Too bad, maps.me was by far the best maps application for non city use, and ideal for hiking. Commendable initiative to bring it back in its original version!
A few examples of why it was so great:
Simple, non social bookmarks. As in: place a bookmark so you don't get lost while hiking, or when you find a nice spot you want to come back to later. Yep, a utility feature that doesn't somehow map to some stoopid business OKR in advertising. I am sure this is possible with Google maps or Apple maps somehow, but only after you've created an account, logged in, and made sure you have the equivalent of a South Korean inner city internet connection.
Also, easily downloadable maps that just stay on your phone. I am hiking, I don't have internet and need the map on my phone.
I know Google Maps allows you to do that but it is tedious unlike maps.me, which is instant.
Even for city use it was great. I've used it plenty of times when traveling to new places, because quite often I wouldn't know if I would be able to get data on my phone. So it was great being able to download maps up front.
Not only hiking! Traveling to Ecuador last year was a real eye-opener. For some reason, the maps on our navigation device (TomTom) were badly out of date and incomplete (despite of course downloading the latest update before travelling), fortunately I also had OsmAnd on my phone, it saved us from getting lost multiple times...
It depends a lot where you go. In places like Nepal OSM is often better than any map you can buy. In the Europe and especially the US, it's not as detailed as the national maps. They usually also have much better contours (drawn from aerial photos not from the space shuttle).
But still much better than Google maps, which seems very much for cars (at least outside of cities).
> Most of the aerial imagery used in Europe for improving OSM is shot from planes
Yes I know, and not just Europe. But my comment there was specifically about contours, i.e. height data from SRTM. I'm not aware of any project to crowd-source stereo-pair contour drawing, but if you know of one, I'd be interested to have a link.
For hiking, check out https://en.mapy.cz/turisticka. While it focuses on central Europe, it regularly imports OSM data worldwide and I found the coverage pretty good.
I can second this recommendation. Mapy.cz is especially awesome for me as I live in the Czech Republic. It has more updated satellite imagery for the CZ than Google, and shows all the hiking trails quite nicely. And the download function works pretty painlessly.
I've always wondered, why is there such a massive difference in popularity of this app in and outside of Czechia? Do you think it's mainly - lack of focus on non-Czech user experience (poor translations, map layer looking worse, ...), lack of marketing, something else?
I guess it's a combination, the lack of marketing for sure. Perhaps it's also the algorithms fault, if only a few people (considered from a worldwide view) download it, it's not shown to others looking for map apps (it's a very crowded space app wise).
Czechs are very outdoorsy people, they recommend this app to each other and so it's very popular there, but unfortunately the language barrier makes it harder spreading over borders. But these are all just wild guesses, who knows? Most people here in Germany use Komoot which gives away their maps for free on a regular basis, perhaps that's better marketing than "everything is free already"... :)
with the downside of them being different services, thus you can't have the same account (saved places / routes) on both the web version and the mobile app. Am I wrong?
The iOS app looks great. Thanks for the tip. It even has 3D visualisations of topography with satellite imagery.
Had tried to find similar apps for hiking recently and ended up with free versions of paid apps that were deliberately crippled, this looks perfect for what I need. Shame it’s not easier to find in App Store.
It even has a feature to find a trail looping a fixed distance from a point - I haven’t seen this on other apps and it’s really fast.
MapOut is great. Does one thing but does it very well, without distractions. Has contours (and a 3D presentation) unlike some OSM-based apps. Works well offline. No subscription nonsense, just a few dollars up front.
OsmAnd fits description perfectly, you can place bookmarks, no account required, maps from OSM, offline maps which can be used even without internet connection.
> OsmAnd fits description perfectly, you can place bookmarks, no account required, maps from OSM, offline maps which can be used even without internet connection.
I love OsmAnd and have paid for the premium version. It's great for hiking or in cities when you can't guarantee an internet connection.
Yeah, I would have pointed out OsmAnd too, but you were faster :) I'm not a subscriber yet as the features of the free version are enough for me, but someday my conscience will probably guilt me into supporting them anyway...
OsmAndroid sucked so badly with its seemingly hours of loading time. Search queries never worked well unless you entered exactly the string, including case and sometime whitespace. It would sometimes not find anything, unless I entered a useless whitespace after my words. In comparison to maps.me it is really really bad user experience and not to be recommended on any old phone. Your old phone will just laaaag and you will curse the search function.
It used to be the case, and I also avoided using OsmAnd in cities for years, but my recent attempt was far more successful. I think they finally fixed their search, at least I didn't encounter any issues with it lately. It's still definitely worse than most apps for hotels, stores, restaurants and so on, but is much less laggy anymore, and is indispensable for biking and pedestrian navigation as it shows every little OSM detail, unlike most other apps that focus on businesses.
OsmAnd is great and it's what I have on my phone, however it has a very un-intuitive UI and I often have to search for what feels ages to find a particular functionality.
It might be because I don't need a map often or maybe I'm just an idiot :)
it has a very rich (or maybe feature laden) UI, that's certainly right. For questions and in case you happen to have a Telegram account, you can join Osmand's telegram channel with developers present!
Same thing for me, I love OsmAnd and I paid to support it, but I'm frequently completely lost in the UI. I have used it for years and still I often need to kill it to be able to leave the menu.
I think the main issue is that the app is not intuitive, so you have to sit down and take the time to memorize how to do stuff with it before you need to do it live on the road. And I've never done that, my bad, I really should take the time.
You do need a subscription for offline maps...but you get very good map layers for outdoor use (some based on OSM data, some based on "official" sources like USGS or Ordnance Survey), you can create routes and tracks, set waypoints etc.
Second Gaia for outdoor activities. Map layers you won't find anywhere else; some that I use frequently are cell coverage, snow depth, many different aerial layers options, public / private land. They incorporate many region / country specific topo and aerial layers too. Their website is also great for trip planning, and the data you create there syncs with the app. Well worth the $40 annual subscription for me.
Pocket earth with the contour maps has been my go to offline hiking map for the last 5 years - not many other openstreetmap systems have that countour data.
I think it uses the https://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/ dataset, which is great, but I did get caught out once by voids in shuttle data meaning there was a 1000m deep hole in the mountain map that wasn’t there!
Wow thank you. That is quite feature complete. It is just the ugliest map that I have ever seen. And there seems to be no way of changing the map theme. Will still try it as my default for now. Thanks!
They are great for cycling and hiking. Setup is a bit more involved compared to maps.me, because you need a separate maps viewer app. Overall nothing too complicated for a somewhat tech savvy audience though.
My mapping app of choice is locus maps. There are alternatives such as OruxMaps available too.
I'll pretty much always carry a paper map when hiking (and a compass) so I'm not dependent on batteries. But otherwise I'm pretty much OK with depending on digital--so long as I have the maps downloaded locally.
