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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

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

mcv 3y 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 3y 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.
  - mcv 3y ago
    Yeah, I think I've gotten too used to it and learned to automatically compensate for it, but the more I think about it, the more I realise just how terrible Google is at bike routes.
  - twic 3y ago
    I've had some horrendous experiences using Google Maps for cycling in the UK too. Mostly it's very good, and it's impressive how good it is, really, but it's the times it gets it wrong that you remember. Routing me through a park in the middle of the night, when it was closed, was one. Taking me on a detour to avoid a busy road, which turned to be on a farm track where the road surface was completely destroyed, was another.
- raybb 3y 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.
  - pietervdvn 3y ago
    Here you go: https://mapcomplete.org/shops.html?z=12.2&lat=52.36511&lon=4.897517&filter-shops-shop-type=%7B%22search%22%3A%22books%22%7D&layer-pharmacy=false https://mapcomplete.org/shops.html?z=12.2&lat=52.36511&lon=4... Note: it takes a little while to load all of Amsterdam. Disclaimer: I'm the (main) dev of mapcomplete
nani8ot 3y 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.
- Vinnl 3y ago
  You can also more specifically search for "drinking water" I think :)
  - nani8ot 3y ago
    Thank you, that's awesome.
- okok3857 3y 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....
  - Ylpertnodi 3y ago
    The app 'fountains in italy' is pretty cool and has saved me on a couple of trips there. Especially locating a fountain on a bridge(!) at Lake Garda...i was stood almost next to it, it was hidden by the people walking past.
- ihatehn 3y 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_3c1f 3y 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.
- fizwidget 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 https://www.openstreetmap.org
- blendergeek 3y 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 3y 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.
- ihatehn 3y 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 3y ago
This is the first time I see "Get it on F-DROID" on an app download page.
taink 3y 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?
- jaakl 3y 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 3y 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.
- vintagedave 3y 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.
  - jaakl 3y ago
    This is essentially po box (or more just fake address) for Estonian e-resident companies (https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/ https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/). It is quite popular for fellow neighbours Russians, Belorussians etc for whom their local country is not that enterpreneurial-friendly.
codetrotter 3y 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 3y ago
Used organic maps recently in central WA without cell service: fantastic app.
hedora 3y 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 3y 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.
unwind 3y 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
- unwind 3y 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.

mcv 3y 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 3y 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.
- mcv 3y ago
  Yeah, I think I've gotten too used to it and learned to automatically compensate for it, but the more I think about it, the more I realise just how terrible Google is at bike routes.
- twic 3y ago
  I've had some horrendous experiences using Google Maps for cycling in the UK too. Mostly it's very good, and it's impressive how good it is, really, but it's the times it gets it wrong that you remember. Routing me through a park in the middle of the night, when it was closed, was one. Taking me on a detour to avoid a busy road, which turned to be on a farm track where the road surface was completely destroyed, was another.
raybb 3y 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.
- pietervdvn 3y ago
  Here you go: https://mapcomplete.org/shops.html?z=12.2&lat=52.36511&lon=4.897517&filter-shops-shop-type=%7B%22search%22%3A%22books%22%7D&layer-pharmacy=false https://mapcomplete.org/shops.html?z=12.2&lat=52.36511&lon=4... Note: it takes a little while to load all of Amsterdam. Disclaimer: I'm the (main) dev of mapcomplete

nani8ot 3y 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.

Vinnl 3y ago
You can also more specifically search for "drinking water" I think :)
- nani8ot 3y ago
  Thank you, that's awesome.
okok3857 3y 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....
- Ylpertnodi 3y ago
  The app 'fountains in italy' is pretty cool and has saved me on a couple of trips there. Especially locating a fountain on a bridge(!) at Lake Garda...i was stood almost next to it, it was hidden by the people walking past.
ihatehn 3y 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_3c1f 3y 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.

fizwidget 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 https://www.openstreetmap.org
blendergeek 3y 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 3y 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.
ihatehn 3y 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 3y ago

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

taink 3y 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?

jaakl 3y 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 3y 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.

vintagedave 3y 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.
- jaakl 3y ago
  This is essentially po box (or more just fake address) for Estonian e-resident companies (https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/ https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/). It is quite popular for fellow neighbours Russians, Belorussians etc for whom their local country is not that enterpreneurial-friendly.

codetrotter 3y 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 3y ago

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

hedora 3y 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 3y 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.

unwind 3y 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

unwind 3y 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.