alt.hn

7/5/2026 at 2:14:30 PM

Organic Maps

 https://organicmaps.app/

by tosh

7/5/2026 at 2:39:14 PM

Organic Maps was my go to app for a navigation app where you can fix errors yourself immediately! So much better than having to work for free on the proprietary apps, and hope they accept your edits

There’s a fork from one year ago, CoMaps, that is gaining different features

E.g., I am adding CarPlay Dashboard support that you can test by joining the TestFlight

We are in great need of both more testers and some proper iOS devs (I am not). We’re racing to get scene lifecycle support by September, perfect opportunity if you like modernising old codebases!

https://www.comaps.app/ https://codeberg.org/comaps/comaps

by eisa01

7/5/2026 at 8:33:16 PM

What do you mean by "scene lifecycle support"? In general, I like cleaning up old code bases. But I don't see how that relates to testing?

by atollk

7/5/2026 at 5:21:25 PM

All these apps rely on the data provided by OpenStreetMap (OSM). It is a Wikipedia-like project where anybody can contribute edits.

https://www.openstreetmap.org/

by david-gpu

7/5/2026 at 7:42:43 PM

do these damn projects even push the proposed edits up back to openstreetmap?

insanely shameful if not

by trueno

7/5/2026 at 8:01:45 PM

I assume they all do, it's nigh impossible to maintain your own data fork and keep reconciling your users' edits and the updates from OSM.

by gpvos

7/5/2026 at 8:10:48 PM

They can’t do so automatically. Osm Editors must approve. Apparantly OSM fears legislation when people copy info from google maps. They like to see evidence, like street sign photos. In my limited experience anyway.

by superjan

7/5/2026 at 8:10:50 PM

Of course they do.

by hk__2

7/5/2026 at 6:12:40 PM

yeah, so were LibreOffice and OpenOffice relying on the .odt format

CoMaps forked out of OrganicMaps after a row about money

by hinata08

7/5/2026 at 6:36:55 PM

Always the rows about some kind of BS that fragments, fractures, and defuses the efforts into pet projects instead of ever actually being a viable alternative for the majority of people to corporate offerings.

The hardest thing about any effort that is two or more people is the interpersonal, coordination, consensus, and organization aspects. Everything else is easy in comparison.

by roysting

7/5/2026 at 7:42:32 PM

It makes sense. People generally want at least one of: money or decision-making power.

If they have to negotiate, constantly settle, and get no money, that's a hard sell.

by jonahx

7/5/2026 at 6:48:49 PM

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”

by roughly

7/5/2026 at 5:42:58 PM

Any recommendations for an OSS maps app that provides tracks like Strava,l and Komoot?

by frevib

7/5/2026 at 8:16:46 PM

There is a federated application called Endurain [0] that can be self-hosted, and is compatible with Strava and Garmin Connect. Not a phone app, but a web front-end. I don't know how well that works on mobile.

[0] https://docs.endurain.com/gallery/

by rapnie

7/5/2026 at 6:51:52 PM

I'm working on something that is best described as Komoot meets Mastodon. Self hostable and federated. It's pretty early, and the UX is pretty bare bones still.

If you're keen on checking it out you should be able to find it in my recent Github contributions, following the link in my profile.

by stigi

7/5/2026 at 7:29:43 PM

Do you mean tracking your workout? If so there's Fitotrack on Android.

by buu709

7/5/2026 at 3:04:46 PM

Any ones which tries to avoid realtime traffic, especially in India? Also ones which detects some shortcuts as narrow, meandering roads that will be extremely slow.

by aitchnyu

7/5/2026 at 5:40:46 PM

I'll preface this by saying I can't speak for India. I live in the US. Use your own discretion to decide what here might apply to you.

I've been using Organic Maps for almost 3 years. I lived in Chicago during this time, as well as some smaller American cities. I go back and forth between Organic Maps and GMaps depending on the situation.

I've found that Organic Maps' lack of traffic data isn't a big deal for me. It doesn't always give you an accurate ETA, sure, but it isn't any worse at actually getting you to your destination.

The thing with GMaps is that everyone has traffic data, so nobody has an advantage. Google's alternative routes end up equally saturated as the main routes, meaning a "dumb" maps app that always takes the main route will get you to your destination in basically the same amount of time. This is backed up by my own personal experience, and some academic research [1].

Now, when I do need an accurate ETA, I go back to GMaps. I'll also use GMaps to route to businesses sometimes, because OSM doesn't have up-to-date info about businesses throughout most of middle America.

[1]: https://trid.trb.org/view/1495267

by ryukoposting

7/5/2026 at 7:45:39 PM

In Europe you could use NUNAV, which does collaborative routing to avoid this scenario (I work for the company that develops it).

by rompic

7/5/2026 at 7:02:50 PM

> I've found that Organic Maps' lack of traffic data isn't a big deal for me. It doesn't always give you an accurate ETA, sure, but it isn't any worse at actually getting you to your destination.

Some places live traffic information gives you a choice between a 10 minute way and 40 minute way though, if you get stuck in the wrong spots it really truly sucks, and for us who live in these places, being able to easily route around those spots saves us a bunch of time and energy.

I want to use any client app that uses OSM for car navigation, as I contribute both money and map fixes, but currently nothing seems to come close to either Wave or Google Maps when it comes to traffic information, which ends up being pretty important (for some), so I end up using Organic Maps only for when I walk on foot.

by embedding-shape

7/5/2026 at 6:04:17 PM

I prefer Google Maps cause they'll tell you where pigs camp out.