Paper maps are pretty heavy downgrade in a lot of places compared to something that have satellite + osm + topographic map. They are often outdated or not nearly as detailed.
As recommended by others, mapy.cz is an excellent app/offline renderer of OSM data. Don't be afraid of czech website, the app and map data are international.
> Too bad, maps.me was by far the best maps application for non city use
Was it? The only time I tried to use it to find my way with a car in a forest, it guided me towards a road that simply wasn't there. It was on the map, and in real life it was just trees. My friend, who was driving, wasn't too happy. I switched to Google Maps and it worked.
Not just OSM. Google Maps is missing plenty of roads, and even entire towns in rural America.
Every National Park I've been to in the last three years has had a sign, a flyer, a notice, or a line in the brochure pleading with people not to rely on Google Maps and to use paper maps.
Google Maps in next to unusable in rural areas of the third world (as far as I have seen) with unpaved roads. I guess there is no business case for Google in spending money to map those areas
I always found maps.me to me much easier than osmand to start navigation by using the "to here" and "from here" buttons, but osmand is still better than nothing at least.
the thing I love about offline maps is that there is no nagging to update the map like there is with google. I also don't think that google downloads everything so you still need an internet connection if you want to search for some things
There is an existing f-droid version of Maps.me [1] and this looks like a separate effort. Despite having access to the source code, map hosting is a non-trivial problem [2].
It becomes trvial if one uses MapTiler or Mapbox with their own styles and overlays. And even self hosting has much improved since the days of raster tiles.
You can use openmaptiles to create the vector tiles (it is made by the Maptiler guys) and serve the tiles with tileserver-gl (or tileserver-gl-light, if you don't need raster tiles).
The fork has maintained their own tiles, so I don't think there's any question of not knowing how to. It's just been inconsistently maintained over time.
With openmaptiles, they had a hiccup when Mapbox sent C&D, because they used the same mvt scheme as Mapbox (thus they were able to use the same themes). Once they switched to their own scheme, I didn't notice any problems with maintenance.
With tileserver, it is more interesting. The full one (capable of generating raster tiles on demand) still needs ancient node.js (v10, soon to be eol), which can be a problem. The light one runs OK on the current stack.
We pay something like 35$ per month for four servers and the cheapest plan. That's peanuts compared to the infra we'd have to maintain ourselves and work we'd have to do to build the tiles or money to spend on a yearly tile subscription.
For downloadable maps you need vector tiles and a mobile rendering engine like OSMand and other mobile apps use. MapgoxGL maybe, but that one uses their service, I don't know if you can serve local data. You could with a local webserver.
I don't have much simpathy for MapsWithMe: they were illegally using OpenStreetMap data by not providing attribution[2] to the project and never complied. I don't know if intentionally or not, but they didn't make life easy for the maintainer of the libre fork, which looks dead too.
The Windy / Mapy apps recommended elsewhere in this thread don't seem to be doing that great of a job on attribution either. A recent draft[0] of OSM attribution guidelines states "attribution after one interaction" as suitable for a mobile app, but these apps require two, and some scrolling.
"include a notice associated with the Produced Work reasonably calculated to make any Person that uses, views, accesses, interacts with, or is otherwise exposed to the Produced Work aware that Content was obtained from the Database, Derivative Database, or the Database as part of a Collective Database, and that it is available under this License."
Wow, it looks like the new marketing department is trying very hard to provide people false promises looking at the last comments in the thread which were posted by very new users (bots?). And same pattern repeats on many public web sites where similar news appeared and caused a lot of discussion. It would have been better if they put the effort into the app instead of that.
> Thankfully, the original Belarusian engineers made the source code free. It is up to the community to pick up development of this app. Let's make sure that the MAPS.ME we know and love stays alive.
No link to the source code?
> If you like MAPS.ME, then please sign up. I will post updates on how it's going and will send instructions on how to get back the original app.
No, how about you give the instructions in the article?
I thought the same... 'Let's make sure the maps we know and love' gets remade by me and you guys come to my version because I won't give the repo code url.
The reason there are no instructions in the article yet is that the app is not published yet. I wanted to quickly inform people like me who woke up to an updated app about what happened and get a way to contact them once it's back up.
The complete lack of any mention in the article of the long-running F-Droid fork effort is a bit disturbing if I'm honest.
If the author had already reached out to @axet to offer to help / become a maintainer I'd imagine it would've been mentioned up top.
I'm all for people creating multiple divergent open-source forks of things (diversity is great) but this doesn't seem to be divergent at all. The stated intent is to repeat @axet's work exactly...
I did not experience any inconvenience with putting apps into the iOS AppStore. Rather, I found the process quite easy and my apps got approved faster than expected (within one day).
On top of that there's the cost of Apple hardware; you can get away with not having an iPhone and using xcode's emulation for many cases but with custom graphics heavy things like omim had, this approach would be limiting. And you still need a Mac either way.
And all this is to create an app that's competing directly with an almost identical app on the same store with only marginal benefits (the Android one in contrast has the benefit of being available outside the Google ecosystem, as well as having some exclusivity within F-Droid itself).
It would be a not insurmountable but still significant extra amount of maintenance effort. Given the maintenance effort was already seemingly unmanageable supporting Android alone it's understandable.
It is true, take it from the FSF themselves [0]. Or the VLC devs [1]. However, you're right that Maps.me is not GPL; I misread the question as asking about F-Droid itself which is GPL.
The way that this comment implies a carelessness about the way I operate is more than a little annoying, especially in light of the clear-cut carelessness of your original comment.
> take it from the FSF themselves
Is that supposed to be a trump card? I've read that FSF document. I read it when it was published in 2010, and because I'm not careless I read it again this morning before and after I posted my comment. I've also looked at it more than once in the intervening years.
> Or the VLC devs
VLC is on the App Store right now.
The FSF post was true in 2010, but unlike GPLv2, v3, etc, the Apple terms are not static documents. They've been revised multiple times in the last 10 years, and the FSF post hasn't been updated. The last time I spent an afternoon doing an analysis, I found that the terms at the time didn't conflict with GPL. At this point, if a person is going to claim that there's a conflict, the onus is on them to show that it's true—just like the FSF did at the time they published that blog post. It doesn't suffice to show that it was true in 2010. But again none of this matters here, because Maps.me isn't GPL software, so this entire diversion has been a waste of time.
EDIT: Disregard, I was confusing the actual F-Droid fork with an older re-upload on the same store. The former is called "Maps" while the re-upload is "Maps.me".
I was, thanks! There's a "Maps.me" app on F-Droid that's the one I described (presumably the same APK as the Play Store?). Whereas the fork you guys are talking about is just "Maps". Editing my comment.
