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Comment by fab1an | Hacker News Reader

Too bad, maps.me was by far the best maps application for non city use, and ideal for hiking. Commendable initiative to bring it back in its original version!

A few examples of why it was so great:

Simple, non social bookmarks. As in: place a bookmark so you don't get lost while hiking, or when you find a nice spot you want to come back to later. Yep, a utility feature that doesn't somehow map to some stoopid business OKR in advertising. I am sure this is possible with Google maps or Apple maps somehow, but only after you've created an account, logged in, and made sure you have the equivalent of a South Korean inner city internet connection.

Also, easily downloadable maps that just stay on your phone. I am hiking, I don't have internet and need the map on my phone. I know Google Maps allows you to do that but it is tedious unlike maps.me, which is instant.

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For hiking, check out https://en.mapy.cz/turisticka. While it focuses on central Europe, it regularly imports OSM data worldwide and I found the coverage pretty good.

They also have a mobile app with downloadable maps. Look for Mapy.cz.

I used it throughout whole Europe, and found it superior to even local apps (map content) and OSMAnd (map rendering).

can you contribute to OSM like with maps.me ?

AFAIK to a degree.

Sadly, no. Though there are some other ways to do this (OSM Go!, StreetComplete, Vespucci)

OSMAnd allows some limited amount of contributing to OSM. But it is not a replacement for Vespucci (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Vespucci).

There is no better app like maps.me with there usability for me

I also used it,and I liked it.

I can second this recommendation. Mapy.cz is especially awesome for me as I live in the Czech Republic. It has more updated satellite imagery for the CZ than Google, and shows all the hiking trails quite nicely. And the download function works pretty painlessly.

Words can't describe how much I love Mapy.cz (a Czech person here).

I wonder if there are other high-profile cases of a national map provider successfully competing with Google or Apple maps.

As a non-Czech but close to the border living German I can also recommend this app, my current favourite on iOS.

Ahoj!

I've always wondered, why is there such a massive difference in popularity of this app in and outside of Czechia? Do you think it's mainly - lack of focus on non-Czech user experience (poor translations, map layer looking worse, ...), lack of marketing, something else?

I guess it's a combination, the lack of marketing for sure. Perhaps it's also the algorithms fault, if only a few people (considered from a worldwide view) download it, it's not shown to others looking for map apps (it's a very crowded space app wise). Czechs are very outdoorsy people, they recommend this app to each other and so it's very popular there, but unfortunately the language barrier makes it harder spreading over borders. But these are all just wild guesses, who knows? Most people here in Germany use Komoot which gives away their maps for free on a regular basis, perhaps that's better marketing than "everything is free already"... :)

1. Mapy.cz is not marketed outside of Czechoslovakia.

2. It has its own (high quality) map data only for Czechoslovakia, outside it uses "just" OSM, although you'll get arguably superior rendering there.

Czechoslovakia is not a country and hasn’t been for 28 years.

Mapy.cz uses OSM data worldwide except Czechia, where they have their own dataset.

The international version of this is Windy Maps - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.seznam.wind.... I highly recommend it - excellent for outdoors / hiking, tracking route etc. Also has a very polished UI.

Great tip, thanks. This is also available for IOS and am planning to use it soon.

I'm also going to start using this app

with the downside of them being different services, thus you can't have the same account (saved places / routes) on both the web version and the mobile app. Am I wrong?

You can if you use the "mapy.cz" version of the mobile app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.seznam.mapy

I have no idea what the point of the "international" version is, as this one has English translation as well.

That's surprisingly good in Minneapolis, presumably all from the OSM data. Even does good bike directions.

Can't find it on F-droid, perhaps under a different name?

Maps (Offline OpenStreetMap maps) - https://f-droid.org/packages/com.github.axet.maps

Source is hosted here:

https://gitlab.com/axet/omim/tree/HEAD

Thanks, but thats maps.me, not mapy.cz, right?

Mapy.cz is not free software.

Norway-specific, but https://norgeskart.no/ is insanely detailed for hiking, skiing, etc.

my friend was in Oslo. And he used only maps.me because the app is really reliable for a lot functions everywhere

The iOS app looks great. Thanks for the tip. It even has 3D visualisations of topography with satellite imagery.

Had tried to find similar apps for hiking recently and ended up with free versions of paid apps that were deliberately crippled, this looks perfect for what I need. Shame it’s not easier to find in App Store.

It even has a feature to find a trail looping a fixed distance from a point - I haven’t seen this on other apps and it’s really fast.