Saved me a lot of speeding tickets on the interstate.

by nekusar

7/5/2026 at 6:43:52 PM

Comaps can display your current speed and (if it's in the data) the speed limit for the road you're on - everything you need to avoid speeding tickets!

by WindyMiller

7/5/2026 at 6:36:27 PM

It would be really cool to see the social situational awareness sharing feature be implemented in an open client over an open censorship resistant protocol. Because to me Google maps is just mass surveillance by the pigs even if it does happen to help you today, the long term incentive for big tech is to erode user freedom and collude with corrupt governments.

by greentea23

7/5/2026 at 6:40:49 PM

Waze is way better for that and where Google gets its data, but delayed it seems, because they’re both Alphabet.

by roysting

7/5/2026 at 3:11:12 PM

There’s actually work ongoing on live traffic support from various public sources!

https://codeberg.org/comaps/comaps/projects/21877

by eisa01

7/5/2026 at 3:29:51 PM

This looks really solid. It's the thing that would make me switch over. 90% of the time I know exactly where I'm going but need Google Maps to tell me what's unexpectedly in the way while I'm trying to get there.

by harkdif

7/5/2026 at 3:50:57 PM

My problem is that more often than not the road or business name I'm trying to find us just not in the database. If I'm at home I'll try to add it but if I'm driving that is not going to happen and I'll just use something else.

by dexterdog

7/5/2026 at 6:53:14 PM

Thank you for contributing! The task of mapping every street and business in the world sounds impossible, but openstreetmap.org does really well.

by zaik

7/5/2026 at 3:59:21 PM

Yeah, that's a great call-out. While I can reckon my way most places, memorizing cross streets isn't my strength. Not having at least decent recency on top of traffic makes it tough.

by harkdif

7/5/2026 at 5:46:55 PM

There’s Magic Earth which uses OSM map data but also integrates live traffic information. Not sure whether it works in India, though.

https://www.magicearth.com/

by mbirth

7/5/2026 at 7:04:52 PM

Have they tried/are there any plans of upstreaming that somehow? While I rely on proprietary services for car navigation today, if I move to a OSM-based services next, I'd want it to be similarly structured to actual OSM, not some proprietary bolted-on-top-of-OSM startup that will disappear/enshittificate within years.

by embedding-shape

7/5/2026 at 2:32:36 PM

There is also CoMaps (https://www.comaps.app/) which is a fork of Organic Maps, after concern over the governance of Organic Maps https://itsfoss.com/news/organic-maps-fork-comaps/

by Yacoby

7/5/2026 at 4:54:57 PM

Thank you! This is highly relavant. I wish OPs would put a bit more research into what they post

https://itsfoss.com/news/organic-maps-fork-comaps/

> Despite being advertised as a community-driven project, key decisions, including financial management, partnerships (with Kayak, for instance), and the inclusion of proprietary components in the code were made by a small group of shareholders, often without input from the broader contributor community.

by random3

7/5/2026 at 5:09:41 PM

> a small group of shareholders

This is sketchy. The entity at the bottom of the page is Organic Maps OÜ, which is an Estonian private limited company. Estonia has non-profits (MTÜs). The fact that this isn't organised as one makes it a commercial venture, except one that asks for donations.

by JumpCrisscross

7/5/2026 at 5:56:14 PM

Indeed and this is one of the key reasons we have started CoMaps. The main OM shareholder made it clear to us that interests of the company and the shareholders are at the forefront.

by pastk

7/5/2026 at 6:49:11 PM

And Organic Maps is itself a fork of Maps.me, started ...due to concern over the governance of Maps.me (introduction of commercial elements I think?).

This app has had quite a history.

by Doohickey-d

7/5/2026 at 7:05:02 PM

Maps.me was sold and the acquiring company moved to a new proprietary code base. The quality dropped considerably. That's what motivated the original Maps.me founders to start Organic Maps.

by cosmicriver

7/5/2026 at 3:46:54 PM

what are the concerns over governance of organics maps ?

by hirako2000

7/5/2026 at 4:15:49 PM

They tried to put ads into Organic Maps, and they only backed down because CoMaps sprung up in response.

Others in the thread highlighted other issues, like Organic Maps' proprietary license for some parts of the repo: https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/blob/master/DATA_....

by hellcow

7/5/2026 at 7:49:04 PM

Please no. This is why I left Maps.me, every time I opened maps.me I'd have to click through ads.

by sysworld

7/5/2026 at 4:13:11 PM

[flagged]

by meta_ai_x

7/5/2026 at 4:11:09 PM

Some parts of the server were closed source for a bit. No longer the case. Also people got upset that the developers used the product funding to pay for their personal expenses. The idea is folks want the developers to isolate all the money they make from this project and use it to only pay expenses directly related to this project. If they need to eat or something they should get a job, presumably.

https://www.comaps.app/news/2025-04-16/1/?ref=itsfoss.com

by physicalecon

7/5/2026 at 4:34:20 PM

> If they need to eat or something they should get a job, presumably.

The tone of this comment is quite different from the text of the open letter to which you refer. Specifically this section. I don't have any personal knowledge either way, but this stood out to me.

> As it was revealed by Roman @rtsisyk it wasn't unusual for the Shareholders to use project's donations as their own money e.g. Alexander @biodranik paid for his personal holiday trip expenses this way. At the same time all other contributors were consistently denied any access to any financial information (even to the totals of money donated/spent). (It's fine for developers to be reimbursed for their hard work, but it should be done in a fair, transparent and accountable way.)

by beart

7/5/2026 at 5:48:15 PM

[dead]

by physicalecon

7/5/2026 at 5:09:20 PM

Going on holiday is why I work. And I use organic maps when I’m on holiday. And donate. Good luck to them.

by cryo32

7/5/2026 at 5:11:03 PM

> And donate

How do you square this with Organic Maps being organised as a for-profit entity?

by JumpCrisscross

7/5/2026 at 5:20:26 PM

Same as when I donate money to Apple.

by cryo32

7/5/2026 at 7:19:47 PM

You donate money to Apple?

by yellowapple

7/5/2026 at 4:53:28 PM

> Some parts of the server were closed source for a bit. No longer the case.

