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I cannot really express how much praise I have for Organic Maps. It has got me out of the mire a couple of times due to the complete offline capability and paper maps being completely wrong. The OSM base layer is better than a lot of native maps out there. Not only that, you can search for a toilet almost anywhere, including in the middle of nowhere in central Asia, and it found one!
Organic Maps is less powerful than OSMAnd (on Android), but it's much more straightforward and easy to use. It's the go-to app I recommend to all casual map users that want offline maps.
Organic Maps is less powerful than OSMAnd (on Android), but it's much more straightforward and easy to use. It's the go-to app I recommend to all casual map users that want offline maps.
OSMAnd tracks users using a secret supercookie by default because the developer wants metrics. This is done without consent. The defensiveness of the developer with regards to such unethical tracking means that I will never use any software they ever release. https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd/issues/15058 Organic Maps does not, and should be supported instead.
And even if it sounds harsh, their initial suggestion is always valid: use another software, or fork it and maintain your own version. It's GPLv3.
Such help is really welcome!
If you are on Android then I recommend StreetComplete which asks questions and edits OSM based on answers (disclaimer: I wrote parts of it)
(Organic Maps has some limited editing capability, but for example you will not change road geometry or add forest area with it)
* Website, ethos: straightforward. “Old internet” vibes, love it. They seem very active, have a presence on every platform, very impressive
* The app seems very nice. Simple clear UI. Lots of features. I need to experiment for more than a few minutes but I get the impression it could replace Google Maps for me, especially because Google Maps has trouble doing things like showing road names or other key navigation tools
* On design and UI: the offline approach is very visible. I zoomed in to where I live and it starts downloading it. First, a great way to get a download (go there on the map, it downloads) but also compare how many steps it is to download offline for Google Maps compared to this (go to a special section of the app, download something in your screen’s aspect ratio, limited in size, give it a manual name, prompted to manually curate downloads, they expire when they could still be perfectly valid…) — this is significantly better design. It’s the same difference angainst other map apps. I have a hiking trail app (AllTrails) that advertises offline, but getting the data and keeping it is a complex series of steps and it’s impossible to know if it’s there until you’re in the wilderness and unable to download if it’s not. This is so much simpler… good simple design.
* It’s developed in Estonia! Estonia has a remarkable IT and software culture (I live there) and every so often you come across an absolute gem. This looks like one of them
Organic Maps is super awesome. The routing feature is really good, too. It even works on Apple CarPlay! There are some glitches to be aware of though: Routing across region borders is often broken. Also, a warning about OSM in general: Do not blindly trust it. Map data can be very out of date in some places, especially on remote-ish hiking trails.
OSM in particular doesn't use third party registries and surveys due to the licensing issues, relying on volunteer work instead, and has a participation-based culture (aka "if you want to have a map of something, make it yourself"). Armchair mappers are using satellite photos and publicly available info, while field volunteers map everything that cannot be seen from above. Both are important. Obviously your trails have to be visited by someone participating in the community for them to appear or be updated on the map. You could be the one, for example.
OSM is also highly chaotic like Wikipedia, and the quality heavily depends on the local community, so always research the situation in the area you intend to visit. For example there's a lot of unreliable poor quality machine work in Latin America in OSM, even in populated areas. No idea why Portuguese/Spanish-speaking communities are letting this fly.
I genuinely want to know what lead Google to not support Maps offline properly. It’s truly staggering how, even when I do everything I can to say: save this journey, don’t delete the map around it, don’t delete the journey, just passively show me where I am next to it, it will gleefully delete everything. I once met their lead designer (who had just changed to work at another FAANG) and… boy was that not a conversati…
Google Maps has pretty good support for offline maps. Select rectangular area, download, it expires after year. I am in Europe, maybe you have different copyright on data?
I definitely can not do this with Google Maps.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're not alone, our community and contributors are helping us!
Thanks for the work you and your community is doing! Quick question - why did you fork maps.me in the first place? And how do you make money?
From what I see, https://organicmaps.app/ is asking for donations ( https://organicmaps.app/donate/ )