8 ms·

In 2023 Organic Maps got its first million users

243 points by RicoElectrico 3y ago

FredPret 3y ago
This app is incredible. Downloadable, offline contour maps with driving directions.
eisa01 3y ago
I’m a contributor to OpenStreetMap, but what I find very lacking is the POI data It’s only updated if there’s someone like me in the local area, or if it’s a tourist destination. But even then it can be sparse (eg just visited Merida, Bacalar and Valladolid in Mexico), and it’s worse in “non-western” countries Tellingly, Overture Maps that use OSM for the street data to not use the POI data. A lot of people pointed out that the POI data of Overture had mediocre quality. While that is true, they do at least have coverage in places OSM do not. If you know the name of the place you can at least find it I’m not sure how this can become better, I’d think that a prerequisite would be that corporate users like Grab, DiDi, Uber start contributing But that may not happen as they are not allowed to combine datasets [1]. Hence you have a chicken and egg problem: The dataset is not usable until it is complete… The street data fundementally have the same problem, but that is easier to edit remotely and may be more stable in contrast to POIs So I’m starting to question if it’s really worth it to continue update POIs in OSM, but I also would not know how to contribute to Overture as it does have quite some errors :) [1] https://github.com/OvertureMaps/data/discussions/102 https://github.com/OvertureMaps/data/discussions/102 edit: Or maybe it is possible to conflate them, but that is not planned - https://github.com/OvertureMaps/data/issues/96 https://github.com/OvertureMaps/data/issues/96
- mpol 3y ago
  An idea might be to have an "Adopt Your Own Neighbourhood" campaign. I don't know if this is seen as wanted in the OSM community, it might attract a lot of low-effort contributions which might wear out longtime volunteers. The way I started contributing to OSM is when I was tired of seeing old or no POI data and thought "enough is enough". I first started editing the shopping mall in my neighbourhood, then the schools, and so forth. It is now 5 years later and I can quite keep up locally with POI.
  - eisa01 3y ago
    Same, 95% of my edits are POI data in the past two years and I fixed two of the main shipping streets in my neighborhood But yeah, not sure how scalable even such a campaign would be. I’m the only user I know that use EveryDoor to confirm/update POI in a city of 500k people… You’d probably need at least 1 out of 1000 people globally to actively contribute. That’s almost 10 million people, quite a bit more than the 1 million Organic Maps users and 250k OSM contributors in 2022 :)
  - matkoniecz 3y ago
    local mappers interested in mapping their area are highly welcome! if anyone here is interested and unsure how to start, feel free to ask at https://community.openstreetmap.org/ https://community.openstreetmap.org/ (official forum, requires OSM account) or at one of other contact channels ( https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contact_channels https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contact_channels ) - there is Slack, IRC, Discord and so on. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/ https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/ may help but it is sadly suboptimal for someone completely new. If you just click edit you will get tutorial for default in-browser editor.
- Rygian 3y ago
  > So I’m starting to question if it’s really worth it to continue update POIs in OSM, but I also would not know how to contribute to Overture as it does have quite some errors :) It's not a chicken-and-egg situation. Here, the egg is clearly OpenStreetMap data, and the chicken are other maps (such as Overture) that benefit from OSM. Contribute to OSM for better eggs, or contribute to Overture to make your chicken look better.
- NewsyHacker 3y ago
  In my OSM career, bike-traveling the world, I have added POIs in all kinds of unlikely places in the developing world. But a real challenge is adding more than just the indication that there is, for example, a shop there. It’s hard to add a name= tag when the shop has not hung up a sign with a name. It’s hard to add an opening_hours= tag when the shop has not posted opening hours, and even if I ask the owners, they might say hours are totally fuzzy. Such clear information is largely a feature of the developed world. In some parts of urban Latin America, the challenge in adding POIs is that it is ill-advised to slowly, aimlessly walk down the street with your phone, because it could get snatched.
  - Reason077 3y ago
    > “It’s hard to add a name= tag when the shop has not hung up a sign with a name. It’s hard to add an opening_hours= tag when the shop has not posted opening hours” Even Google Maps has this problem. There’s a lot of “great noodle shop second on left” type business names in some parts of the world. Owners often live above/behind/in the shop/restaurant and they open more or less on demand. Hours will change seasonally - if there’s customers they’re open and if there isn’t they close. The real trick with POI data is not just the data itself but the metadata that tells you how important it is. If you know how many people are searching for a place, visiting a place, reviewing it etc then you can boost its prominence in map rendering and search results, greatly improving UX. An ideal solution would be for all the travel, mapping apps, etc that compete against Google (TripAdvisor, Yelp, Apple Maps, Facebook, all the in-car apps, etc) to share some kind of global OpenPOI database on top of OSM that aggregates reviews, photos, metadata, etc. And also gives owners a single source of truth to update their business data, keep it updated in real time, and have it disseminated everywhere…
- szszrk 3y ago