Not sure what you're looking at, the last commit to the fork is August 2020.
The author of that fork has also been actively engaged with the maps.me devs throughout its development, you can see a lot of these discussions in the issues on the original github mapsme omim project.
I should have mentioned it. There's now a mention at the end of the post:
I'm aware that one fork already exists, but it hasn't seen any updates for a year and the app doesn't seem to work at this time. The plan is to eventually integrate axel's work back into the app.
When looking at the commit history on github of axet project, the most recent commit is only 4 months old. That comment about it not seeing updates since years looks wrong.
It was updated 4 months ago, it's actively maintained and I use it frequently. Someone else was looking at the wrong listing and you may have done the same thing. The correct listing is simply called "Maps"
I do not know if it's available on iOS (I suspect no) but on Android I am a really happy user of Osmand. It uses Openstreetmap as maps provider and I always use it when hiking. It gives you the altitude profile of your route which is very useful.
2. Disable map features like areas, buildings and such
3. If still unhappy, delete the full blown map data and download the road only map data (about ⅓ size of full blown map)
4. eMMC/microSD speed matters a lot, if you put it on an external SD card, make sure to get a high speed IOPS card labeled "A1" (1500) or better "A2" (4000 guaranteed read IOPs).
Reason: The map is rendered locally on demand from the map data(base), there's no tiles in the default map view. You basically get almost all of Openstreetmap's data (POIs, buildings, areas, ways and relations), not every poi type is indexed and searchable though. It even have has a working public transport map with routing based on timetables (if present) and ferry ways, etc. If you put the data on a slow external sd card, you'll notice.
I did observe it lagging on Android in the past but some point in the last year (I can't remember exactly when) they improved the performance a lot. Still not perfect but nowhere near as laggy as it was in my experience.
Edit: I realised after posting this that you were actually referring to releases not performance.
A critical aspect OSMand is missing for me are business information.
OSM maps will include store and venue locations, but Google Maps will show me their opening hours and give me their phone number, website, and (for restaurants) menu and food pictures.
Looking up that kind of info is, [i]by far[/i], the most common reason for me to open the maps app in the first place, before I actually decide that I want to go there and start navigation.
Obviously this is all information that Google has and OSM doesn't. But I would be OK with a plugin that lets me click on a store on OSM to open it in a Google Maps page in a webview.
I'd be letting Google know that I am interested in that place - no way around it - but I could keep the information of whether I actually went there and how long I stayed within OSM, without sharing my location with Google.
Another, probably easier plugin would be one that lets OSMAnd recognize the location provided by Google Maps when I use the share button. Then I could look up places I want to go on GMaps and send them to OSMAnd+ for navigation.
Osmand shows opening hours etc. when available, just do a short tap on the POI. As this is a "news for nerds" website, it is worth mentioning that if you find that info absent on OSM, then that means that you can add it for the benefit of all.
Strictly speaking that is not Osmand's fault, but an issue of tte underlying OpenStreetMap data project.
Google invests a lot into tagging google map POIs. On standard Android installations Google maps activates the maps timeline recording for you and it's creepily good at guessing to which shops you've been and by what means, etc. You then get frequent notifications that push and nudge you to review and answer questions about places (wheelchair access, confirm opening hours, business type, inventory, add photos, reviews, etc). The whole ordeal is quite gamified with contributor level and stars earned on your profile badge. It's designed to have GMaps' data as much as possible enriched by users.
I once paid for maps.me, when it was a Swiss company before being bought by mail.ru. As it was fast, simple, offline and had no tracking. Mail.ru then decided for a different revenue stream, killed the pay option and added things I don't want, like booking.com ads and travel guides and other things ...
Quite sad, since it was a nice and slick tool, where I trusted privacy and faster than osmand or alternatives.
The fork is in a good state codebase-wise but they've had ongoing issues hosting map tiles (hosting a tileserver is an arduous task for a free/voluntary effort).
The fork is/was very popular so I can envisage this new effort having similar issues if it starts to get traffic.
> They made another Google Maps - clearly, a map that highlights businesses makes more money than a map that is useful
Suddenly the recurring removal of more and more details from the Google Maps visual style makes sense. Earlier I thought it was just a case of overzealous minimalism.
Mine doesn't seem to have updated yet - no "wallet" that I can see, icons not the new colours, and I can turn 3D buildings on. I just disabled auto-updates for it.
I use Maps.me all the time. It has detailed offline maps, with bike paths mapped (where I am, at least).
If the source data (world/map data) is untouched (silly example - the trashcan in the corner), then it's the front-end that has changed, aka the app version filters things differently in this new version and gives preference to "setA" data (e.g. banks) vs "setB,C,D" data (e.g. trashcans, burger places, trashcans, benches).
Then "all" we have to do is fork the front end and keep it steady (with the assumption that the API is open and it will allow 'foreign' apps accessing their data - for free), or stay on the same non-updating app forever. As a principle I don't update apps, unless I absolutely need to (app nags to update 'or else').
I'm not a dev, but without having to rebuild the universe, I don't see any other solution that does not take massive effort.
Also, Ondřej Sojka speaks on the interface. How about the many GB/TB required? Is the new company willing to freely hand out an API that will provide thousands of hits, for free? Are they that generous to pay for the storage, network for someone else's charity?
ADDITION: just because I know this area (of the map used) pretty well, if you are ever there, try the "Honest Burger". I hope they survived the COVID shutdown.. they make what I call honest burger (I use this term for everything of a fair price/value)(way before I discovered that place). I especially liked the fries with rosemary. You don't get that often in a burger palce.
MAPS.ME allowed me and my girlfriend to do a 16-day hike to the Everest Base Camp without a guide.
It had more off-road trails than I had ever seen on Google Maps, along with altitude information, lodge reviews, checkpoints, etc.
I vividly remember turning my phone on a couple of times a day to look at MAPS.ME before immediately turning it off to save battery (you can't easily charge your phone up there). Except for the camera, I basically haven't used any other app for a whole 16 days. I haven't experienced such digital minimalism in adulthood until and since this trip.
The article claims that they are sold to a south korean company “Daegu ltd.”, but I was not able to find any information on this company online. One site even claims that it is an American company[1]. Although I agree that it sounds very much Korean for it is a name of a big city here, it would be nice to see it clarified if needed because there’s already a comment with how greedy korean companies are.
Yeah the original press release from mail.ru [1] says "Daegu Limited (member of Parity.com Group)". It is not at all clear that this is a Korean company.
Is there a reason why all the OSM alternatives on iOS (like maps.me, osmAnd, mapout, etc.) require you to download the more zoomed in maps?
I think being able to download is a nice feature but I don't often need it and would like to use an OSM-based alternative to Google Maps and zoom into any city without having to download it first.
