it's a great app, I use it whenever I have bad Internet coverage or when I want to use open street map, for example when hiking. It's really a competitor of commercial apps.
I used this for my family's recent trip in Lisbon and Prague. It worked great! The OSM data was reasonably up-to-date for all of our destinations; I don't remember encountering bad information, even though I often double-checked with other mapping providers (which aren't immune to issues with out-of-date information).
One awesome feature was being able to find "drinking water" while we were walking around. I did come across a tap that was shut off/unavailable, but only once. Again, this is more of an OSM data thing than CoMaps, but I generally found the app pleasant to use.
There sometimes feels like there is something slightly off with the "Route To/From" UX that I can't put my finger on, but no complaints.
The problem I have most of all with the routing is that it seems to default to my location as either the From or To value (whichever is the one I haven't selected). Once that's been chosen it's not immediately clear how to change it, all you can do is view the route. That's a fine solution when you're immediately looking to go somewhere, but it's not great when you're trying to plot a route between two places in advance.
I've been using CoMaps for a few months and only just discovered that if you choose another location on the map once you've got an initial route and select Route To/From, it then updates the current routing.
> The problem I have most of all with the routing is that it seems to default to my location as either the From or To value (whichever is the one I haven't selected). Once that's been chosen it's not immediately clear how to change it
Yeah this is an oft-asked question at least for OsmAnd, but I was recently corrected on this myself: so long as you don't press 'start' on the route, you can always change the from position freely and it won't flip back to your current location. You can close the navigation window (back button, swipe it away, or tap on the map) to get the map view back in full-screen for further browsing and selecting another point that you want as departure point, waypoint, or (subsequent) destination. Rinse and repeat until you have the route figured out with all the waypoints :)
I use this a lot for planning mapping routes. Another protip is to go into the waypoints view and on the top right you can do traveling salesman sorting to get the shortest way that visits all waypoints
CoMaps/OrganicMaps I don't know; I'm one of those who grew up with OsmAnd and got used to having all those features
Another alternative to geoIP could be WiFi-based location detection (comparing which WiFis are near you to a database). https://beacondb.net aims to replace Mozilla's shut-down location services, with public data releases once a proper anonymisation scheme has been figured out to avoid another Mozilla event. Google and Apple apparently also have usable back-ends: afaik it's not documented or meant for public use so ymmv, but the reverse engineered API is apparently super stable and not requiring any auth.
In case you have a second device where you'd like location, or don't have the USB GNSS receiver on you or something :)
Yep. When I was screwing around getting geoclue to play around with NMEA sentences, I ran across beacondb. I might replace geoclue's back end with it next time I feel like messing around.
Yes. Default location on your linux computer will use geoclue2, which will give you a location based on your IP address. My location is about 30 miles away since my IP is associated with Google Fiber.
Thanks, I get it now. I was thinking you used it for geolocating webvisitors or something, already wondered how you'd do that with your own GPS receiver.
First there was Osmand. AKA OSMAnd or officially OsmAnd.
It was was powerful but complicated. Normies had never heard of it and preferred Maps.me, a user-friendly alternative with an opaque business model. Then something at Maps.me turned sour and the more privacy-minded normies turned to Organic Maps. Then something at Organic Maps turned sour and some of them moved to CoMaps.
During all this time (literally 15 years), Osmand improved steadily and became more powerful than ever. Even the UX got (a bit) better. It is by far the best mapping app, either FOSS or commercial. And yet somehow it continues to languish in relative obscurity.
However, I would not recommend OsmAnd to a normie. My family members, especially the older ones, all use CoMaps because it is much more friendly to them.
100% this. I use OsmAnd very very frequently (it displays on my dash via Android Auto whenever I drive), but try and do something like load a GPX and show the line in a given color... Or add a pin at a specific point... It's not straightforward at all.
OpenStreetMap is a great ecosystem - I'm a long term contributor.
