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Comment by canbus | Hacker News Reader

https://www.openstreetmap.org

If you need OSM on Android, I can recommend:

- "Organic Maps" (a fork of the old MapsMe codebase) if you want a clean, simple user experience

- "OSMAnd" if you want a very powerful, highly customizable map application, which comes at the cost of a steeper learning curve

Both apps are open source and support navigation, offline maps and POI search.

The things I miss most compared to Google Maps is live traffic information and the powerful search. However, this has a privacy cost, so I generally try to use OSM first, and only fall back to Google Maps (in the browser) if I really need to.

I'm a OSMand user and OSM contributor. However, sometimes I hate the routing OSMand provides, taking me through narrow streets with awkward turns. Wish they used GraphHopper... A nice feature in OSMand is that even if you get the free version off the Play store, if you log in with OSM and are active, you get free map updates and all the "plus" functions. And on top of that, the full plus version is available off F-Droid.

By the way, OSMand has some support for reporting traffic issues (police, crashes), but it's very very limited due to low adoption way below a critical mass. Also, reporting traffic status would probably require OSMand to run a pretty beefy server and get the current speed/traffic info from all the users - many chose it exactly because they don't want that.

Maybe you know. I've been told twice that OSMand can show the altitude above sea level of a location, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how. Have you any idea?

Thanks!

It's these steps:

- go to pugins section and activate the contour lines plugin

- then go to download maps and load the contour lines data for your region

- go to configure map and check the show contour lines option

I think you need the f-droid Version or the paid pro Playstore version or the subscription. Please note that this will only show marked contour lines and not interpolate/estimate the elevation for any point. So you need to search for the next line and get your own idea what that means for the specific location. Not ideal for very flat areas with sparse contour lines.

For the current position you can show GPS elevation (settings, configure screen, widgets)

Perfect, thank you! In fact most of my apps are from F-droid when possible.

On iOS, I have mine configured to show the altitude in the top right corner of the map view. The settings are admittedly confusing but if you just poke around in the map display settings you should find it!

I use OSMand for walking and biking and it's great, much better than Google Maps in my region. Just remember to choose the right kind of traffic in the settings when starting navigation.

It's not as good for driving.

I have Organic Maps, because I thought it would be nice to have in case of an emergency where I don't have internet, but sadly just a few weeks ago, I had such a case and Organic Maps couldn't find the address and the map itself didn't have all the roads on it (nor satelite or topology map), so I couldn't even use it as a normal map... In the end I had to resort to one archaic ways and ask local humans for directions...

Google maps does offer being able to download for offline use, but if you don't have internet it quite often doesn't want to do navigation, unless you trick it with saved directions.

How does Garmin do it (I'm guessing map licencing issue)?

And how come this isn't already a solved issue?

I also had some success with HERE maps: https://wego.here.com

Their Android app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.here.app.m...

Their Apple app: https://apps.apple.com/app/id955837609

The performance is good (especially on a budget Android device, better than the recent versions of Google Maps, even), they're reasonably accurate (I'm in Eastern Europe) and include navigation, traffic information, public transportation, as well as the ability to save regions for offline browsing.

I can't comment on the company behind it, though, but it's a nice alternative nonetheless (and there are simple prompts for choosing whether you want to send them any data, e.g. to enrich traffic information).

Edit: as a criticism, some Android reviews suggest that recent updates have made the app less performant than previous versions, though I didn't notice anything in particular on my current device (2020 budget phone). Some also suggest that navigation needs more work.

One of the best features of HERE maps is the ability to download entire countries' maps and turn off data.

This was a life saver when roaming when data charges were really exorbitant.

Google Maps Android also supports offline maps downloading of selected regions. However the download is only valid for a year.

From where do they get traffic information? The only viable app that I've ever seen for traffic data is Waze, because of the huge install base. I do remember HERE from when they were a Nokia brand, but even with that history I think that they'd be too small to have good traffic information.

HERE is currently owned by a consortium of Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi. So I guess that's where their traffic info is from.

Thank you. Sounds like they'll have a ton of data for LA, not so much data for Detroit ))

I can also recommend this app for driving. My experience is better with this than with goggle and speed limit information is very useful.

Is panning and zooming in OSMAnd not a huge pain for anyone else? The map rendering (of downloaded maps) is extremely sluggish and absolutely useless for me to use. (Even worse than the tile-based rendering of early Maps on iPhone.)

Organic and MagicEarth work fine for me. I really wonder if it is just my setup or if everyone else suffers from this. I am on a Pixel 5 with CalyxOS using the OSMAnd+ from Fdroid (but same with normal OSMAnd from Aurora)

I have the exact opposite experience with OSMAnd on Android.