  What do you think about Street Complete [0][1][2]? I know it doesn't let you provide all and any data, but I find it super friendly. It lets you add details to objects that already exist in OSM. It looks very polished, has nice map, icons, and this default style of sticking to your actual location like some location based games for crazy people (I'm a former Ingress player, Enlightened FTW). My neighborhood has all details about building size, roofs, street lights, you know if there are markings on the ground on street crossings (for people with poor vision), each path has clear info of what's it's made of, and stores has open/close hours provided. Super cool, easy to use and has real impact. [0] https://streetcomplete.app/ https://streetcomplete.app/ [1] https://f-droid.org/packages/de.westnordost.streetcomplete/ https://f-droid.org/packages/de.westnordost.streetcomplete/ [2] https://play.google.com/store/search?q=street%20complete&c=apps https://play.google.com/store/search?q=street%20complete&c=a...
  - matkoniecz 3y ago
    > I know it doesn't let you provide all and any data, but I find it super friendly. But shops can be added (using shop overlay). (I am one of people developing StreetComplete)
    - szszrk 3y ago
      Didn't realized.l, thanks! Kudos to you, as you can see I love the app.
    - JeremyNT 3y ago
      I adore this app and it makes it even more fun to wander around new areas on foot. One thing I ran into is that there are buildings that aren't shown in Street Complete. I tried adding a note but there seems like no way to add them in. If there was some easy way to flag a property as having a new building and relying on desktop users to fill in the details that would be super helpful!
      - matkoniecz 3y ago
        long tap to create note, attach photo of location, is the best StreetComplete specific solution You can install Vespucci to draw buildings directly on smartphone
- dn3500 3y ago
  I live in Mérida. The POI data on Open Streetmap is pretty bad. I've been updating it on OSM but my changes never seem to make it to Organic Maps.
  - stereo 3y ago
    I was in Mérida a year ago and used OpenStreetMap to get around. I thought the quality was quite good! Thank you!
nelblu 3y ago
They absolutely deserve this! App is light weight and works smoothly. Every once in a while I do get into unmarked building numbers, to get around that I search location on google maps (in browser) and get the coordinates and then plug them into organic maps - not a big deal for me.
b112 3y ago
And yet sadly, is very difficult to use on freeways in North America. While I am thankful for their time, it's as if all the devs don't drive. Or don't drive on freeways. It never announces an exit soon enough to take action, at 130km/hr, when you also have to move over 5 lanes. I've had it announce an exit when I'm beside it, making it impossible to take any action. Well, anyhow, hopefully rough spots like this get ironed out, we need a Google competitor. It's sad, because this one thing keeps so many on google maps.
- eisa01 3y ago
  The devs are quite responsive on GitHub, so you could help contribute by opening an issue :) https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues
- Doctor_Fegg 3y ago
  One of the things I love most about OSM, and has kept me contributing to it for 19 years, is that it isn’t car-centric like the rest of the mapping industry. The world would be better with much less reliance on cars and OSM is a small part of that. But if you want to have an open source freeway navigator, there’s nothing stopping you: Organic Maps and OSM data are both open and welcome contributions.
- 4wsn 3y ago
  Had the same experience, and ended up being satisfied with Magic Earth[1]. I tried more or less every major navigation service (paid and "free"), and I ended up sticking with it. And no, I'm not affiliated in any way; just wanted to share a recommendation because I was in the same boat. [1]https://magicearth.com https://magicearth.com
- FredPret 3y ago
  If you have an iPhone, Apple Maps is amazing for driving. When in driving mode, the UI simplifies completely, only showing you the minimum you need to drive. The spoken directions are super clear, telling you things like "skip this light and go into that lane and then take a right at the next intersection". I let Siri guide me just by voice and it works brilliantly, even when navigating spaghetti intersections.
Animats 3y ago
This sounds like ZaNavi. Is it better, worse, about the same?
- thriftwy 3y ago
  "Application that is no longer developed and has been removed from PlayStore." Compared to that, Organic Maps work and is being actively developed.
  - Animats 3y ago
    Ah. I got ZAnavi from F-Droid. It downloads maps directly from Open Street Map, so it's not dependent on the app developer for data. I tend to prefer apps that don't get "updated". Too often, that means adding ads, begging, or tracking. The "Simple" series of Android apps went down that hole.
    - thriftwy 3y ago
      What do you mean by "downloading maps directly from OSM"? OSM is a database. If it is downloading rasterized images from the web site, then the difference is that Organic Maps is a vector mapping app.
      - Animats 3y ago
        I think it's using downloads from https://download.geofabrik.de/ https://download.geofabrik.de/ That extracts regions from Open Street Map and packages them as files.
        thriftwy 3y ago
        What if their format changes? The app will no longer work.
        sahkopoyta 3y ago
        It is fairly standard source for OSM data afaik. Organic Maps uses it as well at least for some cases.
davelondon 3y ago
I'd love to start recommending my friends use Organic Maps over Maps.me, but it's missing one critical feature: https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues/622 https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues/622 https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues/1694 https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues/1694 ... right now your bookmarks aren't synchronised anywhere so if you lose your phone all your bookmarks are gone. When that's working I'll change over in a second!
- neilv 3y ago
