CoMaps, which uses OpenStreetMap. StreetComplete gamifies adding data to OpenStreetMap.
Sometimes Magic Earth.The only time i use google is when i want street view.
I tried most of the ones mentioned here but they rarely include any ratings or additional features. For me what comes close enough to a Google/apple maps alternative is mapy.com . Its not Foss and some features are behind a subscription. But its European and 19€ a year is OK with me. Some features that might be interesting:
- Sport/Activity tracking
- Traffic / speed camera info
- Way finding using public transport
- Integrated navigation voices
- Live location sharing
If OSM isn’t good enough, make it better.
Sure, let me just fly my drone over everywhere in the world…
I spent an hour improving my hometown but that’s not where I need a map. I need it in places where I don’t know if it’s right or wrong.
truth is OSM has proven to be more accurate in areas I frequent vs Gmaps. We’ve got into multiple “situations” because of Gmaps
Like what?
like leading us the wrong way. Or completely ignoring existence oh our house.
I’ve never seen it get my home location incorrect… And the only wrong ways I’ve seen it involve are roadblocks.
That can be a good strategy, and please, if you can, once you find a place in GMapsWV that isn’t on OSM, add it to OSM so the map becomes better for everyone and we soon won’t need GMapsWV.
Thanks for the recommendation for GMapsWV. I didn’t know about that, and have always felt very uncomfortable when using Google Maps to find restaurants and such that aren’t always listed in OSM.
I had this talk with a friend the other week, but I can’t recommend enough that if something OSM based isn’t showing correctly, you can always add it in once you find the right answer. For example, if it doesn’t have hours listed for a business, I’ll go to their website and copy that data in, or if the address doesn’t show up right, I’ll edit the building with the correct address. I found the other day that the address for my apartment was listed over a garage up the street instead of my building and I just removed the one and added in the other.
I completely fixed my neighborhood of 800 homes. took me a week. I drew in the house shapes and the heights, turned the row home blocks into individual linked blocks with exact addresses and accurate sidewalks.
I’ve never added in height before. Does it just look for number of stories, or how did you find that info?
When you make an area->structure in osm, you can add it in the height meta in meters.
When an app uses the OSM data to draw a 3d structure, it can use your height data. (and most appear to)
I meant more how did you find the height of the structures? Is it listed in a property database somewhere or are all the houses roughly the size of yours so you just used that as a base?
I live in a neighborhood with 3 house styles; each has a fixed number of floors. The townhomes all have 8’ ceilings, a basement, 1st, a second floor, and an attic or loft. All basements are walkout so i count them. I-joists are about 18 inches. So the townhomes are ~ 11 meters.
The single family are basement, 1st, and second, with 10" main floor and 8" second floor, then they have 16’ attics, which puts them ~ 13m
The apartment complex has 5 fixed floors. It was trickier because I don’t know the internal structure, nor the height of the decorative crowns, so I took a Google Earth look at the side of the building, drew a 45-degree line down from the top, and measured the bottom of the triangle
It’s also better if you know how to get there, its directions are typically very poorly optimized (although you’ll get there eventually).
Trying to learn, what is the advantage of GMapsVW versus opening Google Maps in a mobile browser?
Quoting their github page
- Clears private data on close
- Blocks access to Google trackers and other third-party resources
- Restricts all network requests to HTTPS
- Allows toggling of location permission
No. Most aren’t able to do basic navigation to addresses of people. I’d like it to be different but for me CoMaps and the other ones aren’t useful (yet)
I’ve generally been able to with Organic Maps. If the street address won’t get me exactly to them, I’ll add a mark right at their place on the map and route to that. That almost always works.
Probably because the area youre in is not mapped out, however the routing engine is pretty much on par with the ones by Garmin and others
Roads work but I do prefer entering a destination instead of going to a city and then having to figure out where the street and streetnumber are.
Especially since I only use navigation if i don’t already know where something is.
I use CoMaps and Vela Maps.
I can never find anything on OSM based maps by themselves. My current method is to search via the Apple Maps web beta then use geoshare to copy the location to CoMaps for turn-by-turn. I have magic earth installed as a fallback if I have problems with comaps.
Oh wow that’s an excellent app, now I don’t have to suffer when friends send me google links
Paper map?
I’ve tried several over the past few weeks. There aren’t any that can even do the basic job of mapping from point a to b consistently for some reason. Mapquest came the closest, but 3 issues.
- It won’t stay in landscape mode unless I put my tablet on Dex
- It often can’t find addresses based on business names, and sometimes not at all.
- It doesn’t have wide enough categories to find a good amount of places if you don’t know the address or name of what you’re wanting
I like the interface, it looks nice, but it’s missing key map things, that should be the basics over things like a unicorn icon, which is cute, but useless.
I’m not sure how it stacks up with the rest, but for web: https://mapcarta.com/
“Explore the globe with Mapcarta—the open map that unites the world through the collective knowledge of OpenStreetMap, Wikipedia, Wikidata, and other open projects.”
The foldable paper ones that you picked up at the gas station or tourist kiosk were the best and they were immune to name change updates.
They get outdated when names change, detours are required, anywhere they don’t exist, lack public transit, don’t have live traffic info, and don’t even show you where you are.
Who cares? Most of that list is negligible and the rest is a specific real-time occurrence that may not even be updated in a timely manner on the tech side. The underlying geography and major routes don’t change. Grab an old map and hit the road, you’ll find it’s mostly correct but you do need illumination if operating it in the dark.
I’m sure this is safe to do while driving
About as safe as staring at a fake road on your phone screen ? You’re not supposed to look at the directions for too long on your phone just cuz you can put it at eye level now, that’s still distracted driving. You remember what turns you take and if you can’t do that you either pull over and look or you have someone that can navigate
The map app reads the directions to you.
Yeah and for me it’s always too late, and most of them don’t have a solid plan, like you’ll need to be in this lane etc. That’s one of the biggest parts of navigation. If you pre plan your route you will know where to go and so on
good or better then google maps, no, they’re are a trillion $ company with major resoirces
I use OSMAnd+ its a little bit shit but ot gets me by. I also edit a little bit of Open Street maps in my area to help
This right here; if I can ever manage to get my transmission fixed, I can start recording my DoorDash trips, again. OSM is painfully lacking info in my city.
Time to get some oil on your hands!
Err probably not. But what transmission and what are the issues you’re having? Might be something much simpler than you think
MapQuest is a perfectly reasonable commercial alternative that has all of the things you’d expect - dynamically-loaded map tiles, turn-by-turn nav, etc. If you want to look at options that use OpenStreetMap data, I’ve found CoMaps to be very good. The biggest drawback is that you have to download maps (~100-300MB per geo area) all at once, which can be a problem if you’re on the road and don’t have great signal strength.
Openstreetmaps
Android app OSMAnd+
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No android auto support though…
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You can run android auto through graphene.
@duckshuffgoose
Android Auto work with the FDroid Version
