maps.

sneak2• 3 years ago

OSMAnd tracks users using a secret supercookie by default because the developer wants metrics. This is done without consent. The defensiveness of the developer with regards to such unethical tracking means that I will never use any software they ever release.

https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd/issues/15058

Organic Maps does not, and should be supported instead.

darkwater2• 3 years ago

I took the time to go through the whole thread. Your tone was pretty aggressive from the start and throughout the whole conversation. On the developer's side yeah, they did minimize the issue at the beginning and then eventually modified how it works to increase privacy (rotating the UUID every 3 months, permitting to disable it anyway, clearly state it in the TOS etc). You are still downloading a tons of data from their infra, and for free, I think it's fair for them to have some sort of control to avoid abuses.

And even if it sounds harsh, their initial suggestion is always valid: use another software, or fork it and maintain your own version. It's GPLv3.

rqtwteye4• 3 years ago

I have tried OSMAnd a few times but it reminds me of the GIMP. Super powerful but incredibly convoluted UI

walteweiss• 3 years ago

Do they have Linux apps as well? There are links to Flathub and the native (repository) app in the bottom of the page.

LeoPanthera2• 3 years ago

In beta, yes.

grey_earthling• 3 years ago

Yes. But the UI is much clunkier than the excellent Android version.

mpawelski2• 3 years ago

There is, but the UX is not there yet. I think it was mostly used for for easier development and contributing to the project (you don't have to use mobile emulators to test map rendering), but apparently it's now officially in "beta" state, so maybe there is some hope for better UX improvement in future.

fuzzy23• 3 years ago

Organic Maps is super awesome. The routing feature is really good, too. It even works on Apple CarPlay! There are some glitches to be aware of though: Routing across region borders is often broken.

Also, a warning about OSM in general: Do not blindly trust it. Map data can be very out of date in some places, especially on remote-ish hiking trails.

izacus4• 3 years ago

Do not blindly trust it. Map data can be very out of date in some places, especially on remote-ish hiking trails.

Also, for the love of everything that's holy, do the same with Apple/Google Maps. They can be horribly wrong to the point of being actively dangerous.

IshKebab• 3 years ago

For roads though they generally hook into official sources (e.g. Ordnance Survey in the UK) so they are guaranteed to get updated when the layout changes. That's not true for OSM. (Though obviously in the UK there are enough map nerds that it's very unlikely to be an issue.)

wds• 3 years ago

Can't trust Apple/Google, can't trust OSM, can't trust paper maps...

What's the right answer here?

acec2• 3 years ago

No not trust it google maps either. There is a crossroads that is wrong in Google near my house and it is right in OSM. In fact... I did fix it but I will not report about the error to Google ;-)

gniv4• 3 years ago

I did fix it but I will not report about the error to Google

Why not? That seems like a weird stance. Is your desire to hurt Google so strong that you are not willing to help potentially thousands of people?

orbital-decay6• 3 years ago

Instead of trusting or not trusting any map by default, try understanding how they're made, then you'll have a good idea what could go wrong with it.

OSM in particular doesn't use third party registries and surveys due to the licensing issues, relying on volunteer work instead, and has a participation-based culture (aka "if you want to have a map of something, make it yourself"). Armchair mappers are using satellite photos and publicly available info, while field volunteers map everything that cannot be seen from above. Both are important. Obviously your trails have to be visited by someone participating in the community for them to appear or be updated on the map. You could be the one, for example.

OSM is also highly chaotic like Wikipedia, and the quality heavily depends on the local community, so always research the situation in the area you intend to visit. For example there's a lot of unreliable poor quality machine work in Latin America in OSM, even in populated areas. No idea why Portuguese/Spanish-speaking communities are letting this fly.

fuzzy23• 3 years ago

I agree with what you’re saying. I just find myself lulled by OSM’s ridiculously high quality in the places I usually go. And I suspect many others feel the same.

janc_5• 3 years ago

Depends on the country also; some have their own official mapping data available in the public domain...

ricardobayes8• 3 years ago

I threw some pretty hard challenges at it - small unknown local beach with unpaved road access. And took them brillantly. Noted all the road hazards and even knew where best to park - even with local knowledge there is no better parking around.

Amazing work, loving this app

biodranik15• 3 years ago

Please make sure that you have up-to-date app and maps data, and tell us where you see cross-border routing issues. There's an easy way to report it from the app using "Report a bug" button in the About dialog.

fuzzy23• 3 years ago

IIRC, that was over a year ago near Oberstdorf, at the border between Austria and Germany. You could not get an on-foot route from the Kanzelwand Bergstation[1] to Fellhorn[2]. The hiking path follows the border closely, crossing it multiple times. That location seems to work fine now.

I’ll make sure to report it in the future!

[1] https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/252814925 [2]: https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/276271393

onetimeacc4• 3 years ago

I love organic maps. It's my daily driver for navigation, especially in rural areas where GoogleMaps just sucks.

I wish they added warnings for speed limits though. They do this only when there is a speed camera, but not generally. The PR is here: https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/pull/5233

biodranik15• 3 years ago

This feature is planned, please check our Github and other 1800+ features/issues :)

Vinnl8• 3 years ago

I think that would be https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues/952.

fhchl• 3 years ago

I highly recommend "mapy.cz", another free, ad free, offline map app. I used it for a longer hike in Slovenia this summer and was amazed that it included all of the hiking trails we encountered in the area.

We were hiking the Slovenian Mountain Trail. What a beauty!

mmoskal• 3 years ago

I've been using it for a while and love it but intend to give the open source Organic maps a try. In particular sharing a way point in Mapy.cz seem to require an account with a Czech web portal.

The reason Mapy.cz has all the trails is because they also use open street maps.

shpx• 3 years ago

I tried both this summer and Mapy.cz is definitely better for hiking. You don't have to zoom in as much to see the trails, hiking trails are marked more clearly with major trails marked in a nice thick red line and it has relief maps (though they can't be downloaded) and the peaks are more clearly labeled along with their height. Also when you zoom out you see a height map instead of just grey for land and blue for water.

Overall it has a nicer attention to detail, for example dashed lines stay in one place as you zoom in/out instead of swimming around and I like the selection of downloaded areas better on Mapy.cz (it has flags next to country names and downloading a new area takes one tap instead of two or three) though it still feels flimsy.

RivieraKid• 3 years ago

I wonder why this app isn't more popular. Basically, there's a map app which is much better than Google Maps for a lot of use cases and very few people outside of Czechia use it. Is this a matter of marketing or is the app actually not that good?

solarkraft• 3 years ago

I love Organic Maps! I just wish getting a route somewhere was a tad bit more intuitive; I keep being thrown off by the UX there.

rlaimondas• 3 years ago

Superb mapping with a lot of details.

bertil6• 3 years ago

I genuinely want to know what lead Google to not support Maps offline properly. It’s truly staggering how, even when I do everything I can to say: save this journey, don’t delete the map around it, don’t delete the journey, just passively show me where I am next to it, it will gleefully delete everything.

I once met their lead designer (who had just changed to work at another FAANG) and… boy was that not a conversation I wanted to have. You know how designers like to say that users are always right? Well, not that guy. Literally 45 minutes of monologue, none of it about connectivity, being lost or unfamiliar languages. Just how people were wrong, wrong reviews wrong and how they couldn’t read information properly unless they had ‘a mission’. “What if the mission is finding their way in a new city where they don’t have connection?” Didn’t care. Not a real mission.

A little later, he was told that the company he was now working for throttled wifi every Wednesday to encourage empathy. That was not a conversation he wanted to have.

lionkor4• 3 years ago

This will be mega off-topic, but:

throttled wifi every Wednesday to encourage empathy

As much as slow internet hampered my productivity, I used to have 15 mbit/s download speed until very recently (Germany is behind developing countries, of course, in terms of anything internet), it was good to experience.

Before that, when I was living in the countryside, I had 500 KB/s.

I know exactly how painful downloading 10, 100, 1000MB is, and I try to make everything I do load on GPRS with reasonable speed. My website, much like HN, loads on a 64 kbit/s mobile internet "connection".