  As comments in the first link suggest, the project emphasizes privacy, and it would have to be done in a privacy-respecting way. The second link is asking for iCloud synchronization. A project that emphasizes privacy and open platforms might want to just deprioritize requests coming from people on privacy-violating, closed platforms, since those people hurt their own credibility in the approaches they suggest.
  - googlryas 3y ago
    Can't you just sync some encrypted blob to iCloud? How is iCloud privacy violating?
    - hedora 3y ago
      From reading the bug, they don’t support iCloud backup, which is surprising to me, since I thought supporting backup was trivial on iOS. As the bug points out, they could use core data sync for people that are navigating using multiple devices. I believe all of the above supports transparent E2E encryption at this point. (For backup, there is a toggle, since E2E makes your backup useless if you lose the only device that contains your keys, and many people only have one apple device, and don’t want to bother enlisting their friends to secret-share their recovery key).
  - dash2 3y ago
    If privacy advocates want to persuade people outside their bubble, this is surely not the right attitude. Imagine telling someone who wants iCloud sync, "oh you're hurting your own credibility"? Uh yeah (backing off slowly), guess I'll go back to Apple/Google maps and miss out on the ineffable benefit of your non-functional, but deeply virtuous, software.
wredue 3y ago
I expected to find that this was just another VC funded “steal users until the inevitable mass enshitification” and I was unable to find anything pointing to this. Colour me surprised. Going to definitely check it out.
- matkoniecz 3y ago
  It is actually reverse case: app was open source was developers were able to recover it when maps.me started enshitification.
  - WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
    Since “enshittification” is now a word, so should be “disshittification” or maybe “deshittification”.
neilv 3y ago
On GrapheneOS, I switched from OSMAnd~ to Organic Maps, and have been mostly happy with it. Organic Maps user interface could still use a little refinement (such as to give an unfamiliar user a sense of what mode they're in and how to get out of it). But it's much more approachable for basic use cases like "From where I am in the city, I want to get to address X."
brunorsini 3y ago
I've used Guru Maps over the years for the same purpose (eg, tracing my path in walks/drives through regions without carrier coverage). Curious to see how this compares.
gst 3y ago
For day to day use I use Apple Maps, but when hiking Organic Maps is my absolute favorite. A lot more useful than Apple Maps or Google Maps (as it includes routes that are missing in the other two) and it allows to add custom tracks which is super useful for navigation.
- kilolima 3y ago
  Organic Maps is great, especially for planning hikes, but I'd be careful about relying on the OSM topos for wilderness travel. I got burned pretty hard in the Alps by OSM when a trail didn't actually exist. Since then, I like to use Organic Maps for a digital "reconnaissance" of OSM points of interest and then a country-specific topo map like USGS or IGN for backcountry navigation or route finding. Note: AlpineQuest is a great app for this and is one of the few apps that doesn't charge a subscription to access our taxpayer-funded maps.
  - tomato-sauce 3y ago
    I had a similar experience using Organic Maps for hiking. I was hiking on a forested hill near an urban center. Both Google and Apple Maps only had a couple of the biggest trails while organic maps showed an extensive network. This was really helpful for exploring but I ended up having to take a pretty long detour to get back since the trail I had planned to take didn’t exist. I also encountered a trail marked on the map that had obviously been closed for years and was extremely overgrown. I really like the app but I wouldn’t trust the data for backcountry navigation at all.
neontomo 3y ago
Totally off topic, but it struck me that it would be funny to try to map out the world with thousands (millions?) of Roombas.
- blowski 3y ago
  All called “Mrs Danvers”. They can swim underwater, climb mountains, fly over walls in their quest to map the whole world. They connect to each other, become sentient, join forces with ChatGPT and launch a land war against humans. This is how the world ends, not with a bang but a mild hum.
  - neontomo 3y ago
    They not only map the world, but clean it... of everything.
hedora 3y ago
This was one of a short list of things I missed from Android. How did I miss the iOS version? Christmas came early this year!
Sunspark 3y ago
If any Organic Maps developers are reading this, one feature that I'd like to see would be the ability to define or upload and select a custom colour palette.
NelsonMinar 3y ago
Organic Maps is so great. I don't need offline maps as often as I used to but I'm very glad to have this app when I do. And thanks to the folks for rescuing Maps.Me after that product got corrupted.
dang 3y ago
Related: Organic Maps - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37347447 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37347447 - Sept 2023 (485 comments) OrganicMaps is Android and iOS offline maps for travel without trackers or ads - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27576882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27576882 - June 2021 (116 comments)
therealdrag0 3y ago
I don’t really use it as a Gmaps alternative (unless I’m out of signal range), but strangely it’s the best free app for hiking. I think key features are being able to navigate to a pin anywhere (many hike apps are stuck on predefined trails). The other is it shows you up front a profile of the elevation change over distance. Combined with offline by default makes it the best free hike app I’ve found.
veggieburrito 3y ago
Weird and random to see the hotspring marked on the map. Have been there many times but it was all word of mouth
byt3blight 3y ago
Honestly without address search it's nearly useless for a lot of use cases.

