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OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

osmand.net

91–100 of 105 posts

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm stubborn enough to use Google Maps in my web browser (signed out) and then copy/paste the actual destination address into the app for turn-by-turn directions (e.g. CoMaps, OsmAnd). It's inconvenient, but it's also one less Google app on my phone. The Google Maps moat has always been its breadth of accurate, current business information. It is unfortunately the Yellow Pages of the Internet era.

I use simpler solution (measuring by number of taps on the screen): share place from google maps to https://f-droid.org/packages/page.ooooo.geoshare which can convert it to actual latitude/longitude which in turn can be shared to any app working with locations: OsmAnd, Organic Maps, Uber, ...

Geo Share is great!

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#92
post #56

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…

> Anyone have any solutions to this? No solution. I am a big fan of OSM, but modern maps are not about street namesabd building, but about POI. When you go/drive somewhere you are going to store/museum/pharmacy and so on. If this data isn't reliable it's useless. Additional information like phone number, working hours and website is next level which isn't achievable by OSM.

It is all supported by OSM, but /someone/ has to add it to OSM for it to be present.

Whether it is present in any given area depends upon whether someone bothered to add it to OSM.

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#93

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…

"The best solution I have come up with is to use Google maps to find the address and then copy that into the other app but at that point I might as well use Google maps."

I create an SQLite database of business street addresses using online Yellow Pages, e.g., yellowpages.com

I wrote a simple utility to extract the name, address, phone and URL data from the HTML and convert to SQL. I make the .db file and test it on a laptop

Then I copy the .db file to the phone and query using sqlite3 in Termux

I can then search and copy addresses into OsmAnd or Google Maps

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm stubborn enough to use Google Maps in my web browser (signed out) and then copy/paste the actual destination address into the app for turn-by-turn directions (e.g. CoMaps, OsmAnd). It's inconvenient, but it's also one less Google app on my phone. The Google Maps moat has always been its breadth of accurate, current business information. It is unfortunately the Yellow Pages of the Internet era.

I use simpler solution (measuring by number of taps on the screen): share place from google maps to https://f-droid.org/packages/page.ooooo.geoshare which can convert it to actual latitude/longitude which in turn can be shared to any app working with locations: OsmAnd, Organic Maps, Uber, ...

One part of me likes this solution for being faster and elegant, and I've bookmarked it to be able to recommend to friends. But another part of me is frustrated that so many everyday computer users have little-to-no awareness of basic features like cut/copy/paste on mobile, resulting in another app install as a solution.

Not trying to imply this about you in particular, just griping that the general lack of awareness about how to take advantage of what should be fundamental/foundational OS features means that whole apps get written to, in essence, duplicate those features.

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#95
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The community forked and created comaps because the organic maps maintainers were unwilling to listen to the community, taking decisions that the community disapproved of. Comaps seems to be more active than organic maps today

If you would make the effort to compare commits, you'll see that contributors for Co are mostly fiddling with: - the UI (pixels here, different label or color here - just check the commits by "Yannik Bloscheck"!) - adding objects to the map, which are not often justified (like rendering single(!) trees and tree rows, which is from a performance POV insane) - translations / strings They rarely touch navigation, the en…

Lol https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/pull/12255

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#96
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Don't be a tease and link that project lol. Always happy to consribute to such projects

https://codeberg.org/matkoniecz/list_how_openstreetmap_can_b...

https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/pull/6302

https://matkoniecz.codeberg.page/improving_openstreetmap_usi...

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#97

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…

The big issue for me is that Android Auto does not work without Maps for positioning and navigation. Tried to completely remove Maps and use other applications for Navigation, they do not even start, since the core positioning components is integrated with Maps.

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#98
post #40
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can enable the "public transport" profile in OsmAnd, today. It might not support your local area, though.

And there are no realtime updates,for example bus won't even go on a Sunday but it would still route you like it would ..

The "But Google" rebuttal: I was in a city when they had a public transport strike. The buses/trams would run at irregular times, but as far as Google knew (maybe the public transport company told them so), no buses would run at all.

So trying to get anywhere, Google Maps would say "Walk 20 minutes to the nearest train station, take the train, walk 15 minutes to your final destination.". I had to trick it and say I want to depart 6 months in the future so it would show which tram/bus-lines I actually need, where I can go to the stop and take a chance that one would show up..

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#99
post #19
post #14

For those of you using OSMAnd - do you think there is any chance that they will offer public transport routing? I would at once get the 15-year XV plan if they got this, but perhaps it's at odds with their motto “Offline Maps and Navigation”? (even if I personally could live with schedule-based routing, i.e. not real-time routing, at least for a while).

You can enable the "public transport" profile in OsmAnd, today. It might not support your local area, though.

Grab an application called StreetComplete and start contributing. Little by little we'll get there and have awesome maps. Application asks simple questions like type of road or if bus station has a shelter, etc. Then uploads that to OSM.

Re: OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)

#100
post #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...

I get where you are coming from, but it's still the best map application ever. Whenever I travel I download all the details for the country and am self-sufficient. Can't get lost or hungry. Everything is just there. Am willing to suffer a bit to keep that functionality. UI needs a big improvement though.
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