Of course vodafone's website to recharge prepaid phones takes 20+ minutes (yes) to load on 64 kbit/s internet.

Maxion• 3 years ago

Am I just old if I as a developer think that 10mbit/s is plenty enough? I could probably do with 1mbit/s and still be about as productive as I am now.

bertil6• 3 years ago

It’s pretty much right on the money actually…

Our users in less digitally connected countries were insanely patient. The main problem was less the time than the cost, actually. The app required updates that were enormous. The cost to download them using the most common pay-as-you-go services in India represented a month of the local salary for day laborers… That information got hammered until developers learned to be more parsimonious.

I never heard anyone suggest that FAANG engineers had to forgo their monthly wage to download the test version of the app, but that probably would have triggered their empathy a little too much.

Tee3993• 3 years ago

Google Maps has pretty good support for offline maps. Select rectangular area, download, it expires after year. I am in Europe, maybe you have different copyright on data?

rqtwteye4• 3 years ago

The support is terrible. You can only choose a rectangle with the same proportions as your screen and the allowed size is too small for a trip in lots of areas of the US. Like a lot of software there are restrictions that make no sense and are extremely user unfriendly.

matkoniecz13• 3 years ago

With Organic Maps (and Osmand and mapy.cz) I am able to download entire Poland, Belgium, Czech Republic and Slovakia. This was useful in my recent trips and can download more if needed.

I definitely can not do this with Google Maps.

kilroy123• 3 years ago

You can also type a city name. Then type 'okmaps' and press ok. Then, it will bring up the download offline map screen for the whole area.

palata7• 3 years ago

If you find it "pretty good", I guess you have never tried an OpenStreetMap-based app like Organic Maps. I also like OSMAnd a lot (I use both for different use-cases).

bertil6• 3 years ago

The support got better: downloading is good. It should be usable now, but there are basic things that are not supported, like searching for something or finding a path. I typically don’t need to search: I know where for things are, but there aren't other ways to mark something on the map: favorites and stars don’t appear consistently, and pointing at things is completely useless when logged-in and disabled when off-line. So much of it feels like it was never tested.

My main issue is that there should be a way to say, “Keep this journey on screen until I explicitly delete it, with a confirmation model.” I’m assuming that’s what “Pin it” is meant to do, but in practice, I occasionally see the path I last searched when I reopen my phone and map; I never see a pinned journey again if anything happens: rotate the phone, a quick switch to another app, the screen goes dark…

jonathanstrange• 3 years ago

Off-topic, but I find it hard to believe that throttling Wifi could possibly encourage empathy. That sounds so petty to me, it's like removing printer toner and hoping that the office banter about the dysfunctional printer may somehow forge better team-spirit. Or, putting the stapler away so people go looking for it...

Nition• 3 years ago

I think they probably mean empathy for users on slow Internet connections rather than for fellow staff. Basically making you test your software on a slow connection once a week.

brandall10• 3 years ago

I'd gather its empathy for the customers with those constraints, as in, if the product you're building is having issues in this context then you may rethink perf of this or that feature.

jesterson• 3 years ago

I genuinely want to know what lead Google to not support Maps offline properly

Very simple answer - they want to know everything you do online. As Google Maps is provided for free, you are the product. Convenience of the product (you) is not a priority whatsoever.

designers like to say that users are always right?

It's just smoke and mirrors. Unfortunately IT breeds a number of people who have ignorant position they have the right to tell people how they should interact, conveniently forgetting the service will be used by all groups of people, not just IT geeks.

aikinai2• 3 years ago

This lowbrow criticism is really old. Google doesn’t do much offline for the same reason almost no one does offline anymore; it’s hard and the number of users affected is very small.

Do you honestly think Google is looking at the number of maps users that go offline and saying, “We absolutely need their data!” rather than “Eh, not worth rearchitecting everything for.”

Not to mention they have done a lot for it even if it’s not perfect. There’s a dedicated team doing their best with it. It’s just not worth giving a lot of attention and resources.

kevincox• 3 years ago

It isn't very difficult to log the events to disk and send them later. In fact I would be shocked if they didn't do this already. Offline support wouldn't noticeably affect the data they receive. In fact it may help it if people are using the app more and the event delivery is more reliable.

One real reason could be ads. Unless they are pre-loading ads for offline display than offline browsing will not produce revenue.

tazjin5• 3 years ago

I had a bizarre encounter when working there, also Maps related. I lived in the UK at the time and my post code just didn't exist in Google Maps. I did some digging, and found out that in fact no post codes in the UK had been added in quite some time.

Eventually I found out why: There was some lead dev on Maps, who refused to allow new imports of UK post code data because he thought they were "wrong". They were seeing data with multiple post codes for the same building!

For the record: This is valid in the UK, as there's a maximum number of households per post code or something like that.

Not sure how that ended eventually, left a few years ago, but I just checked and those post codes now exist.

dspillett3• 3 years ago

It is quite valid for one property to have multiple street addresses and therefore postcodes. It could genuinely have frontage in two streets, or it could be the result of joining two properties in the same street that originally had different postcodes – many long streets have multiple postcodes along their length¹.

---

[1] For example even a not-very-long street I used to live on, Alma Terrace in York, has three postcodes: YO10 4DJ on one side of most of it, YO10 4DL on the other side of that, and YO10 4DQ for both sides of the part between that and Fulford Road. I suspect from the street layout that the third code is due to that part of the road being added later, or originally not having anything on it needing a postcode.

red_admiral2• 3 years ago

The UK system is that the pair ("number", postcode) must be unique for any postal address; "number" is often a house number but things like "1A" or even names like "Whitehall" are allowed too.

Further, as mentioned, there is a limited amount of "number" that can be associated with any one postcode (currently 100 for new codes, but some legacy postcodes may have more), so for a long enough street, the postcode will change at some point - for example Chepstow Road, Newport changes from NP182LU to NP182LX at some point. If you have more addresses in a single building than the 100 limit, then the postcode indeed changes within the building.

This is quite useful as the standard way of entering a shipping address is you type your postcode, and then select the exact address from a dropdown, and there's a natural limit on how long you have to scroll to find yours.

ricardobayes8• 3 years ago

Any info on how could I have my street address corrected on Maps?

They are using a random street name that no one else uses and no matter how many times I report it, they don't change it. It also doesn't matter that I'm a local guide with many, many edits.

methou2• 3 years ago

This is also valid in Japan, there's huge build with a mall, a hotel and residences called sunshine city in Tokyo, every few floors has it's own zip code!

https://www.post.japanpost.jp/cgi-zip/zipcode.php?pref=13&ci...

Search for 170-0013 for the beginning of the madness. At least google accepted this one.

sanderjd3• 3 years ago

I think this is actually a really perfect demonstration of why you often shouldn't attribute things to malice which can be explained by incompetence.

This is on my mind a lot when I see speculation about why google (or other large organizations) does various things. It's just a bunch of human beings with egos and biases and blind spots and imperfect information. Mistakes are made.

xg15• 3 years ago

Thank you for that insight. That explains a lot of the bizarre design decisions and shortcomings in the maps UI that have frequently annoyed me.

ricardobayes8• 3 years ago

Probably the same reason why they are showing hotels in the city I lived all my life, and have my home address set.

It's mindblowing how they don't set meaningful defaults with all that mountain of data they have.

mabbo• 3 years ago

Google maps is a real-time social network that you don't realize you are a part of.

"This store is busiest at 6pm". "This area is less busy than usual". "There's a 5 minute delay ahead, but you're still on the fastest route".

All of that comes from data generated by online users. An offline user isn't providing value to Google, so why would they invest in those users?

ericfr112• 3 years ago

I would have to agree with the designer's I find it easy to download a map. I've done it in every single country I went to. But I have seen family members struggling because they didn't want to take the time to know how to do it (it could be a bad design but also laziness of users...)

xrikcus• 3 years ago

Once you download it does anything actually work beyond viewing? Can you search? Can you ask for directions? I do download maps, and pay for roaming data, but I still would never completely rely on it in a new place because I'm bound to be out of network coverage at some point.

ezfe2• 3 years ago

Apple Maps in iOS 17 has good offline maps support:

- Full searching and POI details including hours, etc. - Full routing (no traffic of course, but possibly expected traffic? I'm not sure) - Freeform region selection, overlapping regions, etc.

bertil6• 3 years ago

Apple Maos was only relevant in the Bay Area when they launched. They had no meaningful details elsewhere; they didn’t have most street, told you the Louvre was open on Tuesdays and closed the weekend… “embarrassing” would not cover it.