Like: "Where was that place in Lisbon?" - "Lemme check... oh I have to download the city, one sec..." [Adding another few hundred megabytes that I will not need for a long time]
Some of them make downloading more of a hurdle than others, insisting that you download a whole country, or figure out what region you want.
On MapOut at least, you zoom in too far & then click the tile you don't have. On a good network there's a little more friction than on (say) google maps, but not so bad. A few MB, never hundreds of MB.
(And on a bad to nonexistent network, it's golden to be absolutely sure that it still has what you looked at yesterday.)
Osmand's default map is drawn by the offline ondemand renderer, and that requires a download (there's the full blown map data and a road only version with ⅓ the size)
There's also the option to enable tile based online maps from a number of predefined providers, if you know the url scheme you can also define a new satellite or traffic tile source from certain known providers (and set opacity) to show those tiles on top of another base map
This news surprises me, as I was just preparing a route in the (iPhone) app. Seems like it hasn’t been updated for me yet.
I haven’t used maps.me much, but generally it’s been a good experience. Other than being told multiple times to make a right turn to keep going straight on a highway, it’s been nice having directions and search that is entirely client-side and blazing fast.
Using it has made me want to contribute to OSM to improve the quality. To hear that it’s changing owners and becoming more of a product is unfortunate.
Very sad to see it go, it was great of road trips and walks out in the country where LTE was patchy and would drain your battery.
I really wish there were more OpenStreetMaps based iOS apps as competition against Google maps.
Apple maps is mostly pretty decent in Australia these days (I actually find it better than Google Maps in Melbourne now) but would love to see more competition - especially open source or at least community driven mapping clients.
Very sad to see. Maps.me has been invaluable when through hiking or bike packing. It will be missed. I would love to contribute to an open source version though, will check out the repo.
If any of the new engineers on any of the forks (?) read this, I'd donate my time on automation and server maintenance for the map tiles, if you need help. I'm an SRE so this is my day job.
The 'updated' image basically replaces all of the old map markers with ones for local businesses like Pret, Eat, etc. The original one shows you tube stations (e.g. Cannon Street) and plenty of other non-commercial points of interest.
Still works for me ... they just switched payment model from pay one time and enjoy forever to pay every year. Should have allowed old users to enjoy forever IMO ...
as for the original project, the hard part will be to build incentives to contribute updates to the maps.
that’s where I imagine Google’s commercial incentives to be hard to build, but I’m not really versed in the topic, so maybe that’s just an uneducated guess.
The maps are from OpenStreetMaps, so that's not really a problem.
The bigger issues are likely going to the infrastructure for converting from the OSM format to the maps.me vector format, and hosting the download servers.
“OpenStreetMap” is just a dataset. Whether the app/site you’re using to do routing includes elevation in its calculations is up to that site, and plenty do. Even the routing options on openstreetmap.org are third party services.
OpenStreetMap doesn’t have any official router associated with it. (Note that the basic router on openstreetmap.org is just a tech demo.) Instead, developers are encouraged to come up with their own routers that take whatever features they feel important into account. For example, some routers based on OSM data pull in third-party publicly available elevation datasets.
The most commonly used routers for bicycle touring – Brouter and Cycle.travel – certainly take elevation into account and helped me personally out all over the world. Brouter has a hiking mode, though it is still in beta, and perhaps there are hiking-specific elevation-aware routers out there.
There's OSRM and a very good commercial routing engine from Graphopper. I believe they also offer the core features as an opensource Java routing server. For cycling it has three separate profiles favouring one route over the other and two profiles for walking and hiking. The commercial version allows multi routing and route optimisation. You give it a fleet of vehicles and a number of POIs for them to visit and it splits the work between vehicles and optimally routes them.
Brouter can be installed as a routing engine plugin for OSMAnd, it’s on the F-Droid repository. Also, recent versions of OSMAnd are elevation-aware anyway.
> Note that the basic router on openstreetmap.org is just a tech demo
Huh? On the OSM.org website you can use Graphhopper or OSRM routing engines. Both are not "tech demos", but proper real routing engines for real world use. They are hosted by volunteers, so you shouldn't rely on them to be free for everyone for ever. If you want to build a business on them, both OSRM & Graphhopper are open source & self hostable
With regards to hiking in the mountains, the difference in distance between straight line vs corrected distance is quite irrelevant though. But the elevation profile of a track is important of course. Many applications do include elevation data in route analysis.
For tracks with steepness up to 30°, the straight line distance will be off by max 15%. If it's steeper then that, the actual terrain is the thing that determines how fast you can move.
When using GraphHopper this is not the case. For hiking elevation is considered but hills are not explicitly avoided only slower for up and downhill. For bike we avoid uphill.
Maps.me uses it's own map file format and it's own 3D map renderer. It was created in 2014, — OsmAnd used to be quite slow and clumsy back then (not sure how they compare today)
Too bad, maps.me was by far the best maps application for non city use, and ideal for hiking. Commendable initiative to bring it back in its original version!
A few examples of why it was so great:
Simple, non social bookmarks. As in: place a bookmark so you don't get lost while hiking, or when you find a nice spot you want to come back to later. Yep, a utility feature that doesn't somehow map to some stoopid business OKR in advertising. I am sure this is possible with Google maps or Apple maps somehow, but only after you've created an account, logged in, and made sure you have the equivalent of a South Korean inner city internet connection.
Also, easily downloadable maps that just stay on your phone. I am hiking, I don't have internet and need the map on my phone. I know Google Maps allows you to do that but it is tedious unlike maps.me, which is instant.
Even for city use it was great. I've used it plenty of times when traveling to new places, because quite often I wouldn't know if I would be able to get data on my phone. So it was great being able to download maps up front.
Most of the hiking maps are simply not even on Google maps. Only in OSM
Not only hiking! Traveling to Ecuador last year was a real eye-opener. For some reason, the maps on our navigation device (TomTom) were badly out of date and incomplete (despite of course downloading the latest update before travelling), fortunately I also had OsmAnd on my phone, it saved us from getting lost multiple times...
It depends a lot where you go. In places like Nepal OSM is often better than any map you can buy. In the Europe and especially the US, it's not as detailed as the national maps. They usually also have much better contours (drawn from aerial photos not from the space shuttle).
But still much better than Google maps, which seems very much for cars (at least outside of cities).
Most of the aerial imagery used in Europe for improving OSM is shot from planes, not from space.
> Most of the aerial imagery used in Europe for improving OSM is shot from planes
Yes I know, and not just Europe. But my comment there was specifically about contours, i.e. height data from SRTM. I'm not aware of any project to crowd-source stereo-pair contour drawing, but if you know of one, I'd be interested to have a link.
I used for travelling or bussines only in maps.me
For hiking, check out https://en.mapy.cz/turisticka. While it focuses on central Europe, it regularly imports OSM data worldwide and I found the coverage pretty good.