It's a questions to our habbits but i'd like maps.me

I have been using it for a long time, while the update did not affect me in anyway

Exactly!I don't know how to live without maps.me.So many times, the app has helped me

OsmAnd fits description perfectly, you can place bookmarks, no account required, maps from OSM, offline maps which can be used even without internet connection.

Yeah. I have used maps.me in the past, but osmand is much better. It's one of the few apps I subscribe to (I get more frequent map updates).

after osmand i wanted to use maps.me and understand that this pr. is really know what client wants

> OsmAnd fits description perfectly, you can place bookmarks, no account required, maps from OSM, offline maps which can be used even without internet connection.

I love OsmAnd and have paid for the premium version. It's great for hiking or in cities when you can't guarantee an internet connection.

Yeah, I would have pointed out OsmAnd too, but you were faster :) I'm not a subscriber yet as the features of the free version are enough for me, but someday my conscience will probably guilt me into supporting them anyway...

FYI They currently have a sub deal for like 8$/year!

The full version is also available on F-Droid for free.

OsmAndroid sucked so badly with its seemingly hours of loading time. Search queries never worked well unless you entered exactly the string, including case and sometime whitespace. It would sometimes not find anything, unless I entered a useless whitespace after my words. In comparison to maps.me it is really really bad user experience and not to be recommended on any old phone. Your old phone will just laaaag and you will curse the search function.

> Search queries never worked well unless you entered exactly the string, including case and sometime whitespace.

This. OsmAnd is packed with advanced feautures but search is unusable which is unfortunate because that's how I'd usually use a map.

For search I use the side app Acastus Photon which works well. It's just a search to position app that then can open the position in osmand.

I always thought that was just OSM data being incomplete. I guess I'll need to try Maps again.

It used to be the case, and I also avoided using OsmAnd in cities for years, but my recent attempt was far more successful. I think they finally fixed their search, at least I didn't encounter any issues with it lately. It's still definitely worse than most apps for hotels, stores, restaurants and so on, but is much less laggy anymore, and is indispensable for biking and pedestrian navigation as it shows every little OSM detail, unlike most other apps that focus on businesses.

Thanks for that updated picture. Next time I need an app like that, I will give it a second chance.

OsmAnd is great and it's what I have on my phone, however it has a very un-intuitive UI and I often have to search for what feels ages to find a particular functionality.

It might be because I don't need a map often or maybe I'm just an idiot :)

it has a very rich (or maybe feature laden) UI, that's certainly right. For questions and in case you happen to have a Telegram account, you can join Osmand's telegram channel with developers present!

https://t.me/OsmAndMaps

Same thing for me, I love OsmAnd and I paid to support it, but I'm frequently completely lost in the UI. I have used it for years and still I often need to kill it to be able to leave the menu.

I think the main issue is that the app is not intuitive, so you have to sit down and take the time to memorize how to do stuff with it before you need to do it live on the road. And I've never done that, my bad, I really should take the time.

I use Guru Maps for that. It's neat & fast...

I don't use anything other than maps.me

I actually can't understand, what's happening. In Poland Its still work great

In maps also have this functions so that I dont see arguments to change it

As recommended by others, mapy.cz is an excellent app/offline renderer of OSM data. Don't be afraid of czech website, the app and map data are international.

Download links for app are here: https://en.mapy.cz/zakladni?x=15.5833000&y=49.4000000&z=11&m...

Even for city use it was great. I've used it plenty of times when traveling to new places, because quite often I wouldn't know if I would be able to get data on my phone. So it was great being able to download maps up front.

Apple Maps has an option to bookmark any arbitrary point and create collections without creating an account or doing any sort of sharing.

the iphone is your account.

Check out pocket earth, the UI is a bit clumsy but it’s clearly a labour of love by the author and has served me well in such scenarios..

I second Pocket Earth.

Pocket earth with the contour maps has been my go to offline hiking map for the last 5 years - not many other openstreetmap systems have that countour data. I think it uses the https://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/ dataset, which is great, but I did get caught out once by voids in shuttle data meaning there was a 1000m deep hole in the mountain map that wasn’t there!

I've been using Pocket Earth for a long time and love the way to measure the distance between two points, but the interface is atrocious.

Wow thank you. That is quite feature complete. It is just the ugliest map that I have ever seen. And there seems to be no way of changing the map theme. Will still try it as my default for now. Thanks!

it's too early to say that the program failed

MapOut is a superb alternative for iOS. Intuitive interface and lovely cartography.