They gradually increased the radius to bring hood and well documented in most of California, then some of the US coastline. I’m not sure where they are now, but I’d be surprised if they had basic things like public transport information, Nike lanes where I am. It’s never been a priority for Apple to serve an international audience.

anigbrowl• 3 years ago

I genuinely want to know what lead Google to not support Maps offline properly.

Money. Same reason they won't show you your location on a map unless you turn on location tracking, even though there's a perfectly good GPS in the phone.

You know how designers like to say that users are always right? Well, not that guy.

I have had similar conversations with leads from Google News & Scholar. My impression is that when those people go to a conference or whatever they're they're to promote the company's outlook, not to listen. In the case of the news guy he when I pointed out some logical flaws in his argument (about why they didn't offer a way of sorting by date), he just switched to nodding while staring off into space and refusing to make eye contact, so he could give the appearance of listening without engaging further.

sdeframond• 3 years ago

I genuinely want to know what lead Google to not support Maps offline properly.

Perhaps Google's mapping business isn't so much showing maps but helping local businesses get found, rated, reviewed... (restaurants,shops etc).

bertil6• 3 years ago

I would love to do that offline too. Just suggest any cafe every two hours of walking, or a gas station every two hours of driving and I’ll stop there and nowhere else.

rus64• 3 years ago

Fantastic app. Saw me through a 6 month backpacking trip in South East Asia.

fizwidget3• 3 years ago

I highly recommend OrganicMaps. It’s leagues better than Google Maps for walking & hiking paths, thanks to being powered by OpenStreetMap data. Not to mention it’s much lighter on resource usage.

Leo_Verto• 3 years ago

Organic Maps really nails the use case for a minimalistic, no-nonsense mapping app with great UX design. Whereas OsmAnd tries to accommodate all use cases with full configurability, which results in a mess of nested options menus, OM goes for reasonable defaults and short menu paths.

Unfortunately that minimalism comes with some downsides. While OM has a great metro map, it doesn't show bus lines (which would probably blot the map size quite a bit), making it unfortunately unusable for my use case.

palata7• 3 years ago

I use both Organic Maps and OsmAnd, I see both your descriptions as features:

- Organic Maps is minimalistic, easy, great for what it does.

- OsmAnd does everything. Whenever I want to do something more advanced that is not in Organic Maps (typically I like the GPX stuff for hiking, or the ski maps, etc), I turn to OsmAnd.

I just need both.

Freak_NL3• 3 years ago

Same here. Although I also keep both around from the perspective of an OpenStreetMap contributor and mapper. OrganicMaps is a bit spartan at times, but it has its place.

JeremyNT• 3 years ago

I use both as well, we are lucky to have such great options for both use cases!

ajuc• 3 years ago

I love OSMand but I can't figure out why it announces speed bumps when I'm in walking and biking mode but not when in car mode :) But it's still the best navigation app I've used.

ihatehn21• 3 years ago

That's a good bug to report to OsmAnd. It used to be they announced a turn every time the road hit a slight angle too which was absolute insanity lol

gaazoh• 3 years ago

I agree, including other guided transit (trams, urban gondolas...) on the metro layer would greatly improve public transit routing.

But bus routes are a harder problem to integrate, especially in larger cities. In Paris, there are more than 200 bus routes (more than 1000 including the greater suburbs), map readability would take a probably big hit if they were displayed on the map, or at least it would require a lot of care to do it right. A some larger cities also have a night service for busses, with routes differing from the day busses, handling those properly is also an issue.

Vinnl8• 3 years ago

That's actually one of the few areas where I really like the way OsmAnd approached the UI. When you tap a bus stop, it shows you which bus lines stop there, and only after you tap one of the lines do you actually see the route for that particular line, and it has buttons to focus the next and previous stops.

devit• 3 years ago

OsmAnd, while a bit harder to use (but not that much), is much better than Organic Maps: it can show satellite imagery from both Google and Microsoft (and download it for offline use!), has a 3D map view, supports coloring slopes, has a bunch of specialized functionality for hiking, cycling, skiing, maritime navigation, can record trails, can route according to vehicle dimensions and in general can do everything (except for things that require access to Google's data like routing based on live traffic data and showing data like opening hours that businesses put in Google Maps).

lxgr• 3 years ago

OSMand definitely has more features, but whether that makes it better depends on the use case. I like it in principle and try it every once in a while but could never really warm up to it, and every time I just end up going back to Organic Maps.

ihatehn21• 3 years ago

OsmAnd does more, but I recommend Organic Maps to my family and friends. Unless one of my friends is an avid hiker/biker or map nerd

biodranik15• 3 years ago

OSM Public Transport schemes support for buses and trams is not implemented yet, and it's not an easy task. Any volunteers to lead the development are welcome!

Here is the entry point to the current subways validator with wiki links at the bottom: https://cdn.organicmaps.app/subway/

nerdponx2• 3 years ago

Is there any corporate funding for this work?

matkoniecz13• 3 years ago

Note that if some data is missing or wrong - you can fix it by editing on https://www.openstreetmap.org/ as they use OpenStreetMap data

Such help is really welcome!

If you are on Android then I recommend StreetComplete which asks questions and edits OSM based on answers (disclaimer: I wrote parts of it)

(Organic Maps has some limited editing capability, but for example you will not change road geometry or add forest area with it)

technothrasher2• 3 years ago

I started using StreetComplete a few months ago. It's a good "time waster" when I'm sitting somewhere in my car waiting for somebody, or I'm out for a stroll somewhere. I did laugh though when I was recently in Europe and was filling in data with it, and it kept wanting to know how wide the streets were in meters. I had visions of annoying motorists by putting a tape measure across the streets to get an answer.

matkoniecz13• 3 years ago

There is a separate app to install with VR tool that is capable of measuring it without tape measure :)

See https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.westnordost...

(initially it was bundled in one app, later it turned out that Google was lying about license of arcore repository, see https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/issues/4289 )

vintagedave2• 3 years ago

This was the first time I’d heard of the app, but due to comments in this thread I downloaded it.

* Website, ethos: straightforward. “Old internet” vibes, love it. They seem very active, have a presence on every platform, very impressive

* The app seems very nice. Simple clear UI. Lots of features. I need to experiment for more than a few minutes but I get the impression it could replace Google Maps for me, especially because Google Maps has trouble doing things like showing road names or other key navigation tools

* On design and UI: the offline approach is very visible. I zoomed in to where I live and it starts downloading it. First, a great way to get a download (go there on the map, it downloads) but also compare how many steps it is to download offline for Google Maps compared to this (go to a special section of the app, download something in your screen’s aspect ratio, limited in size, give it a manual name, prompted to manually curate downloads, they expire when they could still be perfectly valid…) — this is significantly better design. It’s the same difference angainst other map apps. I have a hiking trail app (AllTrails) that advertises offline, but getting the data and keeping it is a complex series of steps and it’s impossible to know if it’s there until you’re in the wilderness and unable to download if it’s not. This is so much simpler… good simple design.

* It’s developed in Estonia! Estonia has a remarkable IT and software culture (I live there) and every so often you come across an absolute gem. This looks like one of them

mcv9• 3 years ago

I've had it for a while, but I don't use it nearly enough. I still rely on Google Maps for most things, until Google Maps lets me down. Which it does mostly when I'm on vacation.

Although now that I think about it, Google Maps lets me down on vacation because I'm in unfamiliar territory and I have no idea how to correct for the mistakes it makes. When I'm at home (in Amsterdam) it makes plenty of mistakes too, but I'm familiar with them and the are, so I can easily correct for it.