The map rendering of OSMAnd is faster than Google Maps (using a 3+ year old smart phone with a low-end Realtek SoC). Like really way way faster/snappier.

My setup is a Chinese brand Android 10 with default OS (rooted)and OSMAnd+ from Fdroid.

The only possible cause I could think of is that CalyxOS is somehow missing proper video drivers for your Pixel?

Hmm interesting, thanks for letting me know. I always wondered why people recommend OSMAnd when it performs so poorly. Will look into this.

It may be a bug of Android: Newer Android versions have further locker down sd card access. The implementation is apparently super slow for stuff like what Osmand uses. Dont put the map data onto the sd card or use one of the predefined locations

https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd/issues/12046 https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd/issues/13254

Edit: If that is not the culprit then check if OpenGL rendering is activated.

You can also deactivate unneeded features from being rendered (buildings, areas, etc). And lastly there are smaller road-only maps (no POI data and no adresses though)

Thanks for letting me know. I don't have a sd card, activated the dev plugin and enabled opengl but did not see any real improvement. I will open an issue with a screen recording on their repo now that I know it is not supposed to be this bad.

It's not just you. This comment claiming better performance than Google Maps is baffling to me. OSMand has been slow on every phone I've owned (OnePlus 2, Pixel 3a and Pixel 6a). Enabling OpenGL and restarting improves panning/zooming framerate, but tiles are generated at the same slow speed (maybe even slightly slower).

What really matters is the amount of data. In my local town I can scroll around no problem, but in a more actively mapped area like Amsterdam it takes at least couple seconds to load.

Lets not forget StreetComplete is a dead easy app to use to help contribute to OSM. It just asks you a few questions like "is this bench still here" or "is there a bike lane on this road" etc

https://streetcomplete.app/

Can I use this app to suggest issues? In one of my projects I found a bunch of buildings that have either the wrong direction or the wrong coordinates. Think "Random street 1, 2 and 4 are next to each other, but Random street 3 is 500m away". But since it's a city I don't live in I can't go there in person and confirm.

You can report issues by long pressing and tapping "Create a note" which people will eventually review and fix.

I love this app and use it frequently. Great excuse to take little walks around town.

Organic Maps is also significantly more optimized in my experience (or maybe a more fair thing to say would be: is faster because it does less). So it pays to have both because OM is basically the "fast path" for its use case in more ways than just the interface.

Both Organic Maps and OsmAnd are available on iOS as well.

I hope the author of OSMAnd makes enough money from the play store to finance continued development, because the application is amazing, it has an interface that is not dumbed down, it does not phone home to the mother ship, it gives you great tracks, in short it is a great tool that respects the end user.

I wish more applications were like it, first thing I install on my phone.

Unfortunately this is really not an option for (some) areas in the US. After having moved to a populous LA area from Germany I was baffled at the lack of detail in the maps. Basic things like building numbers are entirely missing. Even after adding more and more details I would never fully rely on OSM here sadly. And if it only works sometimes why even bother using it in the first place? At least this was my progression. From fully using OSM, I am back to Google.

The only good in-between solution is MagicEarth which supplements OSM maps with data from lord knows where. However although they claim to be privacy cautious they are quite opaque.

Also, do not fully rely on Google Maps knowing house numbers. Looks like in some areas (in UK for example) Google used some sort of OCR to find house numbers. There are houses and Wales with random house numbers that only have a house name; Numbering ends a few houses into dead-end alley where the Street View car didn't come; Or totally wrong numbers where house number sings are hard to read.

House names, rather than numbers, are very common in rural UK.

Searching for my address just straight up doesn't work.

Named house rather than a number, and the postcode isn't a particular street but covers a number of little tracks up to various farms.

I also don't have a road name.

The address syntax is:

Building name

Town

County

Post code

The combination of no road and no number means Google absolutely fails. It just gives suggestions of businesses nearby... Ish.

Does your location have a Place ID? Google originated Place IDs for exactly this type of use case, so that people could find places like yours without an address.

Australia went to mandatory house numbers in, I think, the 60s but my grandmother refused and gave out only her house name until she passed away in the 21st century.

Not heard of MagicEarth before - looks interesting but what's missing is a "Why/how is it free" statement. They don't cover how they monetise this, what's their business model.

Makes more sense to switch to bing maps, since they have ever so slightly better satelite imagery and there's no way in hell anyone would use bing for anything else anyway.

Interesting. In my experience, OSM's level of detail in Amsterdam is much higher than Google's. Especially in bike routes, an area that Google often sucks at.

OSM is usually better in Europe. Even some rural paths were mapped as streets in Google maps. But in USA it is probably other way around.

