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OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

osmand.net

21–30 of 105 posts

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#21
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OsmAnd has the annoying quark of suggesting that I drive off my retaining wall, through some woods, and then across some wetlands, in order to get to the road behind my house, rather than directing me down my long driveway to the road a little further away. This is because the driveway is marked as private in the OpenStreetMap data, because it is private. Obviously I know to just go down my driveway, but anybody tryi…

Settings > Driving > Navigation settings > Route parameters > Allow private access

Now you'll be routed through private roads anywhere. It should ignore the private flag if it's directly adjacent to the start or end of a route.

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#22
I love osmand. But every new update seems slower. Navigation speed is mostly ok, I use it for walking and cycling which means routes tend to be short. But panning and zooming the map is just annoyingly slow. It sort of works when I disable most map features, but the map features are the reason I use osmand...

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#23
I really want to stop using Google maps but the issue I have with every other option is that I can never just search for the place I want to go to. 99% of the time, the place I am going to is a business, searching " " on anything other than Google maps either gives me nothing (OsmAnd in this category) or might give me some the shops of that chain but in a random order and intermixed with towns a hundred miles away which have the same name. More generic queries like "petrol station" are even worse. The best solution I have come up with is to use Google maps to find the actual address and then copy that into the other app but at that point I might as well just use Google maps.

Anyone have any solutions to this?

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#24

I really want to stop using Google maps but the issue I have with every other option is that I can never just search for the place I want to go to. 99% of the time, the place I am going to is a business, searching " " on anything other than Google maps either gives me nothing (OsmAnd in this category) or might give me some the shops of that chain but in a random order and intermixed with towns a hundred miles away wh…

I don't have solutions but I have similar experiences about this. It's probably a difficult problem since there are so many different queries and differences in the geospatial data.

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#25

I really want to stop using Google maps but the issue I have with every other option is that I can never just search for the place I want to go to. 99% of the time, the place I am going to is a business, searching " " on anything other than Google maps either gives me nothing (OsmAnd in this category) or might give me some the shops of that chain but in a random order and intermixed with towns a hundred miles away wh…

Same issue, OsmAnd is great, but unless geocoding services like Nominatim get as good as Google Maps's search, I cannot use it unless I know the precise location of where I'm going.

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#26

I really want to stop using Google maps but the issue I have with every other option is that I can never just search for the place I want to go to. 99% of the time, the place I am going to is a business, searching " " on anything other than Google maps either gives me nothing (OsmAnd in this category) or might give me some the shops of that chain but in a random order and intermixed with towns a hundred miles away wh…

Sadly, often shop data is simply missing in OpenStreetMap.

(I have an ongoing project attempting to make slightly easier to detect and add missing ones but it will be just tiny step forward, not solution)

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#28
post #6

At this point I prefer OsmAnd navigation over Google maps. Maps reliably does stupid things like route through winding residential streets because it thinks that's faster and can obviously be done at the full posted speed limit. OsmAnd on the other hand builds routes I would build: get on the main road and get close, then get to the destination.

OsmAnd has the annoying quark of suggesting that I drive off my retaining wall, through some woods, and then across some wetlands, in order to get to the road behind my house, rather than directing me down my long driveway to the road a little further away. This is because the driveway is marked as private in the OpenStreetMap data, because it is private. Obviously I know to just go down my driveway, but anybody tryi…

You might get better results tagging the driveway as `access=destination`.

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:access%3Ddestination

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#29
post #8
post #6

At this point I prefer OsmAnd navigation over Google maps. Maps reliably does stupid things like route through winding residential streets because it thinks that's faster and can obviously be done at the full posted speed limit. OsmAnd on the other hand builds routes I would build: get on the main road and get close, then get to the destination.

I use osmand for privacy but I think it just emphasises main roads. In Melbourne it always suggests turning off cemetery road west because it doesn't know it's congested and will get me stuck for 20 minutes. And there are some missing slip roads. And navigation constantly fails to start. I wonder, how difficult is it to make minor edits to the map data?

To solve the problem for yourself, you can also long press a road you don't like and select Avoid Road.

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#30
CoMaps is by far one of the best offline navigation map app available.

They forked from Organic Maps project which seems to have gone evil.

CoMaps calculation is very fast, map update is constant, it is very lightweight, it has a very clean layout, usability is top tier. CoMaps can find places by the business name, there is still room for improvement but it works.

I was using EarthMagic before that, it was the perfect 10/10 opensource app until they went greedy, and the app now has tons of problems.

I went back to Sygic which is an awesome offline map app, I have a lifetime Premium licensing and as expected, now there is a Premium Plus license which some features were moved to like TTS and limited map update.

CoMaps also works really well with Android Auto and I am running GrapheneOS, it was actually somebody within GOS who recommended it to me.

CoMaps also display trains line, buses stops, public toilets, even motorcycle parking. If you are tired of dramas, give CoMaps a go.

CoMaps is available via Codeberg opensource alternative to GitHub and they are pretty active towards reporting issues.

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