They also have a mobile app with downloadable maps. Look for Mapy.cz.
I used it throughout whole Europe, and found it superior to even local apps (map content) and OSMAnd (map rendering).
can you contribute to OSM like with maps.me ?
AFAIK to a degree.
Sadly, no. Though there are some other ways to do this (OSM Go!, StreetComplete, Vespucci)
OSMAnd allows some limited amount of contributing to OSM. But it is not a replacement for Vespucci (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Vespucci).
There is no better app like maps.me with there usability for me
I also used it,and I liked it.
I can second this recommendation. Mapy.cz is especially awesome for me as I live in the Czech Republic. It has more updated satellite imagery for the CZ than Google, and shows all the hiking trails quite nicely. And the download function works pretty painlessly.
Words can't describe how much I love Mapy.cz (a Czech person here).
I wonder if there are other high-profile cases of a national map provider successfully competing with Google or Apple maps.
As a non-Czech but close to the border living German I can also recommend this app, my current favourite on iOS.
Ahoj!
I've always wondered, why is there such a massive difference in popularity of this app in and outside of Czechia? Do you think it's mainly - lack of focus on non-Czech user experience (poor translations, map layer looking worse, ...), lack of marketing, something else?
I guess it's a combination, the lack of marketing for sure. Perhaps it's also the algorithms fault, if only a few people (considered from a worldwide view) download it, it's not shown to others looking for map apps (it's a very crowded space app wise). Czechs are very outdoorsy people, they recommend this app to each other and so it's very popular there, but unfortunately the language barrier makes it harder spreading over borders. But these are all just wild guesses, who knows? Most people here in Germany use Komoot which gives away their maps for free on a regular basis, perhaps that's better marketing than "everything is free already"... :)
1. Mapy.cz is not marketed outside of Czechoslovakia.
2. It has its own (high quality) map data only for Czechoslovakia, outside it uses "just" OSM, although you'll get arguably superior rendering there.
Czechoslovakia is not a country and hasn’t been for 28 years.
Mapy.cz uses OSM data worldwide except Czechia, where they have their own dataset.
The international version of this is Windy Maps - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.seznam.wind.... I highly recommend it - excellent for outdoors / hiking, tracking route etc. Also has a very polished UI.
Great tip, thanks. This is also available for IOS and am planning to use it soon.
I'm also going to start using this app
with the downside of them being different services, thus you can't have the same account (saved places / routes) on both the web version and the mobile app. Am I wrong?
You can if you use the "mapy.cz" version of the mobile app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.seznam.mapy
I have no idea what the point of the "international" version is, as this one has English translation as well.
That's surprisingly good in Minneapolis, presumably all from the OSM data. Even does good bike directions.
Can't find it on F-droid, perhaps under a different name?
Maps (Offline OpenStreetMap maps) - https://f-droid.org/packages/com.github.axet.maps
Source is hosted here:
https://gitlab.com/axet/omim/tree/HEAD
Thanks, but thats maps.me, not mapy.cz, right?
Mapy.cz is not free software.
Norway-specific, but https://norgeskart.no/ is insanely detailed for hiking, skiing, etc.
my friend was in Oslo. And he used only maps.me because the app is really reliable for a lot functions everywhere
The iOS app looks great. Thanks for the tip. It even has 3D visualisations of topography with satellite imagery.
Had tried to find similar apps for hiking recently and ended up with free versions of paid apps that were deliberately crippled, this looks perfect for what I need. Shame it’s not easier to find in App Store.
It even has a feature to find a trail looping a fixed distance from a point - I haven’t seen this on other apps and it’s really fast.
It's a questions to our habbits but i'd like maps.me
I have been using it for a long time, while the update did not affect me in anyway
Exactly!I don't know how to live without maps.me.So many times, the app has helped me
MapOut is a superb alternative for iOS. Intuitive interface and lovely cartography.
Thank you for the recommendation, looks amazing, instantly bought.
MapOut is great. Does one thing but does it very well, without distractions. Has contours (and a 3D presentation) unlike some OSM-based apps. Works well offline. No subscription nonsense, just a few dollars up front.
OsmAnd fits description perfectly, you can place bookmarks, no account required, maps from OSM, offline maps which can be used even without internet connection.
Yeah. I have used maps.me in the past, but osmand is much better. It's one of the few apps I subscribe to (I get more frequent map updates).
after osmand i wanted to use maps.me and understand that this pr. is really know what client wants
> OsmAnd fits description perfectly, you can place bookmarks, no account required, maps from OSM, offline maps which can be used even without internet connection.
I love OsmAnd and have paid for the premium version. It's great for hiking or in cities when you can't guarantee an internet connection.
Yeah, I would have pointed out OsmAnd too, but you were faster :) I'm not a subscriber yet as the features of the free version are enough for me, but someday my conscience will probably guilt me into supporting them anyway...
FYI They currently have a sub deal for like 8$/year!
The full version is also available on F-Droid for free.
OsmAndroid sucked so badly with its seemingly hours of loading time. Search queries never worked well unless you entered exactly the string, including case and sometime whitespace. It would sometimes not find anything, unless I entered a useless whitespace after my words. In comparison to maps.me it is really really bad user experience and not to be recommended on any old phone. Your old phone will just laaaag and you will curse the search function.
> Search queries never worked well unless you entered exactly the string, including case and sometime whitespace.
This. OsmAnd is packed with advanced feautures but search is unusable which is unfortunate because that's how I'd usually use a map.
For search I use the side app Acastus Photon which works well. It's just a search to position app that then can open the position in osmand.
I always thought that was just OSM data being incomplete. I guess I'll need to try Maps again.
It used to be the case, and I also avoided using OsmAnd in cities for years, but my recent attempt was far more successful. I think they finally fixed their search, at least I didn't encounter any issues with it lately. It's still definitely worse than most apps for hotels, stores, restaurants and so on, but is much less laggy anymore, and is indispensable for biking and pedestrian navigation as it shows every little OSM detail, unlike most other apps that focus on businesses.
Thanks for that updated picture. Next time I need an app like that, I will give it a second chance.
OsmAnd is great and it's what I have on my phone, however it has a very un-intuitive UI and I often have to search for what feels ages to find a particular functionality.
It might be because I don't need a map often or maybe I'm just an idiot :)
it has a very rich (or maybe feature laden) UI, that's certainly right. For questions and in case you happen to have a Telegram account, you can join Osmand's telegram channel with developers present!
https://t.me/OsmAndMaps
Same thing for me, I love OsmAnd and I paid to support it, but I'm frequently completely lost in the UI. I have used it for years and still I often need to kill it to be able to leave the menu.