243 points by RicoElectrico 3y ago

This app is incredible. Downloadable, offline contour maps with driving directions.

I’m a contributor to OpenStreetMap, but what I find very lacking is the POI data It’s only updated if there’s someone like me in the local area, or if it’s a tourist destination. But even then it can be sparse (eg just visited Merida, Bacalar and Valladolid in Mexico), and it’s worse in “non-western” countries Tellingly, Overture Maps that use OSM for the street data to not use the POI data. A lot of people pointed out that the POI data of Overture had mediocre quality. While that is true, they do at least have coverage in places OSM do not. If you know the name of the place you can at least find it I’m not sure how this can become better, I’d think that a prerequisite would be that corporate users like Grab, DiDi, Uber start contributing But that may not happen as they are not allowed to combine datasets [1]. Hence you have a chicken and egg problem: The dataset is not usable until it is complete… The street data fundementally have the same problem, but that is easier to edit remotely and may be more stable in contrast to POIs So I’m starting to question if it’s really worth it to continue update POIs in OSM, but I also would not know how to contribute to Overture as it does have quite some errors :) [1] https://github.com/OvertureMaps/data/discussions/102 https://github.com/OvertureMaps/data/discussions/102 edit: Or maybe it is possible to conflate them, but that is not planned - https://github.com/OvertureMaps/data/issues/96 https://github.com/OvertureMaps/data/issues/96