For example, Google really dislikes the Sarphatistraat for some reason. It's a bike street: basically a gigantic bike path that also allows cars, but bikes have right of way. It's one of the most important bike thoroughfares in Amsterdam, so of course you should always take it. But for some reason, Google always prefers to send me along the Stadhouderskade, which is part of the centrumring for cars, one of the major car thoroughfares, parallel to the Sarphatistraat, and it does have a separate bike path, but you're still in car fumes. Also, it's slightly longer.

There are plenty of other bike routes it doesn't know. I should really try to get used to using Organic Maps on my bike from now on. It's excellent on bike and pedestrian infrastructure, including hiking trails, things to see, etc. Many years ago when I first learned about OSM, I was amazed about the level of detail I got when I zoomed in on Artis, the Amsterdam Zoo. You don't get that kind of detail on Google Maps. I really should use it more.

coolgoose• 3 years ago

The amount of mistakes Google makes in the Netherlands when it comes to bikes is mind-blowing. If you don't know the area or manually check the maps it takes you trough a lot more car places that it should do.

raybb4• 3 years ago

I recently moved to Amsterdam and I find Google maps biking directions are often wrong or just a bit worse than organic maps. But also when organic maps it wrong (like one time it though there was a nice connecting sidewalk that no longer existed) it was super easy to go edit on OSM and next time I'll get the right directions.

My one wish was the OSM had a great app for discovering POI or reviews. Like something that can show me all the bookstores around but with a little extra human touch on if it's nice to sit at or mostly used books or something like this.

ricardobayes8• 3 years ago

Google displays my street name wrong and there is no way to change it. I've reported it 10+ times and nothing is happening. I don't know where they got that street name from but it's definitely not the "official name" of the street as recorded by the official authorities. And this is in Europe on a street where the google car goes through basically every few years.

I can't even describe the level of frustration this causes because I'm forced to use a non-existant street name for packages because otherwise no courier finds me.

aembleton8• 3 years ago

Worth trying out mapy.cz app for cycling. It uses OSM data; and I find it works well in the UK, I've never tried it in the Netherlands though. It has good route finding, but unfortunatelly you can't load in a GPX route: https://en.mapy.cz/zakladni?mobilepromo=1&x=15.6252330&y=49....

ex-googlemaps6• 3 years ago

I’m an ex-Googler and I tried to fix cycling routing. I’m honestly sorry I wasn’t successful. We had a really nice solution but privacy considerations made it extremely difficult and limited. And then I and the other main driver both left Google so it withered and died I believe. I really hope someone else can fix it one day.

This is a throwaway obviously since this basically 50% doxes me.

eCa• 3 years ago

How does https://cycle.travel/map/ perform routing-wise in Amsterdam?

(Unaffiliated happy user.)

ihaveajob2• 3 years ago

I feel like nobody in the Google Maps uses a bike for commuting or other daily life purposes. If they did, they wouldn't route me through the most dangerous, fast traffic street in my neighborhood, and instead they would choose the adjacent bike boulevard. Apple Maps does this much better, even though they've sent me to the wrong side of town a few times.

From my early tests, Organic Maps also sends you down dangerous routes, so I'll use cautiously.

m-p-3• 3 years ago

One feature I definitely enjoy is the ability to connect with my OSM account and easily submit changes on the go (business hours, etc).

MayeulC3• 3 years ago

OSMAnd + Brouter is really the gold standard for bike routing for me, though the Brouter Android app could certainly use some polish (it barely looks like an Android 1.0 app).

If you just want to try the routing, there's brouter-web too ;)

nani8ot2• 3 years ago

What I especially like about Organic Maps and OSM in general is how searching for "water" shows nearby water fountains. Depending on the country and region it helps if your running out of water while hiking. It's not necessarily the best water but at least where I live drinking it is usually not a problem (especially if your drinking a small amount). Water is also listed in the categories tab next to WiFi, Pharmacies, and similar points of interest.

Vinnl8• 3 years ago

You can also more specifically search for "drinking water" I think :)

okok3857• 3 years ago

This was an incredible aspect of the app to have when in Rome this summer! So many public water sources, and it was so, so hot....

ihatehn21• 3 years ago

Yeah the level of detail for things people care about is truly unmatched. I like mapping doggie bag dispensers, trash cans, and park benches -- stuff Google will just never care about.

pete_3c1f3• 3 years ago

What I especially like about this over Google is that now (If I stay with it) I have a way bigger incentive to contribute to OSM, because there's an app where I can see / use my changes.

fizwidget3• 3 years ago

I get a kick out of seeing my changes appear in Organic Maps every month or so. Great motivator for contributing to OSM :D

maze-le• 3 years ago

This is definitly my favourite map app. The offline features are amazing and it has a great UI and operability. Routing for bicycles could be better, I ended up in the middle of the forest without clear path the other day, but this is more of an issue with old OSM datasets than with the app itself.

chickenWing• 3 years ago

Seeing all the praise in this thread, I downloaded the app, and I must admit I'm disappointed and confused at the effusion, but maybe I'm doing something wrong.

I tried a very basic task of getting driving directions to a specific address and that doesn't seem to be supported. For some streets, it will give me directions to the street as a whole, but that's not useful for long streets. Other streets don't seem to exist in the map.

Then I typed in a simple query: "ice cream", and the closest result listed was 4 miles away, but there are several ice cream shops within less than a mile. Other business listings are out of date or inaccurate.

rement• 3 years ago

Sounds like you have the opportunity to make the map better for yourself and everyone else. The data comes from Open Street Map which is community edited and maintained https://www.openstreetmap.org

blendergeek3• 3 years ago

Unfortunately your area may not be mapped very well in OpenStreetMap yet.

The map is maintained by volunteers and in some areas there aren't any.

Humbly8967• 3 years ago

If you are interested in contributing to OSM to make the data better in your region, you can even make basic edits from within Organic maps, including adding addresses.

ihatehn21• 3 years ago

A lot of the effusive praise is from people in Europe, who navigate slightly differently (often directions are based on intersection, etc) and have a lot longer OSM tradition. My guess is that you're American (or at least not European) and so unfortunately the fact is that volunteers like ourselves have to do the work of adding addresses to the map. One easy way anyone can do that is with the RapID / MapWithAI address layer from the National Address Database, I myself have taken to doing large formally-approved imports as well.

OM's only data source is OSM itself and their volunteer dev team is already overloaded so that's the only option there for now (basically the same as with OsmAnd) but if you really want an OpenStreetMaps based GPS app with full address support ASAP you can try Magic Earth in the meantime. It's not FOSS, but at least it's not Google.

As for ice cream, it's a matter of checking to see if those closer businesses are mapped correctly or not. If they're properly tagged as "ice cream" in OrganicMaps but not displaying in the correct order then that's an OM bug to report, but my guess is that they're not entered properly into OpenStreetMap to begin with. Both are free open source projects though so we can make things better ourselves without begging a big corporation to do it for us.

Cheers!

jdblair• 3 years ago

This is the first time I see "Get it on F-DROID" on an app download page.

taink• 3 years ago

It’s developed in Estonia! Estonia has a remarkable IT and software culture (I live there) and every so often you come across an absolute gem. This looks like one of them

What sets Estonia's IT and software culture apart from other countries? What other Estonian software would you recommend?

jaakl3• 3 years ago

Estonian probably better known unicorns are Skype (now Microsoft/Teams), Pipedrive (CRM), Bolt (EU biggest Uber alternative), Starship (robotics), Wise, Sixfold (now Trimble) As Estonian I would recommend any of them, but it is just how our culture works :)

iavael• 3 years ago

It’s developed in Estonia!

It's actually developed by mostly Russian and Belorussian developers who live in Switzerland, New Zealand, Russia, and Belarus. Also, there are some significant contributions from residents of other countries, but none of them are from Estonia. Looks like the only Estonian thing is legal entity for doing business.

But nevertheless, I agree that Estonia is remarkable for its IT culture. I used to work with several Estonian colleagues, and they are great engineers whom I highly respect as professionals.

vintagedave2• 3 years ago

Thanks for the info. I saw the OÜ and the registered address in Tallinn and thought it was based here. I can’t edit my original comment now unfortunately.

codetrotter• 3 years ago

the offline approach is very visible. I zoomed in to where I live and it starts downloading it.

Downloaded the app because of this part of your comment.

