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Organic Maps is the best open source Maps App I've ever tried

It’s essentially an open source fork of maps.me by the original creators.

I’ve been using OSMAnd for years, but it always felt laggy and not that reliable. Searching was slow and so on. Many street or things it didn’t instantly find.

In the Graphene App Store I jnust discovered Accrescent (another app store thing but only with like 10 apps - they’re all gold though, god damn)

An in there I found organic maps. And this shit is google maps level responsive. If you’re on the lookout for a google maps replacement - consider trying this.

Byeeee

fraksken ,

Idk … In their description on f-droid they crossed out “no pesticides” and wrote “purely organic” … It implies they are using organic pesticides. Not sure if that’s something for me tbh.

Edit: screenshot added

https://infosec.pub/pictrs/image/dfe0a9d7-2e69-48a0-a0bf-c0163dc68525.jpeg

gamermanh ,
@gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Caffeine and nicotine are legit organic insecticides, that might be a deeper joke about coffee and cigarettes powering development

fraksken ,

Great point of view

istanbullu ,

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke

fraksken ,

Exactly …

kokesh ,
@kokesh@lemmy.world avatar

It is great. But too bad for me - I live 40km away from the nearest town, in the forest of northern Sweden. So the coverage here is quite not so good. Practically all I see is the main road.

Dave ,
@Dave@lemmy.nz avatar

It’s open street map data. If there isn’t mapping info for your area, you can fix that.

cows_are_underrated ,

You can actually contribute to it. There areso.me great mobile apps for this. I recommend Vespucci for in detail changes(creating new structures or editing their properties) and Street Complete for filling missing information.

Suoko ,
@Suoko@feddit.it avatar

In Berlin it was missing some public transportations like tram

a_new_sad_me ,

Specifically for Prague (ha! I’m here now) mapy is insanely good

possiblylinux127 ,

It is pretty solid. It lacks some advanced features such as routing around preset areas but that’s a minor complaint.

Aldo it is only as good as OSM. Get to work on the map.

JustEnoughDucks ,
@JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl avatar

Also the search doesn’t work, so there is that…

Also using it in android auto is a pain and every action takes between 10x and 100x longer than on the phone.

But yeah it is pretty good and I try to contribute to it when I can. I don’t know how to contribute to bad instruction translations though. It just says “verlaat” on an exit in dutch which grammatically makes no sense.

possiblylinux127 ,

You should open an issue

JohnOliver ,

I noticed that it only downloads local maps initially. You can download more maps and expand the area that it searches in. Maybe this is why you are having issues with searches? I assume that if you search for a place in a map that it hasn’t downloaded it may have trouble finding it.

JustEnoughDucks ,
@JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl avatar

Nope. I type in SPAR and it gives me a bunch of random results 150km away.

I type in Grocery and it gives me SPAR 1.5km away.

I need to type in the exact address for it to find a place, with no errors. Otherwise I can type a category name and hope that it finds it and that I guessed right, that also works.

If you type in a partial name (I.e. not the full legal name including company abbreviations) of a store it will break itself and show you completely random unrelated results from a random place in the country.

I took a bunch of screenshots a while back as proof.

It is fundamentally broken, and it is widely reported IIRC, but I don’t know if there are any issues open about it.

randomaccount43543 ,

You should open an issue with detailed examples including location so they can fix it

lolcatnip ,

Does it do navigation with routes based on current traffic conditions? Because that’s table stakes to me.

RubberElectrons ,
@RubberElectrons@lemmy.world avatar

No, unfortunately. But maybe soon. I lean on here maps if I need that.

miridius ,

Oh :( pretty useless for driving then

RubberElectrons ,
@RubberElectrons@lemmy.world avatar

It’ll at least give you good directions, car/bicycle/walking-optimized based on what you select.

It’ll get there, just needs time.

miridius ,

I mean great if it gets there but in the meantime I’m not going to recommend it to anyone as a google maps replacement. It does look like a good maps.me replacement for hiking though!

RubberElectrons ,
@RubberElectrons@lemmy.world avatar

I wouldn’t have said it was a replacement just yet to non -open source centric folks, personally.