mpol 3y ago
An idea might be to have an "Adopt Your Own Neighbourhood" campaign. I don't know if this is seen as wanted in the OSM community, it might attract a lot of low-effort contributions which might wear out longtime volunteers. The way I started contributing to OSM is when I was tired of seeing old or no POI data and thought "enough is enough". I first started editing the shopping mall in my neighbourhood, then the schools, and so forth. It is now 5 years later and I can quite keep up locally with POI.
- eisa01 3y ago
  Same, 95% of my edits are POI data in the past two years and I fixed two of the main shipping streets in my neighborhood But yeah, not sure how scalable even such a campaign would be. I’m the only user I know that use EveryDoor to confirm/update POI in a city of 500k people… You’d probably need at least 1 out of 1000 people globally to actively contribute. That’s almost 10 million people, quite a bit more than the 1 million Organic Maps users and 250k OSM contributors in 2022 :)
- matkoniecz 3y ago
  local mappers interested in mapping their area are highly welcome! if anyone here is interested and unsure how to start, feel free to ask at https://community.openstreetmap.org/ https://community.openstreetmap.org/ (official forum, requires OSM account) or at one of other contact channels ( https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contact_channels https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contact_channels ) - there is Slack, IRC, Discord and so on. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/ https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/ may help but it is sadly suboptimal for someone completely new. If you just click edit you will get tutorial for default in-browser editor.
Rygian 3y ago
> So I’m starting to question if it’s really worth it to continue update POIs in OSM, but I also would not know how to contribute to Overture as it does have quite some errors :) It's not a chicken-and-egg situation. Here, the egg is clearly OpenStreetMap data, and the chicken are other maps (such as Overture) that benefit from OSM. Contribute to OSM for better eggs, or contribute to Overture to make your chicken look better.
NewsyHacker 3y ago
In my OSM career, bike-traveling the world, I have added POIs in all kinds of unlikely places in the developing world. But a real challenge is adding more than just the indication that there is, for example, a shop there. It’s hard to add a name= tag when the shop has not hung up a sign with a name. It’s hard to add an opening_hours= tag when the shop has not posted opening hours, and even if I ask the owners, they might say hours are totally fuzzy. Such clear information is largely a feature of the developed world. In some parts of urban Latin America, the challenge in adding POIs is that it is ill-advised to slowly, aimlessly walk down the street with your phone, because it could get snatched.
- Reason077 3y ago
  > “It’s hard to add a name= tag when the shop has not hung up a sign with a name. It’s hard to add an opening_hours= tag when the shop has not posted opening hours” Even Google Maps has this problem. There’s a lot of “great noodle shop second on left” type business names in some parts of the world. Owners often live above/behind/in the shop/restaurant and they open more or less on demand. Hours will change seasonally - if there’s customers they’re open and if there isn’t they close. The real trick with POI data is not just the data itself but the metadata that tells you how important it is. If you know how many people are searching for a place, visiting a place, reviewing it etc then you can boost its prominence in map rendering and search results, greatly improving UX. An ideal solution would be for all the travel, mapping apps, etc that compete against Google (TripAdvisor, Yelp, Apple Maps, Facebook, all the in-car apps, etc) to share some kind of global OpenPOI database on top of OSM that aggregates reviews, photos, metadata, etc. And also gives owners a single source of truth to update their business data, keep it updated in real time, and have it disseminated everywhere…
szszrk 3y ago
What do you think about Street Complete [0][1][2]? I know it doesn't let you provide all and any data, but I find it super friendly. It lets you add details to objects that already exist in OSM. It looks very polished, has nice map, icons, and this default style of sticking to your actual location like some location based games for crazy people (I'm a former Ingress player, Enlightened FTW). My neighborhood has all details about building size, roofs, street lights, you know if there are markings on the ground on street crossings (for people with poor vision), each path has clear info of what's it's made of, and stores has open/close hours provided. Super cool, easy to use and has real impact. [0] https://streetcomplete.app/ https://streetcomplete.app/ [1] https://f-droid.org/packages/de.westnordost.streetcomplete/ https://f-droid.org/packages/de.westnordost.streetcomplete/ [2] https://play.google.com/store/search?q=street%20complete&c=apps https://play.google.com/store/search?q=street%20complete&c=a...
- matkoniecz 3y ago
  > I know it doesn't let you provide all and any data, but I find it super friendly. But shops can be added (using shop overlay). (I am one of people developing StreetComplete)
  - szszrk 3y ago
    Didn't realized.l, thanks! Kudos to you, as you can see I love the app.
  - JeremyNT 3y ago
    I adore this app and it makes it even more fun to wander around new areas on foot. One thing I ran into is that there are buildings that aren't shown in Street Complete. I tried adding a note but there seems like no way to add them in. If there was some easy way to flag a property as having a new building and relying on desktop users to fill in the details that would be super helpful!
    - matkoniecz 3y ago
      long tap to create note, attach photo of location, is the best StreetComplete specific solution You can install Vespucci to draw buildings directly on smartphone
dn3500 3y ago
I live in Mérida. The POI data on Open Streetmap is pretty bad. I've been updating it on OSM but my changes never seem to make it to Organic Maps.
- stereo 3y ago
  I was in Mérida a year ago and used OpenStreetMap to get around. I thought the quality was quite good! Thank you!