I think the main issue is that the app is not intuitive, so you have to sit down and take the time to memorize how to do stuff with it before you need to do it live on the road. And I've never done that, my bad, I really should take the time.
I use Guru Maps for that. It's neat & fast...
I don't use anything other than maps.me
I actually can't understand, what's happening. In Poland Its still work great
In maps also have this functions so that I dont see arguments to change it
For this use case, let me recommend http://gaiagps.com/
You do need a subscription for offline maps...but you get very good map layers for outdoor use (some based on OSM data, some based on "official" sources like USGS or Ordnance Survey), you can create routes and tracks, set waypoints etc.
Second Gaia for outdoor activities. Map layers you won't find anywhere else; some that I use frequently are cell coverage, snow depth, many different aerial layers options, public / private land. They incorporate many region / country specific topo and aerial layers too. Their website is also great for trip planning, and the data you create there syncs with the app. Well worth the $40 annual subscription for me.
Check out pocket earth, the UI is a bit clumsy but it’s clearly a labour of love by the author and has served me well in such scenarios..
I second Pocket Earth.
Pocket earth with the contour maps has been my go to offline hiking map for the last 5 years - not many other openstreetmap systems have that countour data. I think it uses the https://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/ dataset, which is great, but I did get caught out once by voids in shuttle data meaning there was a 1000m deep hole in the mountain map that wasn’t there!
I've been using Pocket Earth for a long time and love the way to measure the distance between two points, but the interface is atrocious.
Wow thank you. That is quite feature complete. It is just the ugliest map that I have ever seen. And there seems to be no way of changing the map theme. Will still try it as my default for now. Thanks!
it's too early to say that the program failed
I highly recommend the map material and renderthemes from openandromaps.(https://www.openandromaps.org/en)
They are great for cycling and hiking. Setup is a bit more involved compared to maps.me, because you need a separate maps viewer app. Overall nothing too complicated for a somewhat tech savvy audience though.
My mapping app of choice is locus maps. There are alternatives such as OruxMaps available too.
Or use a real map, and don't risk running out of batteries.
While I love paper maps (especially for hiking), digital maps are more convenient in cities. Also, I'm running out of pockets.
I'll pretty much always carry a paper map when hiking (and a compass) so I'm not dependent on batteries. But otherwise I'm pretty much OK with depending on digital--so long as I have the maps downloaded locally.
We live in 2020, of course using digital maps are more useful and comfortable
Paper maps are pretty heavy downgrade in a lot of places compared to something that have satellite + osm + topographic map. They are often outdated or not nearly as detailed.
You need to buy one for every place and some don't have the level of details you’d get with a digital map. Also, they’re quickly outdated.
I did a hike a few years ago with nothing but a drawn map and a compass - it's a very enjoyable experience indeed.
Apple Maps has an option to bookmark any arbitrary point and create collections without creating an account or doing any sort of sharing.
the iphone is your account.
As recommended by others, mapy.cz is an excellent app/offline renderer of OSM data. Don't be afraid of czech website, the app and map data are international.
Download links for app are here: https://en.mapy.cz/zakladni?x=15.5833000&y=49.4000000&z=11&m...
> Too bad, maps.me was by far the best maps application for non city use
Was it? The only time I tried to use it to find my way with a car in a forest, it guided me towards a road that simply wasn't there. It was on the map, and in real life it was just trees. My friend, who was driving, wasn't too happy. I switched to Google Maps and it worked.
I'm guessing GP is European and you're American. There are significant issues with OSM data in the rural US.
Not just OSM. Google Maps is missing plenty of roads, and even entire towns in rural America.
Every National Park I've been to in the last three years has had a sign, a flyer, a notice, or a line in the brochure pleading with people not to rely on Google Maps and to use paper maps.
Google Maps in next to unusable in rural areas of the third world (as far as I have seen) with unpaved roads. I guess there is no business case for Google in spending money to map those areas
In all programs always there are troubles because we are not have ideals but maps.me not rarely help me
On Apple Maps, press on the map and you have marked the location. Err, that's it. You can also make it a 'favourite' if you want.
You're correct - no offline mapping, though it's pretty parsimonious with data
I'm sure that in future we can get cool version, it's standard updates that will fix
I always found maps.me to me much easier than osmand to start navigation by using the "to here" and "from here" buttons, but osmand is still better than nothing at least.
the thing I love about offline maps is that there is no nagging to update the map like there is with google. I also don't think that google downloads everything so you still need an internet connection if you want to search for some things
Google maps is annoying for offline use, and then the offline content “expires” after xx amount of days. Making it completely unreliable.
Maps.me offline functionality was great.
recently downloaded before the update. With and without it so far I like everything
I think that they will be more upgraded and everything will be even better
There is an existing f-droid version of Maps.me [1] and this looks like a separate effort. Despite having access to the source code, map hosting is a non-trivial problem [2].
[1]: https://gitlab.com/axet/omim
[2]: https://gitlab.com/axet/omim/-/issues/176
It becomes trvial if one uses MapTiler or Mapbox with their own styles and overlays. And even self hosting has much improved since the days of raster tiles.
Self-hosting has improved but is still non-trivial.
MapTiler and Mapbox are expensive.
You can use openmaptiles to create the vector tiles (it is made by the Maptiler guys) and serve the tiles with tileserver-gl (or tileserver-gl-light, if you don't need raster tiles).
Yes.
The maintenance of which is non-trivial.
The fork has maintained their own tiles, so I don't think there's any question of not knowing how to. It's just been inconsistently maintained over time.
With openmaptiles, they had a hiccup when Mapbox sent C&D, because they used the same mvt scheme as Mapbox (thus they were able to use the same themes). Once they switched to their own scheme, I didn't notice any problems with maintenance.
With tileserver, it is more interesting. The full one (capable of generating raster tiles on demand) still needs ancient node.js (v10, soon to be eol), which can be a problem. The light one runs OK on the current stack.
We pay something like 35$ per month for four servers and the cheapest plan. That's peanuts compared to the infra we'd have to maintain ourselves and work we'd have to do to build the tiles or money to spend on a yearly tile subscription.
I tried to self-host tiles from OSM in 2013; it was possible but quite difficult indeed; how has it improved since then?
Today, you would generate vector tiles (thus taking much less disk space) and you can style or re-style them after they are generated.
Oh, excellent, thank you. That's so much better indeed.
> It becomes trvial []
I'm looking forward to you helping solve this problem then as I have the Android app, but can't use due to lack of downloadable maps.
I have a couple of places in the offline storage, which still works, but if I go to a new place I can't use the app, downloads never start.
For downloadable maps you need vector tiles and a mobile rendering engine like OSMand and other mobile apps use. MapgoxGL maybe, but that one uses their service, I don't know if you can serve local data. You could with a local webserver.