Thank you for the recommendation, looks amazing, instantly bought.

MapOut is great. Does one thing but does it very well, without distractions. Has contours (and a 3D presentation) unlike some OSM-based apps. Works well offline. No subscription nonsense, just a few dollars up front.

Most of the hiking maps are simply not even on Google maps. Only in OSM

Not only hiking! Traveling to Ecuador last year was a real eye-opener. For some reason, the maps on our navigation device (TomTom) were badly out of date and incomplete (despite of course downloading the latest update before travelling), fortunately I also had OsmAnd on my phone, it saved us from getting lost multiple times...

It depends a lot where you go. In places like Nepal OSM is often better than any map you can buy. In the Europe and especially the US, it's not as detailed as the national maps. They usually also have much better contours (drawn from aerial photos not from the space shuttle).

But still much better than Google maps, which seems very much for cars (at least outside of cities).

Most of the aerial imagery used in Europe for improving OSM is shot from planes, not from space.

> Most of the aerial imagery used in Europe for improving OSM is shot from planes

Yes I know, and not just Europe. But my comment there was specifically about contours, i.e. height data from SRTM. I'm not aware of any project to crowd-source stereo-pair contour drawing, but if you know of one, I'd be interested to have a link.

I used for travelling or bussines only in maps.me

For this use case, let me recommend http://gaiagps.com/

You do need a subscription for offline maps...but you get very good map layers for outdoor use (some based on OSM data, some based on "official" sources like USGS or Ordnance Survey), you can create routes and tracks, set waypoints etc.

Second Gaia for outdoor activities. Map layers you won't find anywhere else; some that I use frequently are cell coverage, snow depth, many different aerial layers options, public / private land. They incorporate many region / country specific topo and aerial layers too. Their website is also great for trip planning, and the data you create there syncs with the app. Well worth the $40 annual subscription for me.

Or use a real map, and don't risk running out of batteries.

While I love paper maps (especially for hiking), digital maps are more convenient in cities. Also, I'm running out of pockets.

I'll pretty much always carry a paper map when hiking (and a compass) so I'm not dependent on batteries. But otherwise I'm pretty much OK with depending on digital--so long as I have the maps downloaded locally.

We live in 2020, of course using digital maps are more useful and comfortable

Paper maps are pretty heavy downgrade in a lot of places compared to something that have satellite + osm + topographic map. They are often outdated or not nearly as detailed.

You need to buy one for every place and some don't have the level of details you’d get with a digital map. Also, they’re quickly outdated.

I did a hike a few years ago with nothing but a drawn map and a compass - it's a very enjoyable experience indeed.

I highly recommend the map material and renderthemes from openandromaps.(https://www.openandromaps.org/en)

They are great for cycling and hiking. Setup is a bit more involved compared to maps.me, because you need a separate maps viewer app. Overall nothing too complicated for a somewhat tech savvy audience though.

My mapping app of choice is locus maps. There are alternatives such as OruxMaps available too.

I always found maps.me to me much easier than osmand to start navigation by using the "to here" and "from here" buttons, but osmand is still better than nothing at least.

the thing I love about offline maps is that there is no nagging to update the map like there is with google. I also don't think that google downloads everything so you still need an internet connection if you want to search for some things

> Too bad, maps.me was by far the best maps application for non city use

Was it? The only time I tried to use it to find my way with a car in a forest, it guided me towards a road that simply wasn't there. It was on the map, and in real life it was just trees. My friend, who was driving, wasn't too happy. I switched to Google Maps and it worked.

I'm guessing GP is European and you're American. There are significant issues with OSM data in the rural US.

Not just OSM. Google Maps is missing plenty of roads, and even entire towns in rural America.

Every National Park I've been to in the last three years has had a sign, a flyer, a notice, or a line in the brochure pleading with people not to rely on Google Maps and to use paper maps.

Google Maps in next to unusable in rural areas of the third world (as far as I have seen) with unpaved roads. I guess there is no business case for Google in spending money to map those areas

In all programs always there are troubles because we are not have ideals but maps.me not rarely help me

On Apple Maps, press on the map and you have marked the location. Err, that's it. You can also make it a 'favourite' if you want.

You're correct - no offline mapping, though it's pretty parsimonious with data

Google maps is annoying for offline use, and then the offline content “expires” after xx amount of days. Making it completely unreliable.

Maps.me offline functionality was great.

I think that they will be more upgraded and everything will be even better

I'm sure that in future we can get cool version, it's standard updates that will fix

recently downloaded before the update. With and without it so far I like everything

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