nelblu 3y ago

They absolutely deserve this! App is light weight and works smoothly. Every once in a while I do get into unmarked building numbers, to get around that I search location on google maps (in browser) and get the coordinates and then plug them into organic maps - not a big deal for me.

b112 3y ago

And yet sadly, is very difficult to use on freeways in North America. While I am thankful for their time, it's as if all the devs don't drive. Or don't drive on freeways. It never announces an exit soon enough to take action, at 130km/hr, when you also have to move over 5 lanes. I've had it announce an exit when I'm beside it, making it impossible to take any action. Well, anyhow, hopefully rough spots like this get ironed out, we need a Google competitor. It's sad, because this one thing keeps so many on google maps.

eisa01 3y ago
The devs are quite responsive on GitHub, so you could help contribute by opening an issue :) https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues
Doctor_Fegg 3y ago
One of the things I love most about OSM, and has kept me contributing to it for 19 years, is that it isn’t car-centric like the rest of the mapping industry. The world would be better with much less reliance on cars and OSM is a small part of that. But if you want to have an open source freeway navigator, there’s nothing stopping you: Organic Maps and OSM data are both open and welcome contributions.
4wsn 3y ago
Had the same experience, and ended up being satisfied with Magic Earth[1]. I tried more or less every major navigation service (paid and "free"), and I ended up sticking with it. And no, I'm not affiliated in any way; just wanted to share a recommendation because I was in the same boat. [1]https://magicearth.com https://magicearth.com
FredPret 3y ago
If you have an iPhone, Apple Maps is amazing for driving. When in driving mode, the UI simplifies completely, only showing you the minimum you need to drive. The spoken directions are super clear, telling you things like "skip this light and go into that lane and then take a right at the next intersection". I let Siri guide me just by voice and it works brilliantly, even when navigating spaghetti intersections.

Animats 3y ago

This sounds like ZaNavi. Is it better, worse, about the same?

thriftwy 3y ago
"Application that is no longer developed and has been removed from PlayStore." Compared to that, Organic Maps work and is being actively developed.
- Animats 3y ago
  Ah. I got ZAnavi from F-Droid. It downloads maps directly from Open Street Map, so it's not dependent on the app developer for data. I tend to prefer apps that don't get "updated". Too often, that means adding ads, begging, or tracking. The "Simple" series of Android apps went down that hole.
  - thriftwy 3y ago
    What do you mean by "downloading maps directly from OSM"? OSM is a database. If it is downloading rasterized images from the web site, then the difference is that Organic Maps is a vector mapping app.
    - Animats 3y ago
      I think it's using downloads from https://download.geofabrik.de/ https://download.geofabrik.de/ That extracts regions from Open Street Map and packages them as files.
      - thriftwy 3y ago
        What if their format changes? The app will no longer work.
        sahkopoyta 3y ago
        It is fairly standard source for OSM data afaik. Organic Maps uses it as well at least for some cases.

davelondon 3y ago

I'd love to start recommending my friends use Organic Maps over Maps.me, but it's missing one critical feature: https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues/622 https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues/622 https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues/1694 https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues/1694 ... right now your bookmarks aren't synchronised anywhere so if you lose your phone all your bookmarks are gone. When that's working I'll change over in a second!

neilv 3y ago
As comments in the first link suggest, the project emphasizes privacy, and it would have to be done in a privacy-respecting way. The second link is asking for iCloud synchronization. A project that emphasizes privacy and open platforms might want to just deprioritize requests coming from people on privacy-violating, closed platforms, since those people hurt their own credibility in the approaches they suggest.
- googlryas 3y ago
  Can't you just sync some encrypted blob to iCloud? How is iCloud privacy violating?
  - hedora 3y ago
    From reading the bug, they don’t support iCloud backup, which is surprising to me, since I thought supporting backup was trivial on iOS. As the bug points out, they could use core data sync for people that are navigating using multiple devices. I believe all of the above supports transparent E2E encryption at this point. (For backup, there is a toggle, since E2E makes your backup useless if you lose the only device that contains your keys, and many people only have one apple device, and don’t want to bother enlisting their friends to secret-share their recovery key).
- dash2 3y ago
  If privacy advocates want to persuade people outside their bubble, this is surely not the right attitude. Imagine telling someone who wants iCloud sync, "oh you're hurting your own credibility"? Uh yeah (backing off slowly), guess I'll go back to Apple/Google maps and miss out on the ineffable benefit of your non-functional, but deeply virtuous, software.