More attention isn’t a bad thing though, sometimes devs need more input to decide what to focus on next.

BlossomingAsp ,

I just started using it, and I would say it’s even snappier then G Maps. I was pretty skeptical at first, and it does have a few things I miss, like public transport live updates, but I can use the app of the local provider for that and in my experience G Maps can be quute inaccurate anyway. No way I’m going back now. You need some space to preload the maps though.

hummingbird ,

Organic Maps is my goto solution for car navigation because it is very quick, responsive and does not require an high end phone. It just works. However for anything more advanced than that (e.g. live location sharing or recording, planning a hiking trip, navigating mountain bike trails, contributing to OpenStreemMap), OSMAnd is still without contender.

RubberElectrons ,
@RubberElectrons@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve used organic for several hikes. What was missing?

hummingbird ,

Here a a few things that I miss from OsmAnd:

  • adding more than a handful of routing points is tedious
  • you cannot plan partially or fully independent from existing roads
  • no way to save and restore a planned trip
  • no overlays for hill shading or incline visualization. Very useful for assessing the effort of a route.
  • no public transport support. Very useful for planning a trip with transitions.
  • no rain radar
  • satellite view
SeekPie ,

For me, it’s even better than GMaps, because it lets me navigate on bike paths, which GMaps couldn’t.

plactagonic ,

It is nice app but the problem is it doesn’t show Czech hiking and cycling routes by default. I didn’t figured out how to enable them.

imPastaSyndrome ,

Wow that genuinely looks unbelievable!

It’s like an old mall or whatever map except without you are here and movable!

possiblylinux127 ,

What until you discover OSM (that’s what Organic maps uses)

gedaliyah ,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

It’s my go to! Also check out the !open_street_maps community

Edit: sorry, it looks like the more active community is !openstreetmap but I guess you can join both lol!

Tempo ,
@Tempo@hexbear.net avatar

Shame it doesn’t do street numbers (possibly an OSM limitation?). Other than that, solid.

RootBeerGuy ,
@RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Depends what you mean with “doesn’t do”. I haven’t used Organic maps that much yet, but OSMand can handle street numbers. So Organic maps should too.

However it handles them very poorly, you have to type the address in a certain way or it won’t recognise the number in it. Sharing from another app works pretty well most of the time though.

unknowing8343 ,

Many street numbers do not exist in OpenStreetMap because no one created them! So if you know about some area with this issue, help edit the map!

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

Lots of places have street numbers (I can see them on the map) but for some reason don’t come up in search.

I use Magic Earth because, for some reason, it doesn’t have this problem.

I also use GMaps WV to get the address from Google and then just share it to another app.

Wiz ,

StreetComplete tasks got my neighborhood to be the best-mapped little village I’ve ever seen! 😎

Since I’m walking around for exercise anyway, I’ve got most of the addresses, and now I’m working on the fire hydrants.

newerAccountWhoDis ,

fidel-salute

possiblylinux127 ,

You need to go around with street complete and add numbers. It takes time but it is fun and good exercise.

nudnyekscentryk ,
@nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info avatar

For driving I recommend Magic Earth, it’s based on OSM data but uses proprietary traffic information as well

smokinliver ,

Yeah, you can see that organic maps is sadly not there yet in terms of driving-interface, but hopefully its getting there soon.

Afaik the app is far younger than magic earth and for what it is its super good. I’m so stoked to see how organic maps is gonna develop in the coming years

ijeff ,
@ijeff@lemdro.id avatar

Interesting. Do you happen to know where it gets its traffic data from? I haven’t yet personally found anything nearly as useful as Waze.

infeeeee ,

They collect location of their users but anonimize every data on device, they can’t track anyone personally. They also sell their SDK to businesses and collect data from there as well.

eco_game , (edited )

From reading the Magic Earth FAQ, I believe the user data actually isn’t used for traffic at all (at least the manually reported events certainly aren’t).

Edit: never mind I missed a later part in the FAQ:

Do you share data with third parties?