It’s awesome!

At the moment I am in Cancún in Mexico, and one thing that was sad about Google maps is that it shows Playa Tortugas in the wrong part of the map, so when I booked our hotel thinking we were next to that beach it turned out that it was not correct.

Meanwhile, this app with the OSM data shows the correct location for Playa Tortugas.

Of course, there is probably a lot of other places in the world where OSM has something similarly wrong.

But I found it encouraging to see that OSM data is better than Google Maps in this case.

dbtc• 3 years ago

Used organic maps recently in central WA without cell service: fantastic app.

hedora3• 3 years ago

I like this app, and would love to see it succeed, but the offline app flow is a huge downgrade from my map app of choice (Here We Go; formerly Nokia Maps).

I just tell it what countries (or states / regions) to download, and it downloads them. Then, if cell coverage will be spotty, I tap the “work offline” slider, which disables traffic, but also means that search is on device and instant.

This is how literally every map program I used before MapQuest worked. I don’t understand why modern interfaces don’t support this.

For reference, California’s maps (including business listings) are 856 MB. The total map size for all the regions I have taken this phone to is under 3GB.

urgent_skittle• 3 years ago

I just tell it what countries (or states / regions) to download, and it downloads them.

This is exactly how Organic Maps works. You don't _have_ to zoom in on every region you plan on visiting to download it, you can just go into the menu and select a whole country or parts of it.

unwind2• 3 years ago

0n mm mmm nnmmnmnnnnn NMT mmkmkm..mkmmm km km mm kmmmm m ummmmmmnm NMT kmm mmummmmm mm mm.........ummmmmmmmmmmkmm mm u mmm mmmmmmmm NMT m..mm

unwind2• 3 years ago

Meta: I did not post this ... I wonder if I managed to post to HN with my phone in my pocket? Rather interesting/scary thought, account breach would not seem like a reasonable thing either, though. :/ Weird.

BlackLotus892• 3 years ago

I often use my smartphone when driving somewhere by bike/scooter and for this only osmand is usable since background mode is not yet implemented https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/pull/4611

redauburn3• 3 years ago

Background mode will be in the next release :)

freyfogle• 3 years ago

Roman, one of the founders of Organic Maps, was recently interviewed on the Geomob podcast: https://thegeomob.com/podcast/episode-190

DoingIsLearning2• 3 years ago

Started using Organic Maps during the pandemic, this is the app that weaned me out of Google Maps.

At the moment I only really use Google Maps to check opening times of certain shops.

Also way better routing for cyclists than Google maps.

OfSanguineFire4• 3 years ago

You can often find opening times of shops by searching for their own Facebook page instead of using Google Maps. Moreover, you can add business’ opening hours to OpenStreetMap so that other people in future will see the opening hours in Organic Maps and other OSM-based maps. For a programming-savvy crowd like HN, the syntax of OSM’s opening-hours tag is pretty straightforward.

Vinnl8• 3 years ago

you can add business’ opening hours to OpenStreetMap

And by far the easiest way to do this, if you have an Android phone, is to use the beautiful StreetComplete app: https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/#readme

Aachen4• 3 years ago

by searching for their own Facebook page

At that point I'd rather open up Google and give them the data point that someone is interested in this store at this time (to make these crowdedness plots) than provide Facebook with my data ._.

If they have an own website, sure, but a Facebook page? I'm not whitelisting those IP addresses for my browser to be able to visit that.

This is why I always add the website as the most important field for a POI btw: easy to click through, always up-to-date opening hours. They're very often out of date on OSM because the shop owners only supply that info to google and call it good.

sundarurfriend2• 3 years ago

You can often find opening times of shops by searching for their own Facebook page

Maybe a US thing? Where I live, less than 10% of the shops have a Facebook page, and I'd expect maybe 10% of those have up to date reliable information.

gniv4• 3 years ago

There is no UI for opening hours in Organic Maps afaict. I think that's part of the complaint.

prometheon12• 3 years ago

Do you use the search functionality a lot, and is it giving you the results you want? And if so, do you have any tips on how to write search queries?

I love Organic Maps, but when I try to search, I think I find what I'm looking for about 1 out of 5 times.

DoingIsLearning2• 3 years ago

Usually I will take an address from my email or browser and plug it in, so indeed the search feature is not something I use much.

orbital-decay6• 3 years ago

Reliable search is just generally hard to implement for OSM, as it's highly chaotic. There's no single schema forced upon everyone. The same feature can be tagged in multiple ways, which are dependent on the consensus between mappers, country/jurisdiction, culture, particular mapper preference etc. This is especially relevant for addresses and businesses.

biodranik15• 3 years ago

Can you please send us more details about non-working search queries at support [at] organicmaps.app (or report it on our Github), considering that addresses or POIs that you're searching for are _present_ on osm.org ?

harabat• 3 years ago

A workaround I saw a few months ago on HN: for both Organic Maps and OSMand, you can use Acastus to search for something and then open the result in the maps app (+ share the broken query with Organic Maps, as requested by the founder).

Acastus-Photon (An online address/POI search for navigation apps) https://f-droid.org/packages/name.gdr.acastus_photon/

ihatehn21• 3 years ago

Are you searching for street addresses or business names? Coverage of those is highly dependent on openstreetmap volunteer contributions.

elcapitan2• 3 years ago

Does this support custom map styles? OsmAnd has the option to create custom xml styles for certain use cases (which I find interesting for non-standard uses).

izacus4• 3 years ago

Nope, it's meant to be simple to use not a kitchen sink app like OsmAnd.

elcapitan2• 3 years ago

No need to be defensive, it's ok if it's less powerful, I just need to know what I get.

jacooper• 3 years ago

Personally, I lost hope in finding any gmaps alternative.

It's always either super out of date, or missing details and nice features like reviews, photos and advanced integrations like gmaps integration with public transport.

That's without mentioning the clearly worse routing Algorithms.

These issues mostly stem from a lack of data, but there are many related to the way the OSM project sees itself, and concepts like point of interest.

Let's see what comes from the new big tech alliance against gmaps.

wooque• 3 years ago

My go to app for hiking and navigation on trails.

dzogchen• 3 years ago

Organic Maps is the best for biking and walking, Google Maps has left me hanging so many times there.

Freak_NL3• 3 years ago

It depends on the area of course, but many hiking routes are indeed kept meticulously up to date in OpenStreetMap (and thus OrganicMaps). Sometimes even by the regional maintainer of those paths (like in Northern Italy).

(That said, anyone hiking in the wild should always consider a paper map in addition to a digital one. Especially in mountainous terrain.)

123pie123• 3 years ago

fantastic app, I easily prefer it to OSMand

thanks to all those involved on making a wonderful application

botanical• 3 years ago

I'm currently using Magic Earth, any major differences between the two? I realise this one's open source, but I really like Magic Earth's live traffic and recording.

jacekm• 3 years ago

If you're using maps primarily for driving I'd stick to Magic Earth.

narrowtux• 3 years ago

I still want some app that makes the awesome brouter algorithm usable on iOS. They have an android app which is "easy" to do since the routing module is written in Java, but alas, iOS doesn't support Java.

IMO, brouter generates the best routes for bicycling with lots of options to customize for what kind of riding you want to do (road, trekking, gravel, recreational, commuting, safe and quiet vs. quick, etc.).

Right now I use brouter-web on my iPhone but it's really hard to use since the UI is really small and it's very simple to accidentally place a waypoint. After that, I send the GPX file to my bike computer.

iagooar• 3 years ago

Besides hiking and biking, how good are the maps for 4x4 off-road driving?

ricardobayes8• 3 years ago

It installed automatically on the external storage to save space!