In fact, nowadays there are many more closed parts in OM's map generator - many OM's bigger new features like hiking, cycling and bus routes depend on closed source improvements to the map generator. And some binary files required to build the app (e.g. packed_polygons.bin) are nowadays distributed under a custom non-FOSS data license. I.e. nowadays its basically impossible to fork OM as is with all its features - and the "right to fork" is a cornerstone of FOSS.

Also ref to: https://isitreallyfoss.com/projects/organic-maps/

by pastk

7/5/2026 at 5:51:21 PM

[dead]

by physicalecon

7/5/2026 at 7:56:38 PM

I think it's fair for people to be surprised when their donations to the project are used for personal expenses when that is not clearly spelled out. There's nothing wrong with crowdfunding what is effectively a salary for a F/OSS project, but it needs to be explicit when soliciting donations.

by int_19h

7/5/2026 at 3:38:21 PM

So sad. I imagine 99.9% of organic maps users will never know.

by b112

7/5/2026 at 3:44:37 PM

I was hoping for an offline open map with specifically tracking (My tracks from Google or now 3rd party) so I can log my adventures. bonus if I can save a printable thing for my wall or something...guess I know what this weekends project is.

by hypercube33

7/5/2026 at 3:49:25 PM

OSMAnd is similarly OSM-based, offline, and FOSS (available from F-Droid) and does tracking. It is not typically recommended in posts like these because its wealth of options is daunting to the general public, while Organic Maps and CoMaps are more streamlined.

by TFNA

7/5/2026 at 4:43:46 PM

Comaps can record tracks if that's what you need :-)

by jraph

7/5/2026 at 4:41:41 PM

I would recommend people use comaps instead which is the actual FOSS fork. OM has a long history of malicious behaviour like quietly adding ads, turning a part of its previously open sourced code proprietary and misappropriating donations. OM has lost most of its community a year ago to comaps and are now rushing vibe coded features to compensate.

by lone-cloud

7/5/2026 at 2:46:17 PM

Organic mentions Open Source, but I just saw that FDroid mentions the following: "This app contains non open source components - compiled binary data files (including but not limited to .mwm map files) under a non FLOSS license"

Anyone has context on the following not hidden over Git-* issues (I was left thoroughly confused trying to understand it)?

by lexlambda

7/5/2026 at 2:51:15 PM

OrganicMaps rolled their own 'data license' for the actual map files: https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/blob/master/DATA_...

Plus the code that's necessary to generate the map files that OM relies on is no longer openly published. So while true that the actual app code is open source, you can't use it without relying on their proprietary map files.

by gedankenstuecke

7/5/2026 at 3:34:26 PM

>Plus the code that's necessary to generate the map files that OM relies on is no longer openly published.

Seems like a big red flag. And another reason to migrate to CoMaps.

by mpawelski

7/5/2026 at 7:28:11 PM

In the old times, I bought a Nokia smartphone (5230) because it shipped with offline maps – Nokia had the license for satellite data before Google Maps existed. I also drive a VW with built-in GPS and map loaded from SD card.

Offline maps are an obligatory "survival" tool. Most people trust too much they'll have connectivity, but it'll be the first thing to go down when it's most needed (extreme weather, blackouts, conflicts, etc).

Thank you for the tip on the app!

by manoDev

7/5/2026 at 4:25:30 PM

Organic Maps and its fork Comaps still lack a Web client.

We're this on https://cartes.app, trying to push the Web further (even on mobile devices) so that you don't even need an app for most use cases.

by maelito

7/5/2026 at 4:46:36 PM

Would you consider using cache storage for enabling offline capabilities? Maybe I am in the minority but I usually go to organic maps for offline usage.

by scanny

7/5/2026 at 4:52:34 PM

Yes it's planned. Should work in theory, but no one tried before.

Maps are so often done as native apps that to my knowledge no one tried to just use the PWA capabilities to cache tiles on the Web. Of course what's hard is cache invalidation. Does the user want to update the tiles ? Never ? Daily, weekly ? Only some regions ? Or manually ?

Here's an issue about that : https://codeberg.org/cartes/web/issues/1078

It's in French, unfortunately Codeberg has no auto-translate capabilities yet.

by maelito

7/5/2026 at 5:47:46 PM

FWIW, I have an experimental open-source implementation of offline-capable PWA protomaps. Haven't advertised it much, because I haven't sorted out performance (particularly on mobile), and it's a bit buggy still. Also, don't have cache invalidation. But it does work. Usually. xD

app: https://maps.bpev.me

source: https://tangled.org/bpev.me/maps

Based on results from indexeddb pmtiles work:

https://github.com/jtbaker/pmtiles-offline

https://github.com/protomaps/PMTiles/issues/395

by bpev

7/5/2026 at 6:18:24 PM

Awesome, thanks for the links.

by maelito

7/5/2026 at 6:24:21 PM

Funny : there's another Ben that did his "Ben maps". https://benmaps.fr

by maelito

7/5/2026 at 6:34:30 PM

What can I say? Bens like maps I guess.

by bpev

7/5/2026 at 5:21:54 PM

StreetComplete is one of my favorite apps. It's like Pokemon Go mixed with Wikipedia because it gamifies contributing to OpenStreetMap, which powers (all?) mainstream opensource maps.

Looking forward to iOS support so more people can use it.

https://streetcomplete.app/

https://www.openstreetmap.org/

by Cider9986

7/5/2026 at 5:47:29 PM

For the more experience OSM contributors, there is also a fork called SCEE[1] that adds some extra "quests" and a ton of UI customisability!