We send position data to our traffic provider to generate real-time traffic information. The data is anonymized on the phone, using a changing key (so it’s not linked to you), and it is deleted after 5 minutes.

timestatic ,

But I don’t think Magic Earth is that widely used. How precise is it really?

infeeeee ,

I use it frequently, and it’s mostly right. It can tell traffic jams really precisely (it says something like “you will have to stop in 300m” and the traffic jam is actually starts at ∓10m from that point)

But it tries to navigate me through fully closed roads. I don’t know why is that. The kind of closed road it misses is regularly closed, but at irregular intervals (like most weekends on the summer, but not always, if there is some happening it is also closed on weekdays, etc). These kind of irregular things shouldn’t be mapped in OpenStreetMap (As documented in the wiki) I have a feeling that they think that it should be mapped, but I won’t map it.

I guess it also depends on where you live, so just try it first.

timestatic ,

Honestly, when a road is closed for a weekend at irregular intervals without a schedule in advance its not reasonable to map it. I contribute to OSM from time to time and thought about it as well but the general consensus is to map regular closures or road closures that go on for like more than a month. OSM is a general purpose map and not for mapping road closures as current data will be used long after now on offline navigation gps devices. We would probably need an open street closure map that aggregates all the databases for road closures and interact with osm. For the major ones I know I’ve just been blocking what I know locally to not route through it, as I can’t be bothered in starting a project like that

RogueBanana ,

Given they are working with third party for traffic data, it should be theoretically possible for them to exploit ad network or work with google for mobile locations.

istanbullu ,

My experience with Waze was inferior to Organic Maps.

ijeff ,
@ijeff@lemdro.id avatar

Interesting. How so?

CubitOom ,

I second magic earth for driving. The only reason I haven’t entirely removed Google maps from my phone yet is because magic earth doesn’t have data on business hours. This is the last killer feature I’m waiting for.

In the meantime I’m routing for any open source map that can do live traffic and business info.

skuzz ,

Could just use yelp or a browser for business hours.

timestatic ,

Honestly, I uses organic maps and if its not mapped I just go on the business website. Fuck google, thats why!

RogueBanana ,

I use gmap wv for that. It’s just the web view of google maps but works better than Firefox and easier to pull up when osm fails. Navigation obviously doesn’t work but should satisfy your use case.

possiblylinux127 ,

Proprietary software that collects my data, no thanks. It was fine when there weren’t any alternatives but that isn’t the case anymore.

JackGreenEarth ,

How will they get traffic data if they don’t get the data of their users? I understand being privacy conscious, but some data collection can actually make sense.

possiblylinux127 ,

They don’t

I don’t want my location tracked all the time always

winkerjadams ,

Do you carry a cell phone at all?

possiblylinux127 ,

I use Organic maps which runs local

machinaeZER0 ,

Will check this out, thanks for the recommendation!

cows_are_underrated ,

If we don’t need traffic Information Organic maps is fine too. It now even says where you have to turn which is a major improvement.

Scrollone ,

It now even says where you have to turn

Only if the map has road lanes defined. That means: everybody join OpenStreetMap and map your local area! :)

cows_are_underrated ,

Didnt knew that. Good that I regularly try to add more data to OSM.

Scrollone ,

If you use Android, there’s a fun app called StreetComplete that helps you adding details to your neighbourhood

x00z ,
@x00z@lemmy.world avatar

Does it have temporary speed traps and trajectory based traps?

I often drive in the middle of the night and speedlimits make me fall asleep.

we_avoid_temptation ,

That is an impressive grade of bullshit.

How well has that particular excuse worked with law enforcement in the past?

x00z ,
@x00z@lemmy.world avatar

What? I’m asking a question. I don’t need your opinion.

Caboose12000 ,

is it on fdroid or do I need to go to github

Salix ,

Magic Earth is not an open source app. They haven’t released any source code. Mentioning it as the OP title is about open source maps app.

www.magicearth.com/faq-en/

Will Magic Earth be Open Source?

No; since it is also used commercially (we have a paid Magic Earth SDK for business partners), we cannot make the code public.

That being said, I love using Magic Earth for driving. It works quite well as long as your area is up-to-date on OSM

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