I don't have much simpathy for MapsWithMe: they were illegally using OpenStreetMap data by not providing attribution[2] to the project and never complied. I don't know if intentionally or not, but they didn't make life easy for the maintainer of the libre fork, which looks dead too.
[1]: https://github.com/matkoniecz/illegal-use-of-OpenStreetMap/b...
[2]: https://github.com/mapsme/omim/issues/11845
"they didn't make life easy for the maintainer of the libre fork"
They were trying to use servers paid by maps.me in version of app that removed all revenue generators.
This part was perfectly understandable, removing ads/tracking/etc is fine - but use your own servers then.
But lack of a proper attribution was not acceptable (yes, I am the same matkoniecz).
The Windy / Mapy apps recommended elsewhere in this thread don't seem to be doing that great of a job on attribution either. A recent draft[0] of OSM attribution guidelines states "attribution after one interaction" as suitable for a mobile app, but these apps require two, and some scrolling.
[0] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Draft_Attribution_Guidel...
Mote that this draft was rejected primarily because due to "attribution after one interaction" part.
ODBL ( https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1-0/ ) that is a license of OSM data - https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright ) has requirement to include attribution reasonably calculated to make any Person that views the map aware that Content was obtained from the OpenStreetMap and that it is available under the ODBL License.
Hidden attribution does not fullfill it.
"include a notice associated with the Produced Work reasonably calculated to make any Person that uses, views, accesses, interacts with, or is otherwise exposed to the Produced Work aware that Content was obtained from the Database, Derivative Database, or the Database as part of a Collective Database, and that it is available under this License."
Wow, it looks like the new marketing department is trying very hard to provide people false promises looking at the last comments in the thread which were posted by very new users (bots?). And same pattern repeats on many public web sites where similar news appeared and caused a lot of discussion. It would have been better if they put the effort into the app instead of that.
> Thankfully, the original Belarusian engineers made the source code free. It is up to the community to pick up development of this app. Let's make sure that the MAPS.ME we know and love stays alive.
No link to the source code?
> If you like MAPS.ME, then please sign up. I will post updates on how it's going and will send instructions on how to get back the original app.
No, how about you give the instructions in the article?
Here, I think: https://github.com/mapsme/omim
I thought the same... 'Let's make sure the maps we know and love' gets remade by me and you guys come to my version because I won't give the repo code url.
Sorry, forgot the link, it's updated now.
The reason there are no instructions in the article yet is that the app is not published yet. I wanted to quickly inform people like me who woke up to an updated app about what happened and get a way to contact them once it's back up.
The complete lack of any mention in the article of the long-running F-Droid fork effort is a bit disturbing if I'm honest.
If the author had already reached out to @axet to offer to help / become a maintainer I'd imagine it would've been mentioned up top.
I'm all for people creating multiple divergent open-source forks of things (diversity is great) but this doesn't seem to be divergent at all. The stated intent is to repeat @axet's work exactly...
Does the F-Droid fork have an app store version? Author did say they used an iPhone.
Since F-Droid is an Android store, it most likely doesn't even exist for iOS.
But that's kinda the price you pay there.
Given the cost & overhead of distributing via Apple, I can't imagine there'd be much incentive for this.
Could you expand on this please? What costs apart from the $100 or so dev license?
As far as I know, you actually need a Mac or other Apple computer to push something to the Appstore and even then it's not a fun process.
This knowledge is second hand from a friend of mine, whom I had the pleasure of listening to when he was ranting about the process a few years ago.
Maybe things have changed since then..?
I did not experience any inconvenience with putting apps into the iOS AppStore. Rather, I found the process quite easy and my apps got approved faster than expected (within one day).
Did you already have a Mac? Because that seems like a significant part of the process if it is stil necessary.
$100 is not insignificant.
On top of that there's the cost of Apple hardware; you can get away with not having an iPhone and using xcode's emulation for many cases but with custom graphics heavy things like omim had, this approach would be limiting. And you still need a Mac either way.
And all this is to create an app that's competing directly with an almost identical app on the same store with only marginal benefits (the Android one in contrast has the benefit of being available outside the Google ecosystem, as well as having some exclusivity within F-Droid itself).
It would be a not insurmountable but still significant extra amount of maintenance effort. Given the maintenance effort was already seemingly unmanageable supporting Android alone it's understandable.
No, and they won't because it's against Apple's terms of service to license your app as GPL.
Even if this were true, it's irrelevant since Maps.me isn't GPL software to begin with.
It is true, take it from the FSF themselves [0]. Or the VLC devs [1]. However, you're right that Maps.me is not GPL; I misread the question as asking about F-Droid itself which is GPL.
[0]: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store...
[1]: https://www.zdnet.com/article/no-gpl-apps-for-apples-app-sto...
The way that this comment implies a carelessness about the way I operate is more than a little annoying, especially in light of the clear-cut carelessness of your original comment.
> take it from the FSF themselves
Is that supposed to be a trump card? I've read that FSF document. I read it when it was published in 2010, and because I'm not careless I read it again this morning before and after I posted my comment. I've also looked at it more than once in the intervening years.
> Or the VLC devs
VLC is on the App Store right now.
The FSF post was true in 2010, but unlike GPLv2, v3, etc, the Apple terms are not static documents. They've been revised multiple times in the last 10 years, and the FSF post hasn't been updated. The last time I spent an afternoon doing an analysis, I found that the terms at the time didn't conflict with GPL. At this point, if a person is going to claim that there's a conflict, the onus is on them to show that it's true—just like the FSF did at the time they published that blog post. It doesn't suffice to show that it was true in 2010. But again none of this matters here, because Maps.me isn't GPL software, so this entire diversion has been a waste of time.
I̶t̶ ̶l̶o̶o̶k̶s̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶F̶-̶D̶r̶o̶i̶d̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶k̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶l̶a̶s̶t̶ ̶u̶p̶d̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶f̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶y̶e̶a̶r̶s̶ ̶a̶g̶o̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶'̶w̶e̶b̶s̶i̶t̶e̶'̶ ̶l̶i̶n̶k̶ ̶j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶p̶o̶i̶n̶t̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶m̶a̶p̶s̶.̶m̶e̶,̶ ̶r̶a̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶u̶b̶l̶i̶c̶ ̶r̶e̶p̶o̶s̶i̶t̶o̶r̶y̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶f̶i̶c̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶k̶.