Some pointers:
- CoMaps is a fork of Organic Maps, which forked long time ago from Maps.me
- OsmAnd is similar. It has more features but is slower and clunkier
- If you see errors/missing stuff on OpenStreetMap, fix them. You need a free account for this. There are various tools to help out, such as the editor on Osm.org. Beginner-friendly editors are https://MapComplete.org (which has thematic maps; disclaimer: I'm the main dev) and https://streetcomplete.app
Just to clarify: OsmAnd has more features, CoMaps and Organic Maps are much faster.
(Aside: I'm using CoMaps myself. The main missing features are tracking (I use OpenTracks for that) and public transportation (I use a website for that). End of aside.)
I stand corrected, CoMaps can do tracking. It was introduced in Organic Maps a couple of years ago, but I was already using OpenTracks, so I never switched away from it.
OsmAnd is not that much slower nowadays since they added the new OpenGL renderer. It is, however, less convenient and pretty. I think OsmAnd really shines for things like hiking, whereas for regular urban navigation CoMaps works just as well.
Exactly my experience as well. OSMAnd is a lot better for hiking as it has 3d views, hiking routes, topo maps and better routing in general. Comaps is great for city navigation or casual usage
I also really like the star chart they added recently. Seems like a minor thing but it's just really handy to have it available for the few occasions you need it.
I gave CoMaps a shot this morning, but it doesn't support public transit in my city (Minneapolis/Saint Paul area) which is an instant deal killer. Bummer.
Yeah! CoMaps was actually what I used for my very first contribution to OSM! Nice lil gateway to an awesome ecosystem. Mega kudos to the CoMaps devs for doing such a great job with it.
Hey, a simple question : I would like to contribute not features nor POIs but actual paths. In my region the maps lack a lot of forest paths, and others that are on the map are long gone due to nature closing them. Something like the strava heatmap is a lot more accurate because hikers and trail runners make the actual paths appear. I often use https://onthegomap.com (which uses OSM) to plan routes and find that the hiking paths do not match reality. What is a straightforward way for me to contribute ? I have GPX traces of all those not-on-maps well-trodden paths if that helps.
On mobile, Vespucci is the full-featured OSM editor that lets you edit whatever you want. On desktop, JOSM is the main one, though it takes a bit of figuring out.
Unfortunately (but logically I think) the OSM-ecosystem is very Android leaning - so missing out on a large % of street walking smartphone wielding would-be mappers.
Also, to get "basic non-tech regular people" involved in improving the maps, it's too complicated (i.e. even the simplest street or sidewalk has a lot of tags with arcane names, which need to be set to exact values according to very deeply buried and confusing documentation).
For street level small maintenance level enhancements, I would envision (and need) an app that would consist of:
- See the point/lines/area that make up the map at the place where I stand
- Add a new point/line/area or drag existing ones to change their shape
- Answer some simple questions about what you added or edited (i.e. for an area: "is this grass?" or "is this parking space?", for a line "is this paved?" or "can a car drive here?")
- Optionally, either directly publish the changes or add them to some review queue where an expert can asynchronously review and catch the most basic mistakes or abuse
Although I do need to say that despite this app not existing, OSM is often the most detailed and up to date map in my area. I think it heavily depends on if your neighborhood has an OSM enthusiast or not.
Note that there are lots of OSM editors, but sadly not a single one as simple as Google Maps for end-users.
I'm working on cartes.app, we've designed a very simple opening hours editor, but we're missing lots of other edition features.
We should also mention Everydoor or of course osm.org, the main one.
In the end, you can modify way more things yourself on OSM than Google Maps, but through a complexe ecosystem that you have to understand first, and most are missing place reviews and simple image uploading.
Both cartes.app and mapcomplete enable these, through two different databases. Mapcomplete enable Mangrove reviews and Panoramax image uploads.