Finally someone thinks of the general population who doesn't buy the latest gadget just to keep up. A 3-4-5 year old smartphone should be perfectly adequate if devs actually thought of supporting the "normal phones".

hnarn• 3 years ago

I’ve used maps.me for years and years, I had no idea it had been forked by the original creators. I’ll definitely move over to using this instead.

l9i• 3 years ago

If you enjoy Organic Maps, please consider supporting them financially: https://organicmaps.app/donate/. Supporting their serving infrastructure for numerous users is surely costly.

matkoniecz13• 3 years ago

Right now infrastructure appears to be donated, but donations increase how much effort developers can spend on it!

rob742• 3 years ago

I'm currently using OSMAnd, which is pretty powerful, but also feels a bit overloaded UI-wise - does anyone have any experience on how Organic Maps compares to it? Sounds like it could be a worthwile alternative. Especially the claim "go for a weeklong trip on a single battery charge" sounds interesting - I have the feeling that OSMAnd actually increases battery usage, because all rendering has to be done client-side, but of course it's probably possible to optimize this. Also, the free version of OSMAnd can only download a limited number of maps (split up by regions, which are sometimes a whole country, sometimes less) - I hope that the donation-based model works out and they will not be forced to do something similar.

Vinnl8• 3 years ago

I'm currently using OSMAnd, which is pretty powerful, but also feels a bit overloaded UI-wise - does anyone have any experience on how Organic Maps compares to it?

It's less powerful, but not overloaded UI-wise.

(Where "powerful" means things like travel guides and bus lines, but also things like being able to set up different profiles with the ability to customise the icon indicating your position per profile.)

orblivion5• 3 years ago

Organic Maps is way less overloaded UI-wise. It's the go-to app for basic use as far as I'm concerned. I keep OSMAnd around just in case I need something more advanced.

itronitron• 3 years ago

Very cool, I was in a small metropolitan region recently and looking up directions to get places was absolutely killing my phone battery. Seems like the perfect use for this.

al_be_back• 3 years ago

looks great - the UI is simple/easy to use. I like the Compass Needle , it integrates well on the Map/tile as well as on Place Details popover (arrow top-right corner), so smart!

reify• 3 years ago

Great app.

Being a non google user I have used Organic maps for years. I have tried all the open source others but they dont compete for me.

I install E/OS and lineage with Organic maps on all my phones and on all phones my family use.

Its because I am old that I continually get confused with (route to) and (route from) selection when working out my destination route. I always have to do it twice.

There is a selection of voices but I only like one voice. I generally dont need a voice to direct me, I only need to have a quick glimpse at the screen every now and then

I walk/ramble a lot and use .gpx files in organic maps for rambling routes. I also download .gpx files from rambling websites when looking for new rambling routes.

hkt2• 3 years ago

I used this app to navigate around Italy on a cycling holiday. It was marvellous and I'd recommend it to anyone. Donated afterwards as a thank you for making such excellent software.

gorbypark3• 3 years ago

I use Organic Maps for hiking specifically because it's not a "hiking app". There are way too many apps out there that expect you to just hike a trail that someone else has already hiked. Want to combine intersecting trails? You're out of luck. Want to use a trail you didn't explicitly pre-download without a data connection? You're out of luck

But with Organic Maps, I find it has all the trails (at least on two separate one and a half month hiking trips in Andorra), and since they're all included with the base data, you can mix and match trails and do whatever you want.

Pain points: The search isn't so great, there's a lack of names for trails and no real way to tell the "grade" of a trail. It could be a super easy walking path or some barely marked scramble.

But overall I love it and it's way better than the commercial hiking offerings (WikiLoc, AllTrails, etc)

biodranik15• 3 years ago

Please write us more details about search issues at support [at] organicmaps.app, or even better, create/update an issue on our Github: https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues

If trails have names in osm.org but names are not present in OM, please let us know, it's a bug.

gorbypark3• 3 years ago

Will do! I am pretty sure the trails where I hike (mostly Andorra) are just not named is OSM. I thought about trying to update some myself, but there's a lot of overlapping trails, so it would be tough to get right. For example big stretches of the same trail might be both GR-7 and GR-11 and also a local Andorran trail number. I'd rather not do it than do it and get it wrong!

ijustlovemath4• 3 years ago

You can tell the grade of a trail by doing Route To / Route From and selecting the walking option. After computing the route it shows you a fairly accurate elevation profile, as well as the length and total elevation gains/losses.

If you're using imperial units, you can also quickly estimate difficulty by doing the following:

- take the total elevation change, in hundreds of feet, eg 900ft = 9 * 100ft

- take the total distance, in tenths of a mile, eg 2.1 mi = 21 * .1 mi

- divide the elevation by the length and convert to a percentage: 9/21 ~ 43%

- grades are like so:

0-40%: relatively easy

40-70%: moderately big elevation, may be hard to sustain

70-100%: steep terrain, may involve some scrambling

100%: very steep, technical terrain. Sometimes involves ladders or a static line in particularly steep sections

For example, there's a pretty lengthy trail near me called Shining Creek, that's very sustained, but I wouldn't call it steep. It's got 2300ft of elevation change over 3.9mi, which corresponds to a 58% steepness, aka the upper end of a moderately difficulty hike if sustained.

gorbypark3• 3 years ago

The elevation profile is great, for sure, but I meant more like...difficulty, rather than grade? I don't know the exact word to use, but sometimes you have well used, well marked trails and other times you have a "trail" that maybe gets used a few times a year and is more like a choose your own adventure with a rock cairn or two every couple hundred meters if you are lucky.

agent008t• 3 years ago

It does not really say if any areas are exposed though. You can have near flat elevation but a very exposed path.

lioeters• 3 years ago

Just wanted to add my experience with Organic Maps.

I used it extensively this year, mainly because it has hiking and bicycle paths that are not marked at all on Google Maps.

It works off-line. This is so valuable to me, especially when hiking.

One time I was lost deep in a mountain/forest, and the app found a GPS signal to show my location and direction, saving me from unexpectedly spending the night (for which I was not prepared). I suppose any map app is capable of this, but I was so glad.

It's also capable of giving directions.

And, unlike Google Maps, I can trust that the app is not collecting and misusing my location data.

Of course, as an open-source project, there are some rough edges. I have GMaps installed just in case, and on a few occasions I had to resort to using it. But I was pleasantly surprised by Organic Maps, so far it's my favorite mobile app for maps.

nerdponx2• 3 years ago

FWIW AllTrails is pretty good, they will only show specific "known" routes in the search, but the underlying map data itself seems to be OSM data and everything is visible on the map. I tend to use it to find interesting trailheads and locations, but then I actually use Organic Maps when I need to navigate.

kccqzy• 3 years ago

I use MapOut for that purpose. I believe it also has OSM base data and allows you to draw your own routes. It provides elevation gain and loss, as well as a remarkably accurate time estimate for the hike taking into account elevation.

ZacnyLos• 3 years ago

Mapy.cz

FrustratedMonky• 3 years ago

Been looking for a different map app like this, Thank You.

All the others have turned into commercials, weighed down my ad's.

pete_3c1f3• 3 years ago

I'm a bit disappointed by OSM and their map rendering and always wondered why there isn't a good Nav app using MapBox, like StreetComplete does for example. This is wonderful, thanks HN!

fredsmith219• 3 years ago

I really want to like it, but I can only figure out how to navigate to the street level. It doesn’t seem to route to a specific address.

pete_3c1f3• 3 years ago

For my city this seems to work (Northern Germany)

redauburn3• 3 years ago

this is usually due to a lack of data in OpenStreetMap, if you go to https://osm.org and check one of the addresses, is it there?

the good thing about OpenStreetMap is that if something is missing, you can add it in 1 minute :)

thom• 3 years ago

I bought this app when it was maps.me out of a weird prepper urge to have more offline stuff on my phone (shout out to Kiwix for offline Wikipedia, and modern phones for having terabytes of storage). But then I grew to absolutely love it, the coverage of walking routes is amazing, it works for car journeys in low coverage areas, and often has archaeological points of interest that I wouldn't see in other maps apps.

speg• 3 years ago

Been using this since last time it was posted on HN. Great little app that complements Apple Maps with offline mode and random stuff like water fountains. Only thing I would want them to improve is the color scheme when used with CarPlay, I don’t know why but one of the day/night color schemes is almost impossible to read.

sva_• 3 years ago

Very fast and responsive compared to OsmAnd. Would really benefit from having Terrain maps for the mountains though.