A lot of the US road map was imported from TIGER (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topologically_Integrated_Geogr...>). This is an electronic mapping system set up in the 90s by the US Government to aid in conducting the census. The TIGER data doesn’t have any address information at all, just road shapes. No information about the type of road, the number of lanes, the quality of the surface, presence of sidewalks, signals at intersections, anything. Just the paths the roads follow, and those paths are often of extremely poor quality. The resulting OSM maps are barely usable; sometimes they are not even recognizable by locals.

So OSM has decent geographical coverage of the US, but relies very heavily on individual contributors to correct the deficiencies and add useful information to the maps. The only way it will be usable for you is if others have improved it. The only way it will be usable for others is if you jump back in and do the same.

> TIGER data doesn’t have any address information at all

In the EDGE tables it does have ZIP codes and house number ranges, split into left and right side of the road. ZIP codes were imported into OpenStreetMap data. House number ranges are imported into the OpenStreetMap search into a separate database table, so searching works in a lot of areas but it's far from complete, all the issues you mentioned with roads that don't even exist etc

I stand corrected. Maybe the TIGER data or the import process was improved at some point in the last decade?

Obviously YMMV.

I live about 1 mile from suburbs in a town called Bingley in Yorkshire, England.

I can't trust Google maps locally (though its good for local business searches), as the mapping quality is terrible. My village and local town have roads missing, numerous public rights of way missing (over both public and private land). Major areas of trees missing. OSM is much, much better.

See the difference:

https://ibb.co/fk74k3s https://ibb.co/GTKMTzn

I am noticing more and more how poor Google maps is for non-drivers (such as myself recently having to stop driving), such as not being able to do walking routes over local foot bridges, OSM with OSRM or Grasshopper is fine:

https://ibb.co/NtTf6kr https://ibb.co/sq60YQy

> OSM with OSRM or Grasshopper

Is this usable on mobile? Can you tell a bit more?

Sorry, I don't know. I used the OSM website for the purpose of this comparison. I use the Magic Earth app on my phone, which has proprietary route planning (using open street maps).

I see, thanks.

While I like OSM for some use cases, and have contributed, it can not work as a replacement for google maps for every day use. My biggest problem is the search - absolutely unusable.

Technical nit: OSM as such does not have "a search". Geocoding (as it's known) is a separate component and if you dislike the one used by the openstreetmap.org there are other services that render OpenStreetMap data for you – perhaps with a better search!

Here's a question for someone who understands cross-site cookies (which isn't me): Why does www.google.com/maps 's site permissions show https://www.openstreetmap.org/ as one of the sites 'that can use cross-site cookies and site data'?

I found OsmAnd absolutely essential in my extensive off-road travels in Central America and Spain, paid to support it via Google Play, but i could not for the hell of it figure out how to submit photos and places. It forced me to create a separate account and then always gave me errors when i tried to submit

The separate account is needed for openstreetmap uploads/notes/corrections. You can add places on osm.org also or retry with the osm account using Osmand.

I have what i think is a separate account. Could you link a GitHub where i can create an issue and upload error screenshots? Even if it's not a bug but a feature, it should still be useful, because this flow is very confusing.

https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd/issues

There are two ways to login

Oauth and user/password, you can try both under plugins/openstreetmap editing/settings/Login to Openstreetmap

The official Telegram support group is also good for getting help:

https://t.me/OsmAndMaps

osm and wikipedia are proof that an alternative, more desirable, digital universe is not utopically distant but begging to be born. imagine if the world would somehow muster to dedicate something more than token support to such projects / designs

prediction: osm will eventually surpass wikipedia as the most successful crowdsourced effort because the more objective and simple nature of its data allows dramatic scaling. if even 1% of the billions of the world's roaming mobile devices get into the habbit of augmenting the osm database (e.g. using streamlined UI's like streetcomplete or yet to be build apps) the disruption will be on its way

Would you bet money on that? Google Maps is pretty entrenched. A competing 2.4 trillion dollar company that preinstalled their app on the most popular phone in the US couldn't dethrone Google Maps.

my prediction was careful to pitch osm against wikipedia (both of which I love) not against the well known elephant in the room :-)

but on your real point, yes its going to be a long slog...

The problem is you loose a certain percentage of businesses and also user recommendations (no real alternative there). There is no real incentive for businesses to make yourself visible on OSM (probably many don't even know it exists).

But is the app as good as Google's? I always struggle with OSM maps.

I think at the moment there's a massive discount on OsmAnd+. Worth it?

Really depends, it can be much better than Google depending on country/region. Google Maps is not in every country good. Definitely better for any kind of outdoor activity like hiking, bicycle, ski etc. and offline usage.

This article is not about one specific service and how an alternative can solve the problem.

It is an example of how companies are dying to permission to track is.

Or, you know, use the Google maps app (like the company is always haranguing us to do) and turn on “only allow while using” for geo location.

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