[1]: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/SCEE

by Tmpod

7/5/2026 at 7:30:04 PM

I wonder if that one lets you add flock cameras. I can't find the option in Streetcomplete.

by Cider9986

7/5/2026 at 6:51:46 PM

This is a good way to get outside and do challenges like jogging every single street in your town. I figured that OSM was basically complete, but info was severely lacking for my area. It’s really easy to make local maps MUCH better.

by VariousPrograms

7/5/2026 at 7:23:33 PM

Yeah, especially accessibility-related data (especially especially crosswalk info) is apparently sorely lacking in OSM, given that every time I fire up StreetComplete in a new place the vast majority of the questions are things like “Do both ends of this crosswalk have tactile paving?” or “Does this crosswalk have an island?”.

by yellowapple

7/5/2026 at 8:01:20 PM

Indeed. I have been slowly but surely completing a11y info in my area for a while. It seems never ending, but it's a good excuse to go take some long walks outside. Hopefully the data is useful to someone in need too :)

by Tmpod

7/5/2026 at 5:53:58 PM

iOS has Every Door[1] and there’s also MapComplete[2] which works as a PWA.

[1]: https://every-door.app [2]: https://mapcomplete.org

by mbirth

7/5/2026 at 6:20:37 PM

Didn't know that, very helpful.

by Cider9986

7/5/2026 at 5:57:52 PM

> the same people, who created MapsWithMe/Maps.Me app

Ah, the same people who I bought Maps.Me from in 2012 - that when I went to use it recently now bombards me with "sale ending in 4 hours!" pro subscription ad popovers in order to restore functionality (more than 10 offline map areas) that existed at the time I bought the app? No thanks.

by AmblingAvocado

7/5/2026 at 6:51:13 PM

Maps.me got sold to a series of subsequent owners. It was those subsequent owners who enshittified the app, not the original developers mentioned in your quotation. The original developers only later returned to the codebase, because it was freely licensed, and forked it in a different direction.

by TFNA

7/5/2026 at 3:39:54 PM

There is also https://gitlab.com/tilelessmap/tilelessmap with some of the same focus areas.

> TilelessMap is an open, offline-first mapping engine designed for critical field use, such as forestry, emergency services, and humanitarian work. Built with C and optimized for mobile performance, TilelessMap enables full local map rendering without relying on cloud infrastructure — even in areas with poor or no internet connectivity.

They have an Android app with maps of Yellowstone, Sweden and Norway.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.tileless.m...

by mamaar

7/5/2026 at 5:00:41 PM

I am curious: is it called "tileless" because it uses tiles, but offline? Or does it somehow not use tiles?

by palata

7/5/2026 at 5:21:08 PM

There are no tiles. All geometry is loaded and rendered directly from an SQLite database on every render.

Geometry is stored as TWKB (Tiny Well-Known Binary) to reduce storage and transport size. During decoding, they do clever work using aggregate functions and reusing buffers across rows to reduce allocations.

There is real potential in the tech, but unfortunately little momentum behind it.

by mamaar

7/5/2026 at 5:34:36 PM

> There are no tiles. All geometry is loaded and rendered directly from an SQLite database on every render.

Which can be done with tiles. Or maybe I don't understand what you mean by "tiles"? What do you describe as "tiles"?

by palata

7/5/2026 at 5:56:23 PM

I would define a tile as a slice of geometries, not whole features.

The difference with Tileless' approach, is that they load whole features from the database and don't split them into tiles. So if a feature extends outside the current view, they would load the whole geometry rather than the intersection of the tile's extent and the geometry.

Vector tiles are optimized for concurrent downloads and browser / CDN caching and doing a good job of that.

by mamaar

7/5/2026 at 5:22:11 PM

IIRC it usually means it stores the vectors and draws it clientside.

by jasonjayr

7/5/2026 at 2:43:38 PM

I used comaps on a hike. It really is good at not draining your battery.

I've wanted to run it on my wear OS watch, but while you can sideload the APK, wearOS does not have a file browser, so it's not possible to import a planned route or similar. Has anyone here any idea for how to solve this?

by efrecon

7/5/2026 at 3:29:43 PM

I'm very pleased to see open source mapping/navigation systems. I have had the hypothesis for a while that many of the UI/UX designers on the google maps team do not actually drive a car.

by resters

7/5/2026 at 3:33:15 PM

People at Apple are not left-handed, they don't drive, they don't work out, and they don't seem to go out in the cold very much. Oh, and they definitely don't play video games.

by 01284a7e

7/5/2026 at 3:58:59 PM

IDK, my hypothesis is that they only go anywhere by car. The way they hide public transportation and pedestrian-only streets sucks.

by throw-the-towel

7/5/2026 at 2:39:38 PM

Is there a nautical map equivalent of osm or organic maps? One that emphasizes waterways by drawing them thicker when zoomed out like regular maps draw roads thicker? Plan routes over the water? Even google maps lacks a nautical layer.

by bruce343434

7/5/2026 at 7:51:41 PM

it depends what type of waterways you’re after. for the sea, https://map.openseamap.org/ is very good (but no route planning sadly - for that you’d need opencpn and some charts obtained. For inland waterways i can only speak for the English canals, for which i recommend https://opencanalmap.uk/ which uses data from both OSM and the Canal and River Trust. Again, sadly no route planning but for that I use https://canalplan.org.uk/

by s3krit

7/5/2026 at 3:01:54 PM

The OSS tool for nautical charts is OpenCPN.

by bmitch3020

7/5/2026 at 2:56:55 PM

OsmAnd has a nautical map plugin you can enable.

by shiandow

7/5/2026 at 4:00:23 PM

The plugin is just part of why OsmAnd is good for nautical use, there is also an alternate view in the configure map menu for nautical use.

by jboss10

7/5/2026 at 3:45:21 PM

For some reason osmAnd was the only GPS map that would work on a flight for me.

by RobotToaster

7/5/2026 at 7:30:58 PM

Related:

Organic Maps migrates to Forgejo due to GitHub account blocked by Microsoft - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43525395 - March 2025 (49 comments)

Organic Maps Turns 4: The Privacy-Focused Alternative to Google Maps - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42470155 - Dec 2024 (6 comments)

Organic Maps: Offline Hike, Bike, Trails and Navigation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42343654 - Dec 2024 (1 comment)