Cartes enables ATProto place reviews, with pictures, and soon Panoramax upload too.
after about 6 years of using OSMAnd, i’m pivoting to CoMaps for a hike through switzerland that i’m leaving for tonight. i don’t actually need all of the features of OSMAnd and just downloading maps costs a subscription now. id pay outright for it but i just can’t justify a subscription for how infrequently i use it
You can download Osmand~ from F-droid which doesn't limit downloads. Or you could even download the map from another provider like bbbike or geofabrik, use osmandmapcreator (needs java) to convert the pbf to obf and then import it into the phone.
I use this regularly when I go on long walks out of the city (including the couple of times I've done stretches of the Camino de Santiago). The offline map support and being able to load and display GPX tracks are really helpful there. Not only because you can sometimes find yourself with spotty reception in remote areas, but also because if you are out all day and your phone battery is not the best, you can just stick on airplane mode which massively saves on battery.
CoMaps also makes it quite easy to edit information about businesses etc, so if you spot something that isn't right you can correct it right there.
Also, for long walks/hikes, OSM is excellent. Most people tend think think of OSM as "Google Maps but worse" but IMO it is clearly superior for this use case (at least, for reasonably popular routes). It will display a lot of paths that Google Maps won't and also has far more granular detail, so you can use it to find nearby water fountains, picnic benches, even bins and so on.
I've been visiting some parts that are new to me on a rental car and my partner used Google maps with android auto to set the routes. In a week gmaps tried to send me twice against traffic into one-way streets and once in one that didn't even exist
maps.me was my goto for years, but that has since devolved into a mess with ads and upselling. I recently discovered CoMaps, and it is excellent for my needs.
I recently started tinkering with CoMaps to make it more useful for bikepacking, since I do quite a bit of it. I don’t plan to turn this fork into a product, it’s mostly something I’m building for my own needs ; but I figured it might be interesting to share:
As a fellow keen bikepacker (about six months a year), I prefer OSMAnd. More features relevant to our community, and you can install Brouter as a routing engine.
This is nice to see. I've been a long-time contributor to OpenStreetMap and a long-time user of applications in the ecosystem. I recently tried the CoMaps fork of Organic Maps and was surprised by a few quality of life improvements. For example, the one named in the article about being able to receive periodic map updates outside of the monthly application update cycle. Another subtle example is the color scheme in CoMaps being slightly more pleasant.
I had a student in my class propose an "AI for emergency response" that leveraged local models. Not a far stretch from what we see here with CoMaps, plus a small Gemma or similar low-parameter model running on-device to help with anything required at the 'last-mile' (beyond just mapping/navigation) during an earthquake, fire, flood, etc.
I was the sysadmin for the original version of https://sahanafoundation.org/eden/ over a decade and a half ago (!), this would have been amazing as a component. Not sure how well my HTC desire or whatever was current would run it though.
63 comments
[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 13.3 ms ] threadOne awesome feature was being able to find "drinking water" while we were walking around. I did come across a tap that was shut off/unavailable, but only once. Again, this is more of an OSM data thing than CoMaps, but I generally found the app pleasant to use.
There sometimes feels like there is something slightly off with the "Route To/From" UX that I can't put my finger on, but no complaints.
Reporting from within CoMaps generates note that will sometimes wait years for verification.
I've been using CoMaps for a few months and only just discovered that if you choose another location on the map once you've got an initial route and select Route To/From, it then updates the current routing.
Yeah this is an oft-asked question at least for OsmAnd, but I was recently corrected on this myself: so long as you don't press 'start' on the route, you can always change the from position freely and it won't flip back to your current location. You can close the navigation window (back button, swipe it away, or tap on the map) to get the map view back in full-screen for further browsing and selecting another point that you want as departure point, waypoint, or (subsequent) destination. Rinse and repeat until you have the route figured out with all the waypoints :)
I use this a lot for planning mapping routes. Another protip is to go into the waypoints view and on the top right you can do traveling salesman sorting to get the shortest way that visits all waypoints
CoMaps/OrganicMaps I don't know; I'm one of those who grew up with OsmAnd and got used to having all those features
It beats using IP based Geocoding.
In case you have a second device where you'd like location, or don't have the USB GNSS receiver on you or something :)
https://github.com/deepin-community/geoclue-2.0/blob/master/...
