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Comment by CivBase | Hacker News Reader

I've been looking to replace Google Maps with OSM on my smartphone. OSM itself is great, but I've been having a harder time finding a good app to use it with. Is anyone familiar with a good option? I mostly use a maps app for location searches and real-time GPS navigation, but offline maps and location sharing are nice-to-have features.

I've been using OsmAnd and it's okay. The interface is pretty good. It supports offline maps, but not location sharing. Map tiles are kind of slow to load compared to Google Maps, which is odd since the tiles have to be downloaded to local storage. The location search often includes redundant results and whatever database they use to store place data is sparse on details like pictures, hours, or reviews. I'll keep using it to stay de-platformed from Google as much as possible, but I'd be willing to pay a bit for something more responsive and polished.

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Check out mapy.cz [1] or an ad-free version from Windy [2].

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.seznam.mapy...

[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.seznam.wind...

I'm pretty sure OsmAnd renders all the roads, buildings etc on demand, which is why it's slow. It has to be able to rerender since it supports different styles, but it doesn't seem like it caches the results or prerenders adjacent tiles.

EDIT: performance issues seem to not be due to rendering the vector data[1].

[1] https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd/issues/8370

> It supports offline maps, but not location sharing.

Are you on iOS or Android?

On Android there is the OsmAnd Online GPS Tracker [0].

[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.osmand.tel...

I think Gaia GPS has a free tier? The base map is OSM. I've seen changes that I've made in OSM pulled in within a couple of days. I've gotten a lot of use out of my subscription.

I can't speak as much to the location searching capability.

Love Gaia GPS as well. Location search is hit and miss, but once you're on a trail, it's a flawless app.

Magic Earth offers a more polished user experience for driving. Compared to OsmAnd, you gain address geolocation from a third-party source (not sure which), traffic alerts, and a dashcam feature, but you lose map editing functionality and many of the non-driving features in OsmAnd. Magic Earth is closed source, although it is free of charge and has no ads. It doesn't hurt to have both Magic Earth and OsmAnd installed.

https://www.magicearth.com

I downloaded magic earth and it works surprisingly well. I am concerned about the fact that it is free, though. I wonder what's their business plan.

I'm using an app called Maps.Me, which seems to be OSM-based. It's kind of commercialized, which I don't like, but it's usable.

I'd be interested in something more FOSSy, myself.

There used to be a free fork of Maps.me called simply Maps on F-Droid here: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.github.axet.maps

Very nicely designed. It seems to be gone now however, maybe someone else knows why.

I was looking for a more lightweight FOSS map app (as opposed to OsmAnd+, which is excellent but not the most performant), as far as I can tell the Maps maintainer had a falling out with / didn't respond to the F-Droid maintainers.

That said I had to piece this together from some commit messages by the F-droid maintainers so I'd prefer a better source myself.

There's a new one called OMaps, currently in an early stages of development.

https://github.com/omapsapp

https://matrix.to/#/#omapsapp:matrix.org?via=matrix.org&via=...

Maps.me was on HN a couple of weeks back.

MAPS.ME is gone. We must bring it back: https://telegra.ph/What-happened-to-the-old-MAPSME-12-20

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25515004

The most active fork is probably OMaps.

https://github.com/omapsapp

https://matrix.to/#/#omapsapp:matrix.org?via=matrix.org&via=...

Surprisingly, the original is still being updated too: https://github.com/mapsme/omim

Is OMaps available for phones yet? All I can see is source code.

I've been using Maps, from fdroid, also. It is very good, quick, and you can choose tracking on and off, etc. It states under info, that it is based on maps.me, version that's working is 9.1.8-8.

I recently tried the newer iOS app and it requested my location in the background somewhere around once per minute when I wasn't using the app. Didn't do anything to investigate— I just deleted the app— but it was sketchy.

I love MapOut (iOS only). It's an outdoor-focused mapping app with easy offline downloads and really beautiful cartography.

MapOut is such a beautiful app, I'm using it very often. If you are doing any outdoor sports or even just wanting to get to know your surrounding, I heavily recommend MapOut on iOS. Worth every euro. The developers are also very responsive in case you have any questions.

I previously had good experience with Maps.me. OsmAnd is great with its myriad settings and such, but somehow is a huge battery drain on my phone. I use it just fine in the background though, because it still provides turn by turn navigation that way. I think OsmAnd doesn't use generated tiles, but rather generates the map on the fly, hence the slowness.

I like Locus maps a lot. The UI is a little busy but once you get used to it you appreciate it because it really is a work of love.

We used Locus to hike through Norway.

And with Locus maps you can use OpenAndroMaps [1] as a map source.

With their map styles [2] OpenAndroMaps are IMO the best hiking maps you can get. They even added very precise elevation data from LIDAR scans recently.

[1] https://www.openandromaps.org/en

[2] https://www.openandromaps.org/en/legend/elevate-mountain-hik...

Locus also have a store where they sell offline maps very similar to OpenAndroMaps for very small amounts. Not sure if they include elevation data however.

Other than the ones that have been mentioned already, I also use Maverick, which has a free and a paid version.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codesector...

I like its ability to show the different map layers, and it has great information screens that show things like GPS coordinates and such, great for geohashing or geocaching. Also has a cool display of how many satellites are visible and whether they're GPS or GLONASS or whatever.

The track recording feature is also nice, saving as a gpx file that can be easily uploaded to the openstreetmap online iD editor with drag-and-drop.

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