Maps.me co-founder tries to close down Organic Maps open-source fork - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42343121 - Dec 2024 (72 comments)

Google removed Organic Maps from the Play Store - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41272925 - Aug 2024 (224 comments)

Organic maps: Experimental feed based public transport mapping - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41152559 - Aug 2024 (35 comments)

Organic Maps is a free Android and iOS offline maps app for travelers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39582797 - March 2024 (24 comments)

In 2023 Organic Maps got its first million users - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38746187 - Dec 2023 (88 comments)

Organic Maps - 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 - June 2021 (116 comments)

Organicmaps: Android and iOS offline maps app for travelers, tourists, hikers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27543012 - June 2021 (113 comments)

by dang

7/5/2026 at 2:54:35 PM

Organic Maps a great app in many ways, but I still don't get how people can actually use it every day and say it replaces Google Maps when its search feature totally stinks. I know it's a hard problem, but this is the number one thing that needs to somehow be fixed. I can't tell if I'm just too dumb or if FOSS/degoogle fanboys are just pretending. I just know I've tried to use it exclusively many times and always had to give in to Google Maps because the search totally failed.

by ravenstine

7/5/2026 at 5:39:03 PM

This is more about OSM than Organic Maps, and I agree that looking for businesses it's not great. But looking for mapped features such as toilets, water taps, benches, fountains, etc. is far superior.

by ivanjermakov

7/5/2026 at 3:27:35 PM

I actually think the search feature rocks, because you have high fidelity OSM maps to query. Can't search for drinkable wells in Google Maps!

But then, it of course isn't Google Maps. It is likely to be more out of date and will not understand "natural" search queries as Google does. I believe it just takes some getting used to. There is overlap between the two, each service has its strengths and weaknesses, but also unique features.

by fuzzy2

7/5/2026 at 3:43:41 PM

+1 That, and it works in mountainous areas like the Alps or Pyrenees, where you're lucky to have GPS and most definitely can't rely on 4G for Google Maps

by pipo234

7/5/2026 at 4:22:22 PM

We the FOSS world just have 100 to 10000 less budget to implement this feature. It's a hard problem, and you can't ignore that lots of other features are missing. E.g. street view or place comments.

I'm working on https://cartes.app and we're well aware that search is not on par, far from it. But we have hundreds of other features and bugs to fix. https://codeberg.org/cartes/web

by maelito

7/5/2026 at 3:16:14 PM

I guess it depends on how you use Google Maps, but I mainly navigate to addresses, and Comaps works fine for that.

by InsideOutSanta

7/5/2026 at 3:00:29 PM

search greatly improved in the past couple years. try it again?

by mac3n

7/5/2026 at 6:47:06 PM

I tried to use it while biking but it's extremely confusing for bike trails (colors and parallel routes display, not highlighting real bike trails). I vastly prefer mapy.com in just showing a simple red dashed line for any official bike trail. The elevation is also displayed in 50m increments which is too little for bikes.

by storus

7/5/2026 at 7:31:17 PM

Love this app. Simple, useful, works offline, and doesn’t feel like it’s trying to track everything I do. Really appreciate that.

by paulreaney

7/5/2026 at 7:53:33 PM

The offline-first approach is underrated. Most mapping apps assume connectivity as a given — Organic Maps treating it as a luxury is the right call for global users.

by MoneyBurning

7/5/2026 at 4:40:46 PM

This is my regular hiking and cycling map, fantastic for offline use as well!

Edit: didn’t know about the ads / proprietary server issues. I guess this is the only sort of place to find out unless users are browsing the GitHub repo.

by scanny

7/5/2026 at 4:41:11 PM

How does this compare to AllTrails for discovery, tracking and accuracy?

by JumpCrisscross

7/5/2026 at 5:41:18 PM

I had bad experience tracking my bike ride with it on iOS - seems like app offloaded and didn't record half of the track. Strava and OutRun don't have this problem.

by ivanjermakov

7/5/2026 at 4:28:44 PM

For offline use I use pocket earth https://pocketearth.com/ I'm pleased with it, it's one of the best out there.

by pi-victor

7/5/2026 at 5:54:46 PM

I had my first hiking in a route without network connection one month ago, that was the first time I used the GPS without network by Organic Maps even I knew I could do it in the past. It showed me the possibility that some feature work well without network. It's a really good experience.

by informal007

7/5/2026 at 3:48:30 PM

I use OrganicMaps a lot for long walks and it's great. Works perfectly offline if you have downloaded the map of the region beforehand, which is helpful if you are in an area with poor reception or just want to conserve phone battery by turning off data. And being OSM, it is great for showing less prominent paths/trails and other useful info like drinking water sources, picnic benches etc. And supports importing GPX trails. So IMO it's way better than Google Maps for this use case.

It's also very easy to edit some basic data through the app so if you notice an error in the map it's usually possible to fix it right there and then.

by NoboruWataya

7/5/2026 at 4:33:03 PM

This is exciting!! I was not aware of organic maps until today. I use offline maps in google maps also. It's not fully private if it requires GPS connection though!! That's why I have been working on https://github.com/deepanwadhwa/anumaan for a while now. The focus is on navigating without internet and without GPS.

by dwa3592

7/5/2026 at 4:52:32 PM

> It's not fully private if it requires GPS connection though!!

How so? GPS is like FM radio: you send nothing, you only receive.

Apps like organic maps or comaps let you use the maps fully offline and you can compute itineraries without GPS when your need this (from point A to point B, with as many stops as you wish).

I strongly recommend you to seriously look into comaps or organic maps if you don't know them.

Now, "GPS isn't working or depletes my battery, what do I do?" is an interesting topic worth looking into. It seems you are trying to automate what we all do when GPS doesn't work well. I find that relatively easy in a city, not so much in a road on the countryside.

by jraph

7/5/2026 at 6:46:05 PM

With the important caveat though that a lot of devices use AGPS, I don’t understand in too much detail and I think on some devices it can be disabled but I think this reveals some info

by etdznots

7/5/2026 at 5:00:16 PM

They may be thinking of Google's coarse location feature where the handset checks SSIDs in the proximity against Googles database for fast lookup.

by wasting_time

7/5/2026 at 6:38:03 PM

Oh yeah, makes sense didn't think about this especially since I don't have the google services.