LifeDesigner• 3 years ago

Hey guys! So happy to vote for Organic Maps. As a part of the team (when it was MAPS.ME) I'm very happy to see new life of MAPS.ME in Organic Maps. Good luck and all the best for you guys! Use your product with a pleasure. Alex Matveenko

davelondon• 3 years ago

My friend is a heavy iOS maps.me user, and has hundreds of bookmarks all over the world. She isn't a fan of the new maps.me, and would love to use Organic Maps.

I've tested the import / export function, and it looks like we can transfer all her bookmarks over and preserve the colour information...

The only thing we're missing is an auto-backup function to store the bookmarks online. She's not a techie, so it has to be free from settings and automatically enabled.

As soon as that feature is added you'll have another user!

mothsonasloth• 3 years ago

Bookmarked. Definitely will use this for the Mongol Rally next year

curionymous• 3 years ago

I've used organicmaps for a while. but it needs a way to sync bookmarks. I bookmark places like a good restaurant, parking places, fuel stations, stores, roadside attractions to places I've been to. But without a cloud sync(preferably self-hosted nextcloud), I always fear I'm going to lose my bookmarks. There was another open-source maps.me fork before Organic maps and it lost maps/bookmarks with certain updates and became abandoned.[1]

With file access limitation with recent android versions, I can't just use foldersync or syncthing on the bookmarks.

[1]https://gitlab.com/axet/omim/-/issues/168

Madeyro• 3 years ago

How doeas rhis compare to mapy.cz?

michaelmior• 3 years ago

Organic Maps doesn't request excessive permissions to spy on you

To be fair, the requesting of these permissions doesn't mean the other app highlighted is "spying on you." Some of those permissions are required for certain features. Not everyone will be comfortable with that, and that's ok. But I think it's unfair to suggest that the intention is spying.

F30• 3 years ago

In this particular case I read the statement as a dig at maps.me (the app they forked from). On iOS, maps.me would always continue accessing my location in the background unless force-quit, even if nothing was actually happening in the background. I might be wrong of course, the statement could have a different background and maps.me's behavior could be an honest bug.

koziserek• 3 years ago

Fantastic app.

To reach perfection for me, it would need:

- to allow storing my POIs in some sync-able location (e.g. Nextcloud folder)

- to improve rendering and reach same level of beauty as mapy.cz / Windy has...

threemux• 3 years ago

A fantastic app that has saved me a few times when I didn't have service. I know they're actively working on Android Auto support and I'm eagerly awaiting it!

mezod• 3 years ago

Looked awesome until I saw there's no satellite imagery, I cannot get lost in the middle of the mountains with so little reference points :(

euroderf3• 3 years ago

Is there someway to lock North so that it doesn't try to keep rotating so "helpfully" ?

1970-01-01• 3 years ago

I've been looking something like this for many years. I installed it and it works as described. Old Androids and iPhones sitting in my drawer can now be permanently left in my old vehicles as an emergency backup GPS.

marbartolome• 3 years ago

One thing I find missing from most alternative map apps is satellite view - I find it very useful for orienting myself and for "exploration".

OSM supports microsoft satellite maps as a layer - any way to add it to organic maps too? I do like the simpler interface.

gerry_shaw• 3 years ago

patchtopic• 3 years ago

organic maps is great but it does not have street numbers.

I know this is a limit of the underlying OSM data it uses.

methou2• 3 years ago

This is so nice!

I checked out the map, works great even outside of the US/EU. I checked my favorite local food chain, routes are very good. I found one missing, followed the lead to OSM and updated the venue data. Things gets interesting when you can edit the data behind the scenes! Kudos to people behind both projects!

evantbyrne3• 3 years ago

The critical issue I've always had with OSM-based map apps has been stale data. If I were to update something on OSM, then how long could I reasonably expect it to take for that change to make it onto my phone with Organic Maps? And would it happen automatically in the background while I'm on WiFi, or would I have to do something manually?

SushiHippie• 3 years ago

If you change something on OSM it takes a few minutes to a day to be visible on the *online* map. And in their faq they state, that they update their maps 1-4 times per month.

Automatic updates are planned https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues/5679

evantbyrne3• 3 years ago

Yeah, such massive delays will be the one thing preventing me from using Organic Maps. OSM being community-editable is where these map apps get most of their value. Letting the data go that stale defeats the purpose.

Thanks for the link I'll keep an eye on that issue.

LispSporks22• 3 years ago

Is this one good for motorcycle?

21433• 3 years ago

Great app, I like it, but I did notice some problems:

My city is comprised of several islands, and there's relatively large bodies of water between them (over 100 metres), but this map shows those large water bodies as narrow (1 or 2 metre) river-like things.

I understand this might be the problem of the underlying data source, and not the app itself.

(For what it's worth, both Google and Apple maps correctly displays the islands and water bodies).

orblivion5• 3 years ago

Check if it looks the same on openstreetmap.org

21433• 3 years ago

openstreetmap.org correctly displays the islands and the relative distances between them!

redauburn3• 3 years ago

could you give rough coordinates? we (OM) can fix it :)

pseudoshikhar• 3 years ago

damn, I've been waiting for something like this for a long time.

kibwen• 3 years ago

I'm slowly de-googling due to the WEI debacle, and my resident OpenStreetMap evangelist recommended this as a Google Maps replacement. It obviously doesn't have all the features of Google Maps, but surprisingly there are several things that I feel it does better. For example, the transit overlay is much more visible and shows transfers between lines (although that's the only overlay it offers, no bike lane overlay sadly (although, honestly, GM's bike overlay isn't all that useful)). Searching is obviously instantaneous and shows all your hits, so I can search for "cafe" in my city and immediately get a map with pins for every single cafe, which can be overwhelming at large zoom levels but it's fine once you zoom into an area (and it's much less "mystery meat" than GM's approach of selectively only displaying a subset of your search results based on your zoom level, so I think it's a worthwhile tradeoff). And no ads, obviously. The biggest downside is that the search is basic, and searches the whole planet while only sporadically prioritizing results in your current area, or your current zoom, or your downloaded maps. If you have an address it doesn't matter, but if you don't have an address then you'll find yourself longing for the more intelligent search of Google Maps. But it's nice, and I'm using it more and more often by default over time. However, until search is improved, I don't think I'll be able to uninstall Google Maps entirely (although eventually maybe I'll just use it through mobile Firefox).

vladharbuz• 3 years ago

I would use Organic Maps if OSM supported entering UK postcodes in the search box. Can’t wait to stop using Google Maps.

aembleton8• 3 years ago

Try mapy.cz app. You can use UK postcodes in there and it uses OSM data.

rcarmo• 3 years ago

I love this thing, it’s been tremendously useful in all kinds of situations, especially when offline.

lionkor4• 3 years ago

Not affiliated with them, but I did find their incredible selection of donation options very interesting:

https://organicmaps.app/donate/

sjkoelle• 3 years ago

mapsme had the conch in its hand

somewhat_drunk• 3 years ago

I've been using maps.me for a long time for offline map use while hiking and traveling off the grid, but recently switched to organic maps due to their superior interface. They both use openstreetmaps, which I have found to be outstanding. Even the most obscure trails and overgrown overlanding tracks are almost always on openstreetmaps. The file sizes are quite small, and being able to download specific areas, or states, or entire countries at a time is perfect. I prefer organic maps to alltrails, gaia maps, etc. It's become an indispensable tool for me while hiking and traveling.

yumraj• 3 years ago

Just tried it iOS. Maps look interesting.

Tried to plan a route, couldn’t figure out how to see step by step directions in a list view which is supported by almost every map. Is that possible?

ospohngellert• 3 years ago

Downloaded the app, searched for mexican restaurants in my area and it missed a few. I tried searching for the restaurants specifically and they were in the DB and categorized as mexican. Any recommended way to accomplish this?

pwillia7• 3 years ago

Love it. thanks for making this.

Feature Request: Add a Thrilling style mode for navigation so I can map fun drives without using a real computer. https://help.tomtom.com/hc/en-us/articles/10428741608466-Rou...

Here is more information about the variables they use to figure out the most thrilling route -- https://developer.tomtom.com/blog/build-different/thrills-an...

ihatehn21• 3 years ago

One way I did this randomly the other day was choosing Bicycle or Walking mode which prioritize slow streets and pedestrian pathways. Maybe a different definition of thrilling than most people in cars, but I appreciate being taken into other areas of town I might not normally go since they're not major roads.