Using a cheap USB GPS receiver you can get to meters level resolution, could use it mobile as a navigation device, and NTP timing too if you want.
First there was Osmand. AKA OSMAnd or officially OsmAnd.
It was was powerful but complicated. Normies had never heard of it and preferred Maps.me, a user-friendly alternative with an opaque business model. Then something at Maps.me turned sour and the more privacy-minded normies turned to Organic Maps. Then something at Organic Maps turned sour and some of them moved to CoMaps.
During all this time (literally 15 years), Osmand improved steadily and became more powerful than ever. Even the UX got (a bit) better. It is by far the best mapping app, either FOSS or commercial. And yet somehow it continues to languish in relative obscurity.
However, I would not recommend OsmAnd to a normie. My family members, especially the older ones, all use CoMaps because it is much more friendly to them.
Powerful, but very not straightforward.
Some pointers:
- CoMaps is a fork of Organic Maps, which forked long time ago from Maps.me - OsmAnd is similar. It has more features but is slower and clunkier - If you see errors/missing stuff on OpenStreetMap, fix them. You need a free account for this. There are various tools to help out, such as the editor on Osm.org. Beginner-friendly editors are https://MapComplete.org (which has thematic maps; disclaimer: I'm the main dev) and https://streetcomplete.app
Just to clarify: OsmAnd has more features, CoMaps and Organic Maps are much faster.
(Aside: I'm using CoMaps myself. The main missing features are tracking (I use OpenTracks for that) and public transportation (I use a website for that). End of aside.)
Also, to get "basic non-tech regular people" involved in improving the maps, it's too complicated (i.e. even the simplest street or sidewalk has a lot of tags with arcane names, which need to be set to exact values according to very deeply buried and confusing documentation).
For street level small maintenance level enhancements, I would envision (and need) an app that would consist of:
- See the point/lines/area that make up the map at the place where I stand
- Add a new point/line/area or drag existing ones to change their shape
- Answer some simple questions about what you added or edited (i.e. for an area: "is this grass?" or "is this parking space?", for a line "is this paved?" or "can a car drive here?")
- Optionally, either directly publish the changes or add them to some review queue where an expert can asynchronously review and catch the most basic mistakes or abuse
Although I do need to say that despite this app not existing, OSM is often the most detailed and up to date map in my area. I think it heavily depends on if your neighborhood has an OSM enthusiast or not.
GoMap!! also exists for Apple devices
I'm working on cartes.app, we've designed a very simple opening hours editor, but we're missing lots of other edition features.
We should also mention Everydoor or of course osm.org, the main one.
In the end, you can modify way more things yourself on OSM than Google Maps, but through a complexe ecosystem that you have to understand first, and most are missing place reviews and simple image uploading.
Both cartes.app and mapcomplete enable these, through two different databases. Mapcomplete enable Mangrove reviews and Panoramax image uploads.
Cartes enables ATProto place reviews, with pictures, and soon Panoramax upload too.
CoMaps also makes it quite easy to edit information about businesses etc, so if you spot something that isn't right you can correct it right there.
Also, for long walks/hikes, OSM is excellent. Most people tend think think of OSM as "Google Maps but worse" but IMO it is clearly superior for this use case (at least, for reasonably popular routes). It will display a lot of paths that Google Maps won't and also has far more granular detail, so you can use it to find nearby water fountains, picnic benches, even bins and so on.
for less popular areas it may be worse, but Google Maps often will be degraded even more
I have yet to find case where for hiking/cycling Google was better (I am kind of cheating as I edit on OpenStreetMap and fix problems if found)
I recently started tinkering with CoMaps to make it more useful for bikepacking, since I do quite a bit of it. I don’t plan to turn this fork into a product, it’s mostly something I’m building for my own needs ; but I figured it might be interesting to share:
https://github.com/r0xsh/CoBike
https://gurumaps.app/
Most of the project cited here will be presented.
https://2026.stateofthemap.org/