That's not really GPS anymore so when discussing the topic it would be worth being exact on this.

by jraph

7/5/2026 at 5:55:02 PM

This is correct but if the phone's internet is off, there is no way for BSSID look up but maps might collect this in the background for telemetry and send it to the server once the internet is turned back on.

by dwa3592

7/5/2026 at 5:48:47 PM

You are largely correct about everyday location privacy but I was thinking more in the adversarial direction (read military/ GPS denied zones) when I started this work. There have been news about GPS being denied/spoofed over european region. When your phone can't get the GPS signal, it would try to retrieve alternative signals (A-GPS, cellular network etc) - this is where an adversary could be listening for leaks. So GPS denial could effectively be a trigger and the follow ups after that trigger could lead to leaks.

by dwa3592

7/5/2026 at 5:36:18 PM

I just wished Organic Map had a better way to download many countries/regions at once.

I frequently use it in the airplane without WiFi and wish to have high definition, but downloading country by country is too cumbersome.

by KolmogorovComp

7/5/2026 at 4:45:04 PM

I'll repeat a question asked in an earlier thread on OM:

Do there exist apps that share their offline map data? As in: install app A, dowload offline map data for country xyz, use in app A, install app B, use same map data in app B (or C, D etc) without re-downloading the map data?

As I understood, that was not the case as each app uses its own format which is some underlying public geo info (presumably too big to have on device), filtered / processed in per-app fashion.

The sillyness & waste of this is obvious. So: any progress in resolving this situation?

by RetroTechie

7/5/2026 at 6:25:31 PM

This used to be a thing on Windows Phone, you could download maps in the settings and they would be available in the default Maps app, but also in HERE Maps, Transit, etc.

by hadrien01

7/5/2026 at 5:07:46 PM

> The sillyness & waste of this is obvious

Until you realise that there is not one true way to show a map, and that different apps may actually have different needs. Suddenly it becomes obvious that not all apps can use the same shared offline data.

by palata

7/5/2026 at 7:24:38 PM

There's no fundamental reason that underlying map data used by a good % of mapping apps, couldn't be stored 1x on-device, in some standard format and shared across apps.

Users could pick & choose what subset(s) of map data they want to store locally. Different apps could pick & choose what features to offer, how to use available data & how to render it.

Sad to see that such a conceptually simple problem hasn't been addressed yet. We're talking a good # of apps here, many millions of users, and enormous amounts of storage & bandwidth wasted.

Edit: I'm assuming that last bit is a problem for the app developers themselves, too.

by RetroTechie

7/5/2026 at 6:24:39 PM

To further back this up, just because OSM might be a map's data source, it doesn't mean they use the same rendered vectors or images for the tiles.

I make changes to OSM so they can be propagated to a cycling-specific mapping tool I use (it's a commercial tool with their own custom map layers) - it takes about 3-4 weeks from when a change is made on OSM for it to be incorporated into their data set.

So yeah, it's not as simple as "we all use OSM so we'll just share all our rendered mapping values".

by davidee

7/5/2026 at 5:43:22 PM

Storage constraints haven't been on developers' radar last 20 years.

by ivanjermakov

7/5/2026 at 3:33:36 PM

I remember over 15 years ago my wife and I were honeymooning in Europe (rom the US). While we had iOS devices that could use maps, the data services then were terrible, and GPS was effectively useless

We ended up taking screen shots of Google Maps where we zoomed in on local streets, on an ad hoc type atlas. I wish we had this app back then

by dxetech

7/5/2026 at 5:18:47 PM

I believe MapsWithMe (now Maps.me) was released about that time, but I personally didn't get an iOS device until 2013.

by cmdoptesc

7/5/2026 at 5:12:48 PM

At that time I think I was using CityMaps2Go. Not sure if it still exists though.

by palata

7/5/2026 at 2:58:16 PM

Migrated all of my pins to Organic Maps from Maps.me when it started to aggressively monetize. Smooth process. Been a happy user for years!

by gordonhart

7/5/2026 at 6:03:43 PM

I bought Maps.me Pro in 2012, used it while traveling then and was happy. Fired it back up for a similar trip this year and in spite of having paid for it already, I don't have Pro features and I get aggressive "Sale ending in 4 hours!" popovers every time I launch the app.

by AmblingAvocado

7/5/2026 at 5:11:33 PM

Is it feasible for something like this to have heatmaps?

Maybe the data could be shared/distributed via hypercore or similar.

I find heatmaps are my primary way of finding new mountain biking trails and routes.

by radec

7/5/2026 at 5:37:37 PM

Don't think anyone other than Strava and Komoot have sufficient user-generated trail database to be useful for your use-case.

by ivanjermakov

7/5/2026 at 6:48:47 PM

OSM has a heatmap feature. Users can contribute tracks and feed into it:

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Heat_maps

by stigi

7/5/2026 at 7:47:24 PM

Awesome! Thanks. I'll look into it.

