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Comment by devit | Hacker News Reader

How does this compare to Osmand?

The search engine is much better. You can do google-like searches, just type what you're looking for, and select the best match from the results list. In Osmand and all other open source apps, you have to first type the country and region where you think your target is located.

Also, it's very easy to start downloading an offline map for any region - just zoom in on a new area, and it provides the link for that region. Right now it's free, unlimited and it works all over the world (though of course that can change in the future). I haven't figured out how to do the same thing in Osmand, and it says the free version is limited to 10 maps.

You can use the version from f-droid.

Does it have easy direct download of maps from within the app?

The official Osmand can sideload any number of maps too, the limit is only for direct downloads; but common users won't know how to get their own maps without support from the app.

It's the full version.

Thanks, I'll give it a try for myself. In Maps.me I miss the capability to take OSM notes from within the app.

Just download directly from https://download.osmand.net/rawindexes/

Thanks, but that's not something I can recommend to my family and friends :-)

I could do it for them myself, but then they wouldn't be able to recommend the tool to their friends in turn - which is my litmus test for any open source software intended for end users.

It just costs one single meal to buy the pro version and you support the future free, open source and ad-free development development.

Then tell them to pay the $6 to support development. I think the osmand model (lite/demo with 10 map downloads, paid version with unlimited, open-source with full features for free but you have to know where to get it and how to install) is fair.

This has a simpler an cleaner user interface, but Osmand has many more features.

I haven't tried maps.me yet, but that sounds like two plusses. Osmand has too many features.

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