wredue 3y ago

I expected to find that this was just another VC funded “steal users until the inevitable mass enshitification” and I was unable to find anything pointing to this. Colour me surprised. Going to definitely check it out.

matkoniecz 3y ago
It is actually reverse case: app was open source was developers were able to recover it when maps.me started enshitification.
- WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
  Since “enshittification” is now a word, so should be “disshittification” or maybe “deshittification”.

neilv 3y ago

On GrapheneOS, I switched from OSMAnd~ to Organic Maps, and have been mostly happy with it. Organic Maps user interface could still use a little refinement (such as to give an unfamiliar user a sense of what mode they're in and how to get out of it). But it's much more approachable for basic use cases like "From where I am in the city, I want to get to address X."

brunorsini 3y ago

I've used Guru Maps over the years for the same purpose (eg, tracing my path in walks/drives through regions without carrier coverage). Curious to see how this compares.

gst 3y ago

For day to day use I use Apple Maps, but when hiking Organic Maps is my absolute favorite. A lot more useful than Apple Maps or Google Maps (as it includes routes that are missing in the other two) and it allows to add custom tracks which is super useful for navigation.

kilolima 3y ago
Organic Maps is great, especially for planning hikes, but I'd be careful about relying on the OSM topos for wilderness travel. I got burned pretty hard in the Alps by OSM when a trail didn't actually exist. Since then, I like to use Organic Maps for a digital "reconnaissance" of OSM points of interest and then a country-specific topo map like USGS or IGN for backcountry navigation or route finding. Note: AlpineQuest is a great app for this and is one of the few apps that doesn't charge a subscription to access our taxpayer-funded maps.
- tomato-sauce 3y ago
  I had a similar experience using Organic Maps for hiking. I was hiking on a forested hill near an urban center. Both Google and Apple Maps only had a couple of the biggest trails while organic maps showed an extensive network. This was really helpful for exploring but I ended up having to take a pretty long detour to get back since the trail I had planned to take didn’t exist. I also encountered a trail marked on the map that had obviously been closed for years and was extremely overgrown. I really like the app but I wouldn’t trust the data for backcountry navigation at all.

neontomo 3y ago

Totally off topic, but it struck me that it would be funny to try to map out the world with thousands (millions?) of Roombas.

blowski 3y ago
All called “Mrs Danvers”. They can swim underwater, climb mountains, fly over walls in their quest to map the whole world. They connect to each other, become sentient, join forces with ChatGPT and launch a land war against humans. This is how the world ends, not with a bang but a mild hum.
- neontomo 3y ago
  They not only map the world, but clean it... of everything.

hedora 3y ago

This was one of a short list of things I missed from Android. How did I miss the iOS version? Christmas came early this year!

Sunspark 3y ago

If any Organic Maps developers are reading this, one feature that I'd like to see would be the ability to define or upload and select a custom colour palette.

NelsonMinar 3y ago

Organic Maps is so great. I don't need offline maps as often as I used to but I'm very glad to have this app when I do. And thanks to the folks for rescuing Maps.Me after that product got corrupted.

dang 3y ago

Related: Organic Maps - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37347447 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37347447 - Sept 2023 (485 comments) OrganicMaps is Android and iOS offline maps for travel without trackers or ads - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27576882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27576882 - June 2021 (116 comments)

therealdrag0 3y ago

I don’t really use it as a Gmaps alternative (unless I’m out of signal range), but strangely it’s the best free app for hiking. I think key features are being able to navigate to a pin anywhere (many hike apps are stuck on predefined trails). The other is it shows you up front a profile of the elevation change over distance. Combined with offline by default makes it the best free hike app I’ve found.

veggieburrito 3y ago

Weird and random to see the hotspring marked on the map. Have been there many times but it was all word of mouth

byt3blight 3y ago

Honestly without address search it's nearly useless for a lot of use cases.