Edit: hmmm I don't think I understand that wiki. Most of those are not the type of heatmap I was thinking of. I'll keep looking into it though.

by radec

7/5/2026 at 6:19:48 PM

That's possible. I use RideWithGPS, maybe a lot of people use it around here. Or maybe only two other people have ridden the route, it doesn't say, but it's still super useful for finding routes.

by radec

7/5/2026 at 3:46:47 PM

How is it different from OSMAnd?

by codingjoe

7/5/2026 at 3:51:32 PM

It's a fork from Maps.me, the streamlined map app popular with normies. I myself use and love OSMAnd, but in the travel communities I am active in, most people react badly to OSMAnd as something arcane and nerdy.

by TFNA

7/5/2026 at 6:30:21 PM

Arcane and nerdy is a good description of OSMAnd. That's why I love it and would never switch to anything else.

by fender256

7/5/2026 at 4:03:25 PM

Much better performance and much less cluttered UI, at the cost of having fewer features.

by xigoi

7/5/2026 at 3:53:49 PM

Better and easier to understand and use UX.

by frabcus

7/5/2026 at 3:26:41 PM

Always loved this. There are still parts of the UK where you’ll have no data offline navigation is great, and the walking paths are better than you can get elsewhere.

by thom

7/5/2026 at 5:57:05 PM

If there any chance for supporting AppImage for linux? Are there any plans for that?

by zgucci

7/5/2026 at 6:53:43 PM

There is a desktop client but it’s kind of immature it seems to me compared to the iOS and android frontends

by etdznots

7/5/2026 at 2:58:56 PM

Will this take down Big Maps?

by sgt

7/5/2026 at 3:07:50 PM

There are two things keeping me using "Big Map".

1. Address lookups. Many of the buildings in OSM have yet to get street addresses added, so navigating to an address is a bit hit or miss. This gets fixed with time as people update the maps and wouldn't be a show stopper.

2. Real time traffic and detour navigation. This is really needed when navigating around busy cities where a wreck on a major highway can result in significant delays. This needs a combination of an external service (separate from OSM) but also one that has enough adoption to have usable data.

by bmitch3020

7/5/2026 at 4:27:06 PM

1. This is largely country-dependent with some governments being quite adamant that address data should be in the public domain, and some governments doing the opposite and selling address databases to private companies for some quick cash, where private companies then sell address lookups for some absurd per-lookup price for the next few decades. Most of the world though is probably just not rich enough to compile, publish and accurately maintain a national address database.

OpenAddresses is perhaps the gold standard for open source address data compilation from government datasets. Note for the future that alltheplaces.xyz (project I contribute to) is looking like it may eventually perform the automatic address data download/extraction/compilation that OpenAddresses currently performs. This has the benefit that in backwards countries, alltheplaces.xyz also obtains some addresses through other means--such as advertised location of international restaurant chains. And quite often, being within +/- 100 address numbers on a road is good enough for navigation. Google Maps obviously crawls addresses from all over the Internet AND has quite a high tolerance for errors, hence will perhaps always seem more complete than OSM.

2. Some further ideas for open source mapping applications trying to determine real time traffic situations:

2a. Use GTFS/GTFS-RT feeds for bus networks to detect real time delays but also to compare planned bus route schedules for different times of the day (different traffic conditions) where buses share the road with the public. There's already a few maps out there that overlay nearby GTFS-RT feeds for the city of interest and usefully provide a visual indication of how well public transport vehicles are currently moving.

2b. alltheplaces.xyz extracts public traffic camera feeds which could be presented to users when they plan/commence a journey as an indication of what lies ahead on the route.

by dhx

7/5/2026 at 5:43:55 PM

While default osm data is great, I've been very impressed with the partnership/collective of Overture Maps data. It's osm + esri/tomtom + corporate processing/funding.

https://overturemaps.org/

While not updated as frequently, their releases have a pretty high quality and coverage.

by mwexler

7/5/2026 at 5:00:02 PM

Also current place names. You can sometimes find a business on OSM that has correct metadata, but in many areas the majority are missing or stale (like, closed 10+ years ago.) Solving this is an "interesting" problem to say the least when many businesses these days have nothing more than an Instagram/Whatsapp handle.

by sehugg

7/5/2026 at 3:12:53 PM

There's one more for me: reliable store hours.

by bronson

7/5/2026 at 4:42:11 PM

See alltheplaces.xyz for continuously updated straight-from-the-primary-source opening hours of chains of shops and restaurants, public facilities such as libraries, etc. This is probably as accurate as it gets AND you have the confidence of knowing exactly where the data came from (down to the URL) and when it was last checked.

Some OSM contributors go brand-by-brand/operator-by-operator in making sure OSM features have the most up-to-date opening hours added to them from matched ATP features. As such, OSM may be fairly accurate for chains too.

For a standalone shop or restaurant the opening hours situation is usually still better with Google Maps rather than OSM. There aren't enough OSM contributors who care enough to check and maintain opening hours for every shop, restaurant, fuel station, etc.

by dhx

7/5/2026 at 3:20:45 PM

Both this and addresses is something that's really easy to survey with StreetComplete.

Google has the benefit of having their own street-level imagery for house numbers and street names, Android devices for real-time traffic info, and the ability to simply scrape web pages for shop data including opening hours. but in places with a reasonable number of active mappers, OSM is so much richer and more up to date.

by ygra

7/5/2026 at 6:52:57 PM

IME there is no reliable source: Stores' (including restaurants') own websites are inaccurate enough that I need to call them if I need to be sure. Yelp, etc. are at least equally inaccurate.

I'm sure it annoys the stores that keep their website and Yelp etc. updated but there is no way to know who is reliable.

by mmooss

7/5/2026 at 3:24:49 PM

Yeah (2) is the killer feature especially in totalitarian shitholes (pretty much every country nowadays) full of money grab ops disguised as police checkpoints and cameras.

I wonder if we can build a decentralized version of such a reporting service.

by photios

7/5/2026 at 4:56:12 PM

How does Organic Maps differ from Maps.Me (which it also mentions), or PocketEarth mentiond in comments here? Or CoMaps for that matter?

I've had Maps.Me on my phone for some years; it's often not as accurate or polished as the commercial offerings (Google, Here Technologies), but it's pretty nice. What might make me switch?

by einpoklum

7/5/2026 at 5:11:08 PM

In terms of forks, I believe it was Maps.Me -> Organic Maps -> CoMaps.

So all forks of the same project. Maps.Me is not open source anymore (I think?), and CoMaps was started by a subset of the Organic Maps community that wasn't happy with the Organic Maps governance.