OsmAnd also has many different navigation profile options, you might try customizing that to get what you want. Organic Maps focuses on what the bulk of people need to navigate decently, so that the end result is simple and usable for everyone even if it's not the most feature-packed.

SamuelAdams• 3 years ago

Just a reminder: Apple will (finally!) update Maps in iOS 17 with an offline mode.

https://9to5mac.com/2023/06/07/ios-17-offline-maps-in-apple-...

uhtred• 3 years ago

Is it better than OSMAnd? (I love OSMAnd)

rcMgD2BwE72F2• 3 years ago

Simpler.

Borg3• 3 years ago

Anyone know how to upload maps files into app? I do NOT want to download maps from their servers. Is it possible?

fuddle• 3 years ago

I'm impressed normally free open source apps aren't great quality. This looks quite polished. I was trying to figure out what library it uses for map rendering. It seems like it uses a custom C++ code for map rendering?

kensai• 3 years ago

I would use in Europe Komoot. So amazing for hiking and cycling.

eh__dub• 3 years ago

Using OSM is not unique amongst mapping apps. Almost every company's mapping app is using OSM data in some way.

The no ads bit is nice.

I don't think I properly understand the "no tracking" claim. I don't want to be tracked by miscellaneous third parties, but designers and engineers should absolutely be instrumenting the app so they can understand user behavior via empirical means.

I saw another comment mention they can update OSM via this app. That is def cool and I wish more apps supported that use case and educated users about it.

The topo map leaves something to be desired. Once you go Gaia Topo, it's hard to look at other companies' topo maps.

janc_5• 3 years ago

Whenever a company is tracking such data, there is no way for users to know if collected data is used or sold for other purposes, now or in the future, so the default should always be to collect no data at all.

If you want to run UI/UX tests/experiments on users, just ask them (and maybe offer incentives to participate?).

ryukoposting3• 3 years ago

Wow, I had no idea this existed 10 minutes ago, and I'm already thinking about deleting my AllTrails account. I'm driving about 6 hours tonight and I think I'm going to give this thing a try.

The UI is tremendous. Takes a while for it to make longer routes, but that could be my old phone's fault. One thing I don't like - it doesn't seem to be possible to save a route. You can save places, but not routes. Especially for hiking trips that have very particular manually-selected paths and/or lots of destinations, it would be nice to be able to save a route to a list, tap it, and have that route show up immediately instead of waiting for it to calculate.

lost_tourist• 3 years ago

before doing anything drastic, just add a 30 day calendar reminder to remove the account after you've used this new app for a while. That's how I always handle things that are hard to reverse.

ryukoposting3• 3 years ago

Doesn't seem like Organic Maps requires an account, but this is excellent advice.

joshlemer• 3 years ago

This looks great! But it needs a bike route layer please!

dang• 3 years ago

OrganicMaps is Android and iOS offline maps for travel without trackers or ads - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27576882 - June 2021 (116 comments)

_AntonM_• 3 years ago

It’s a great open-source with great team. If you want to improve/create some feature and have relevant experience - you can join.

rurp• 3 years ago

I love the offline focus of this app, but the one killer feature it lacks is the ability to download satellite maps.

One of my most used and loved apps is a hiking app that supports saving different types of maps offline, and I use the satellite views quite a bit.

raylad• 3 years ago

Organic Maps has the best walking directions.

It's always picking interesting routes and has never led me astray.

Also, if you go in a different direction, it automatically remaps from where you are at the moment to where you told it you wanted to go, unlike Google maps and most others that I've used.

chaz6• 3 years ago

I am very happy that this exists, great job! Unfortunately there is one important feature missing for me. On Android I cannot change the storage location.

Edit: I was mistaken, the option is not available while maps are downloading. It is perfect!

pSYoniK• 3 years ago

When I went full "no-google" on my smartphone I had to find a Google Maps alternative. Organic Maps filled the gap nicely and I've used it for personal navigation about 95% of the time since (2ish years now).

The one thing that makes me pull up gmaps now is public transport routing in new cities where the information boards in bus/tram/metro stations doesnt help me figure out the routes.

Also, for driving OM offers less hand-holding than GM so it took a while to get used to that, but it made me a better driver. I now use OM to get an idea of which way to go and thn rely on public signs to drive. It's been really amazing.

OM also just wins hands down when I'm hiking and cycling. I've donatrd to the project each year but every once in a while I'm just so happy with itthat I feel bad for not being able to afford giving them more money.

joren• 3 years ago

By far the best app when abroad. Use it to plan a holiday with color coded bookmarks. Easy to plan hikes, runs etc. And all offline. Great to spot where you find drinking water, playgrounds, and all the other great details OSM provides.

Started using it in Montenegro for driving as well since I didn’t want to pay a fortune for roaming and all other offline apps or even GPS device did not have the country available offline.

brailsafe• 3 years ago

Seems like a noble effort, and I'll keep it installed and in-mind, but I'm just about to head out on a rather well-tread trail that just happens to be quite long and segmented, and I can't make anything useful of the UI at all. Though I could piece together a custom trail I was satisfied with—after much irritation and rezooming—there was then no way to save it for later that I could see, and when I tried importing a KML or GPX it was rather clumsy; I eventually succeeded at displaying the route, and maybe that'll ckme in handy later today, but I ultimately just decided to use the AllTrails pro trial and hopefully remember to cancel in time. I can't mess around with iffy, unpredictable interfaces when I'm exhausted both physically and mentally and cell service is spotty at best. hwat would be awesome is to seriously iterate on the UI of the trail side of things, if the technical bits are in-place, because it seems like an otherwise commendable endeavor. It just feels very open-source, as in maybe it technically works, but I wouldn't put myself in a vulnerable position with it

itwillnotbeasy• 3 years ago

It has a cool feature on Android, when phone is locked, I only need to press the unlock button to see the map, phone doesn't ask for a password/fingerprint scan. This saves so much time when traveling on a bicycle because I don't like planning a detailed route, i just set a destination point, and ride in that direction, choosing the best scenic view. In that scenario, my phone mostly sits in my pocket, and I pull it out only when I get lost, but it saves so much time through the whole route.

If I want to switch to another app, Android asks me to authenticate, I don't know why google maps doesn't work the same way.

dotluis• 3 years ago

Is there any way to disable the POIs on the map?

MagicMoonlight2• 3 years ago

I really want a car navigation app that actually routes you correctly.

Apps like Waze have fallen for the "AI" meme where they take a limited data set of people driving and extrapolate it.

"It's 0.2 seconds quicker if you take a hard right across 4 lanes of traffic in rush hour" it thinks, so it takes you off the main road and onto a side street. You are then stuck there for 10 minutes because you can't turn right across 4 lanes of traffic in rush hour.

Zmicier42• 3 years ago

Height profile on the route is one of the most useful features of Organic maps for hiking. Have not seen such functionality in most of other maps apps.

quercusa2• 3 years ago

Great for airline passengers!

I saw this while preparing for the return leg of an airplane trip, so I downloaded the offline maps and was able to follow my flight via GPS - made things much more interesting.

anderiv• 3 years ago

If you’re on iOS, the University of Minnesota (USA) has release an purpose-built app for this sort of thing. I’ve enjoyed it on many flights:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/flyover-country/id1059886913

quercusa2• 3 years ago

Thanks, I'll give it a shot.

leokennis• 3 years ago

If this app would support “streaming” maps it would be the best. I don’t need an entire region stored on my device just because I want to navigate to the closest supermarket while I’m there, and I also don’t want to wait for it to download 50MB of data on cellular just to navigate me a few streets.

yonatan8070• 3 years ago

It seems like a great app with a nice and fast UI, but it doesn't support public transport in my area, and seeing as my primary mode of transportation is public, it's not very useful to me.

I hope a future update might add that functionality (bus, train, and light rail schedules, routes, and real time arrival data)

therealdrag0• 3 years ago

It’s honestly better for hiking than many hiking apps I have. (Comparing free for free)

Organic Maps

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