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A potted history of mobile OSM-based mapping. First there was Osmand. AKA OSMAnd or officially OsmAnd. It was was powerful but complicated. Normies had never

A potted history of mobile OSM-based mapping. First there was Osmand. AKA OSMAnd or officially OsmAnd. It was was powerful but complicated. Normies had never heard of it and preferred Maps.me, a user-friendly alternative with an opaque business model. Then something at Maps.me turned sour and the more privacy-minded normies turned to Organic Maps. Then something at Organic Maps turned sour and some of them moved to CoMaps. During all this time (literally 15 years), Osmand improved steadily and became more powerful than ever. Even the UX got (a bit) better. It is by far the best mapping app, either FOSS or commercial. And yet somehow it continues to languish in relative obscurity.

ihatehn 2mo ago
We tell our users that OsmAnd is great if you want a mapping swiss army knife in your pocket: it does a little bit of everything, for power users. It has plugins and customizability. CoMaps' mission is to be an accessible usable privacy-first FOSS map app for the entire world (average people) and so we always have our eye on the typical expected user experience and what obstacles remain between them and uninstalling those non-FOSS privacy-invading apps, but we're not going down the rabbit hole of adding all sorts of niche powerful features: OsmAnd already does that very well, and the world doesn't need two OsmAnds.
- gedankenstuecke 2mo ago
  100% agree - I think even some of the CoMaps contributors use OsmAnd for the rare specialist use cases. I know I do: CoMaps is my main map app that I use basically every day and works perfectly for all of my common/normal use cases. but once in a while I have a map/nav need beyond that and then OsmAnd's customizability is great!
- andrewshadura 2mo ago
  Please please, fix the long-standing bug: make it possible to use the navigation in "north is always up" mode.
  - schubidubiduba 2mo ago
    That has been possible for a long time, by pressing the location button to toggle it. And recently some more edge cases regarding this were fixed.
- pcthrowaway 2mo ago
  I haven't tried using osmand much yet, but one concerning thing is the info I encountered that long (as in, cross-country) trips could take minutes (or hours?) to provide a route for. I haven't actually tested it yet, but it definitely gave me pause
  - artyomsv 2mo ago
    It is real but not so dramatic as you heard. Offline routing must walk the graph across many downloaded regions, so time grows fast with distance. Trip inside one country is usually seconds, whole continent can be minutes. Standard trick is to put two or three intermediate points on the route. Then engine solves several short problems instead of one huge one, and answer comes almost immediately. Also OsmAnd can use online routing when you have signal, offline engine is fallback. So the bad case happens only when you plan very long route and have no connection at same time, which is not typical situation.
  - bluebarbet 2mo ago
    That warning was unjustified. In my experience it's never more than a few tens of seconds, and usually much quicker.
- Vinnl 2mo ago
  To illustrate this, look at OsmAnd's most recent blog post [1]. They've recently been looking at adding pretty extensive Astronomy features. Before that, they added a lot of nautical tooling [2]. This is all very cool if you use that, but if you don't, the laundry list of such features make it harder to find the features you do use. I used OsmAnd for a long time, and it's a great app that I learned how to use well. And while I do miss some features (most notably the Wikivoyage integration for offline travel guides), ultimately the simplicity of CoMaps makes it much more pleasant to use for the thing I mostly use it for: getting around cities. [1] https://osmand.net/blog/eclipse-explorer/ https://osmand.net/blog/eclipse-explorer/ [2] https://osmand.net/blog/nautical-maps https://osmand.net/blog/nautical-maps
  - shiandow 2mo ago
    Even if it adds some complication I really enjoy just having both features available when I need to. But then I'm a sucker for gadgets. In a way both provide answers to the question, what is that light? Performance is the main reason to prefer CoMaps but they've gotten a lot better at it (and inevitably you have to sacrifice some speed for customisability)
    - bluebarbet 2mo ago
      Indeed. I have a theory that software complexity tends to bring with it a subjective perception of slowness that might not show up if measured empirically. At one point Osmand certainly had an issue rendering lots of POIs, but it was addressed and these days the app feels (to me) acceptably quick.
  - cicko 2mo ago
    OsmAnd's search feature always sucked whereas CoMaps' is just beautiful. I wish it was simpler to share a location between the two, once I find it.
- cicko 2mo ago
  World also doesn't need two copies of maps. Please fix.
nkjvhb 2mo ago
OsmAnd is a great powerusers app. I use it daily. However, I would not recommend OsmAnd to a normie. My family members, especially the older ones, all use CoMaps because it is much more friendly to them.
- c0nsumer 2mo ago
  100% this. I use OsmAnd very very frequently (it displays on my dash via Android Auto whenever I drive), but try and do something like load a GPX and show the line in a given color... Or add a pin at a specific point... It's not straightforward at all. Powerful, but very not straightforward.

