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Comment by lukeqsee | Hacker News Reader

Maps.me is what finally has allowed me to mostly switch with offline maps, good routing, and support for all modes of transit I use consistently.

https://maps.me/

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OSMand+~ is a much faster smartphone client, that cares about your privacy and doesn't spam you with ads.

You can find it on osmand.net, the F-Droid repository and the Play/ios store.

There is an ad-free version of Maps.me. It is on F-Droid under the name of simply "Maps". I would recommend it to ordinary users who might be daunted by OSMAnd's somewhat arcane interface.

I find the interface to be really powerful once I got accustomed it, took some time though. I use it for hiking, motorcycling, measuring distance, searching places and public transport, etc. Its easily one of my most used apps on my mobile

It's very powerful, but, as a result, very stuffed and overwhelming. It's a significant barrier to entry. I've seen it several times.

There is definitely a place for a much simpler app, that focuses on the most important features and ease of entry.

I agree, i also saw it happen even with technically minded persons - but I really hope they don't take away that powerful interface from me. I find it invaluable since I got the hang of it.

I actually switched to Maps.me (F-Droid's "Maps", technically) for most uses because OsmAnd's renderer is a lot slower, what did you mean by "much faster"?

I do use OSMand a lot for my bicycle tours. I download the map for the area and keep the phone offline so nobody bothers me and the battery lasts longer. However when planning the itinerary I keep looking at the satellite view of Google Maps because I want to get an idea of the terrain and of what the streets and intersections really look like. Then I place markers on OSMand and use them when I'm cycling. Using OSM and nothing else would give me many surprises on the road.

Unfortunately it looks like they may share your data with third parties, which includes their parent company, mail.ru. I personally don’t trust them.

Oh wow, I wasn’t aware of this. I will definitely be re-evaluating them…

I switched from maps.me to osmand recently after I found out about the 20 tracker dependencies on the Exodus Privacy app. osmand has zero trackers and so many cool features that I use. Love it :)

There's a version that removes "ads and binaries" on F-Droid: Maps (Offline OpenStreetMap maps) - https://f-droid.org/app/com.github.axet.maps

There's an open source version of Maps.me with no tracking on Fdroid for those on Android. It's called "Maps" https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.axet.maps/

Since there seems to be some skepticism about them, I want to recommend this app, that my partner uses and likes, and that claims to be based on maps.me while having removed all advertising and binaries.

https://f-droid.org/de/packages/com.github.axet.maps/

If I look for bus stations, select United States of America as country (would have been nice if it geo-located my IP address here) and try to pick the 'locality', for 'San Jose' it offers only "San Jose/Northern Marina Islands", "village Hacienda San Jose (Puerto Rico)" and "village San Jose (Illinois)". Wonder why people think the Internet centers around the SF Bay Area ...

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