> What might make me switch?

Different reasons for different people, but OpenStreetMap is a great community project, for one. What I really like with those apps (I am now using CoMaps) is that they are open source, offline first and the UI is quite minimal and clean.

by palata

7/5/2026 at 5:41:13 PM

Organic Maps was founded by two of the Maps.Me authors (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_Maps#History).

With CoMaps I don't think, there are any original authors involved (?). In any case I prefer organic, the original. Donated and very grateful that this app works so well (except for search where I sometimes use another app).

by johnsea

7/5/2026 at 5:48:37 PM

I didn't say "founders", I said "community". The community is more than just the founders. If anything, the part of the community that left did it because of their disagreeing with the founders.

by palata

7/5/2026 at 7:51:35 PM

What was the nature of the disagreement?

by int_19h

7/5/2026 at 5:27:28 PM

> What might make me switch?

Google Maps will always have better POI data because they have a larger userbase and they've gamified adding POIs with the "Local Guides" badge.

The main reason to switch is to have an offline-first experience. Google Maps does not provide offline maps everywhere, e.g. South Korea. And if you've ever tried using the Google Maps app on a weak connection, it's frustrating because it still tries to download remote tiles instead of using the ones you've downloaded.

Lastly any contributions you make in OpenStreetMap will show up in Organic Maps / CoMaps for everyone.

Personally, I use Google Maps on a daily basis, but have Organic Maps and regions downloaded for travel and just switch between the two. It's good to have a reliable fallback.

by cmdoptesc

7/5/2026 at 5:07:05 PM

CoMaps is a fork/spin-off of Organic Maps, which in turn is a fork of Maps.ME

by thinkingemote

7/5/2026 at 5:06:56 PM

Is this support all countries? Specially Indian region

by cobra_69

7/5/2026 at 4:08:57 PM

is there any current benefit over comaps?

by throawayonthe

7/5/2026 at 4:22:53 PM

comaps is a fork of organic maps

by johanyc

7/5/2026 at 6:47:31 PM

correct

by throawayonthe

7/5/2026 at 6:53:18 PM

so helpful

by kannishk

7/5/2026 at 4:55:25 PM

Using CoMaps gave me the "Oh shit!" moment for the first time that the convergence of enough high quality open map data and a reasonably designed maps app to consume it was finally happening. It's crazy to think about how much thankless work it took to the point where we have something that is in many ways at parity and even exceeding in some dimensions the user-hating map software.

There is still a super long way to go until it suits everyone's needs, but the end + even further is starting to come into sight.

by mistercheph

7/5/2026 at 4:30:14 PM

I love organic maps

by roschdal

7/5/2026 at 3:42:49 PM

This belongs to a class of thing I've been predicting for a while: as non-volatile storage (not RAM but flash etc.) gets cheaper and cheaper, offline snapshots of quantities of information that used to require an Internet connection to practically access become possible.

Example: a modern mid-high end phone can contain this, a complete copy of Wikipedia, and a small LLM capable of understanding natural language queries and using tools. All on board, no connection needed.

Plus it an also carry most peoples' complete music and book collections and a meaningful chunk of most peoples' movie collections.

A mid-high end laptop can carry all of it and then some. Laptop and desktop storage is gigantic by previous generation standards. Mine is a higher end laptop but has 8TB storage. 512GB to 1TB is mainstream.

by api

7/5/2026 at 4:55:39 PM

This sounds like an optimistic comment from a decade ago. Cost of storage has gone up recently, as a glance at data-hoarder fora will show. Phones have less storage capacity nowadays inasmuch as many manufacturers are removing SD card slots. The idea is that normies keep stuff in the cloud; self-storage of very large amounts of data is an edge case.

In my country, the typical laptop purcase from a retail chain is still 512GB or so, and moreover, few and fewer people own a laptop since it is becoming normal for a smartphone to be one's only computing device outside the workplace (even uni students are foregoing "real computers" now). Anything more than such a basic laptop is a premium product, and premium products cost premium prices.

by TFNA

7/5/2026 at 5:32:33 PM

Offline-first used to be the norm before everything started requiring an internet connection for some reason. I was using OSM data offline 15 years ago on smartphones.

The reason it moved to the internet was not that it wasn't possible to stay offline-first. If the app depends on your server, then the owner can monetise that (e.g. with subscriptions) or track the users. It is more interesting for companies than allowing the users to buy a snapshot of the maps once and never come back.

Offline-first nowadays comes from open source projects, not from companies.

by palata

7/5/2026 at 3:46:06 PM

Tried it for while, works with GrapheneOS and Android Auto well enough.

What I absolutely can’t stand is the routing. It once tried to send me through residential Oakland on some Manhattan-grade staircase labyrinth instead of just taking normal streets.

by snerbles

7/5/2026 at 8:01:10 PM

One of the routing options in CoMaps is "avoid stairs". Not enabled by default. See ≡ → Settings → Routing Options.

(CoMaps is the open-source, non-profit community fork of Organic Maps.)

by doug-moen

7/5/2026 at 7:32:15 PM

Honestly I've seen google maps suggest some absurd routes, especially to avoid 1 minute of traffic on the motorway.

Always best to double check the routing suggestion.

by Flere-Imsaho

7/5/2026 at 3:34:22 PM

[flagged]

by kotberg

7/5/2026 at 3:51:11 PM

> Btw they (respectively, only one guy, Konstantin!) copy code / changesets from Organic Maps, while this is not happening the other way around.

Is anyone breaking any licence here? If not, then I don't understand this complaint.

by celsoazevedo

7/5/2026 at 3:38:17 PM

>Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

>Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

>When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

That comment is against the guidelines. You should make a new comment that avoids breaking the guidelines if you want people to see your criticism.

by Cider9986

7/5/2026 at 2:23:40 PM

amazing

by arnab777

7/5/2026 at 3:36:04 PM

This is amazing

by aaronrobinson