ihatehn 2mo ago

We tell our users that OsmAnd is great if you want a mapping swiss army knife in your pocket: it does a little bit of everything, for power users. It has plugins and customizability. CoMaps' mission is to be an accessible usable privacy-first FOSS map app for the entire world (average people) and so we always have our eye on the typical expected user experience and what obstacles remain between them and uninstalling those non-FOSS privacy-invading apps, but we're not going down the rabbit hole of adding all sorts of niche powerful features: OsmAnd already does that very well, and the world doesn't need two OsmAnds.

gedankenstuecke 2mo ago
100% agree - I think even some of the CoMaps contributors use OsmAnd for the rare specialist use cases. I know I do: CoMaps is my main map app that I use basically every day and works perfectly for all of my common/normal use cases. but once in a while I have a map/nav need beyond that and then OsmAnd's customizability is great!
andrewshadura 2mo ago
Please please, fix the long-standing bug: make it possible to use the navigation in "north is always up" mode.
- schubidubiduba 2mo ago
  That has been possible for a long time, by pressing the location button to toggle it. And recently some more edge cases regarding this were fixed.
pcthrowaway 2mo ago
I haven't tried using osmand much yet, but one concerning thing is the info I encountered that long (as in, cross-country) trips could take minutes (or hours?) to provide a route for. I haven't actually tested it yet, but it definitely gave me pause
- artyomsv 2mo ago
  It is real but not so dramatic as you heard. Offline routing must walk the graph across many downloaded regions, so time grows fast with distance. Trip inside one country is usually seconds, whole continent can be minutes. Standard trick is to put two or three intermediate points on the route. Then engine solves several short problems instead of one huge one, and answer comes almost immediately. Also OsmAnd can use online routing when you have signal, offline engine is fallback. So the bad case happens only when you plan very long route and have no connection at same time, which is not typical situation.
- bluebarbet 2mo ago
  That warning was unjustified. In my experience it's never more than a few tens of seconds, and usually much quicker.
Vinnl 2mo ago
To illustrate this, look at OsmAnd's most recent blog post [1]. They've recently been looking at adding pretty extensive Astronomy features. Before that, they added a lot of nautical tooling [2]. This is all very cool if you use that, but if you don't, the laundry list of such features make it harder to find the features you do use. I used OsmAnd for a long time, and it's a great app that I learned how to use well. And while I do miss some features (most notably the Wikivoyage integration for offline travel guides), ultimately the simplicity of CoMaps makes it much more pleasant to use for the thing I mostly use it for: getting around cities. [1] https://osmand.net/blog/eclipse-explorer/ https://osmand.net/blog/eclipse-explorer/ [2] https://osmand.net/blog/nautical-maps https://osmand.net/blog/nautical-maps
- shiandow 2mo ago
  Even if it adds some complication I really enjoy just having both features available when I need to. But then I'm a sucker for gadgets. In a way both provide answers to the question, what is that light? Performance is the main reason to prefer CoMaps but they've gotten a lot better at it (and inevitably you have to sacrifice some speed for customisability)
  - bluebarbet 2mo ago
    Indeed. I have a theory that software complexity tends to bring with it a subjective perception of slowness that might not show up if measured empirically. At one point Osmand certainly had an issue rendering lots of POIs, but it was addressed and these days the app feels (to me) acceptably quick.
- cicko 2mo ago
  OsmAnd's search feature always sucked whereas CoMaps' is just beautiful. I wish it was simpler to share a location between the two, once I find it.
cicko 2mo ago
World also doesn't need two copies of maps. Please fix.

nkjvhb 2mo ago

OsmAnd is a great powerusers app. I use it daily. However, I would not recommend OsmAnd to a normie. My family members, especially the older ones, all use CoMaps because it is much more friendly to them.

c0nsumer 2mo ago
100% this. I use OsmAnd very very frequently (it displays on my dash via Android Auto whenever I drive), but try and do something like load a GPX and show the line in a given color... Or add a pin at a specific point... It's not straightforward at all. Powerful, but very not straightforward.