̶G̶i̶v̶e̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶,̶ ̶I̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶s̶e̶e̶ ̶w̶h̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶a̶u̶t̶h̶o̶r̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶s̶i̶d̶e̶r̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶a̶ ̶d̶e̶a̶d̶/̶a̶b̶a̶n̶d̶o̶n̶e̶d̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶j̶e̶c̶t̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶s̶e̶e̶ ̶n̶o̶ ̶r̶e̶a̶s̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶p̶i̶c̶k̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶u̶p̶ ̶i̶n̶s̶t̶e̶a̶d̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶r̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶m̶o̶s̶t̶ ̶r̶e̶c̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶M̶a̶p̶s̶.̶m̶e̶ ̶p̶u̶b̶l̶i̶c̶ ̶r̶e̶l̶e̶a̶s̶e̶.̶
EDIT: Disregard, I was confusing the actual F-Droid fork with an older re-upload on the same store. The former is called "Maps" while the re-upload is "Maps.me".
Maybe you're looking at the wrong place?
> It looks like the F-Droid fork was last updated five years ago
The latest release is August 2020 [0] and the latest update to the repo happened at the same time [1].
> and the 'website' link just points to maps.me, rather than a public repository or anything specific to the fork.
There's a "Source Code" link [0] which points to the Gitlab repo [1]. I don't even see a "website" link.
[0]: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.axet.maps/
[1]: https://gitlab.com/axet/omim/tree/HEAD
> Maybe you're looking at the wrong place?
I was, thanks! There's a "Maps.me" app on F-Droid that's the one I described (presumably the same APK as the Play Store?). Whereas the fork you guys are talking about is just "Maps". Editing my comment.
Not sure what you're looking at, the last commit to the fork is August 2020.
The author of that fork has also been actively engaged with the maps.me devs throughout its development, you can see a lot of these discussions in the issues on the original github mapsme omim project.
Sorry for meta, but what's the hn markdown for strikethrough?
Wish HN would document such things, feels a bit gate-keeper-y but I doubt intentional.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439437
Looks like the parent ran his comment through a strikethrough character generator; I don't believe HN supports it natively.
You are correct.
https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+0336
You originally posted as lucideer then instead of editing that you posted as piaste.
It looks like there are more of us than there are, possibly.
No, we're different users. Out of curiosity, why did you think otherwise?
I should have mentioned it. There's now a mention at the end of the post:
I'm aware that one fork already exists, but it hasn't seen any updates for a year and the app doesn't seem to work at this time. The plan is to eventually integrate axel's work back into the app.
When looking at the commit history on github of axet project, the most recent commit is only 4 months old. That comment about it not seeing updates since years looks wrong.
It was updated 4 months ago, it's actively maintained and I use it frequently. Someone else was looking at the wrong listing and you may have done the same thing. The correct listing is simply called "Maps"
F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.axet.maps/
Gitlab: https://gitlab.com/axet/omim/tree/HEAD
I do not know if it's available on iOS (I suspect no) but on Android I am a really happy user of Osmand. It uses Openstreetmap as maps provider and I always use it when hiking. It gives you the altitude profile of your route which is very useful.
I also use Osmand, though when I compared it to Maps.me, loading a map was significantly slower in Osmand
Yeah it was incredibly slow to render the map for me while google maps was flawless
1. Check if GPU rendering is activated.
2. Disable map features like areas, buildings and such
3. If still unhappy, delete the full blown map data and download the road only map data (about ⅓ size of full blown map)
4. eMMC/microSD speed matters a lot, if you put it on an external SD card, make sure to get a high speed IOPS card labeled "A1" (1500) or better "A2" (4000 guaranteed read IOPs).
Reason: The map is rendered locally on demand from the map data(base), there's no tiles in the default map view. You basically get almost all of Openstreetmap's data (POIs, buildings, areas, ways and relations), not every poi type is indexed and searchable though. It even have has a working public transport map with routing based on timetables (if present) and ferry ways, etc. If you put the data on a slow external sd card, you'll notice.
It is on iOS, though it usually lags the Android version.
I did observe it lagging on Android in the past but some point in the last year (I can't remember exactly when) they improved the performance a lot. Still not perfect but nowhere near as laggy as it was in my experience.
Edit: I realised after posting this that you were actually referring to releases not performance.
OSMand is much more complete than maps.me.
A usable alternative to gmaps for me.
A critical aspect OSMand is missing for me are business information.
OSM maps will include store and venue locations, but Google Maps will show me their opening hours and give me their phone number, website, and (for restaurants) menu and food pictures.
Looking up that kind of info is, [i]by far[/i], the most common reason for me to open the maps app in the first place, before I actually decide that I want to go there and start navigation.
Obviously this is all information that Google has and OSM doesn't. But I would be OK with a plugin that lets me click on a store on OSM to open it in a Google Maps page in a webview.
I'd be letting Google know that I am interested in that place - no way around it - but I could keep the information of whether I actually went there and how long I stayed within OSM, without sharing my location with Google.
Another, probably easier plugin would be one that lets OSMAnd recognize the location provided by Google Maps when I use the share button. Then I could look up places I want to go on GMaps and send them to OSMAnd+ for navigation.
Osmand shows opening hours etc. when available, just do a short tap on the POI. As this is a "news for nerds" website, it is worth mentioning that if you find that info absent on OSM, then that means that you can add it for the benefit of all.
For people that don't want to look into editing OSM directly, there's this website to easily add business information: https://www.onosm.org
Entered data will be added as a note to OSM and experienced editors will then correct/add the business on the map.
Strictly speaking that is not Osmand's fault, but an issue of tte underlying OpenStreetMap data project.
Google invests a lot into tagging google map POIs. On standard Android installations Google maps activates the maps timeline recording for you and it's creepily good at guessing to which shops you've been and by what means, etc. You then get frequent notifications that push and nudge you to review and answer questions about places (wheelchair access, confirm opening hours, business type, inventory, add photos, reviews, etc). The whole ordeal is quite gamified with contributor level and stars earned on your profile badge. It's designed to have GMaps' data as much as possible enriched by users.
It depends on your choice, everyone of us can think that him or her program the best
I always download new maps for cities and countries. There will be no problems in the future
I once paid for maps.me, when it was a Swiss company before being bought by mail.ru. As it was fast, simple, offline and had no tracking. Mail.ru then decided for a different revenue stream, killed the pay option and added things I don't want, like booking.com ads and travel guides and other things ...
Quite sad, since it was a nice and slick tool, where I trusted privacy and faster than osmand or alternatives.
There is already an open source fork at F-Droid:
https://f-droid.org/de/packages/com.github.axet.maps/
Note: This is not new. F-Droid maintains this open source version since serveral years.
This fork is in a poor state, barely working, needs some love
Installed OK, but errors-out trying to download the first map :(
The fork is in a good state codebase-wise but they've had ongoing issues hosting map tiles (hosting a tileserver is an arduous task for a free/voluntary effort).
The fork is/was very popular so I can envisage this new effort having similar issues if it starts to get traffic.
I kind of feel it’s supposed to be set and forget right? I spent a few days setting it all up but it was pretty seamless after.
Source code for the mobile app here : https://github.com/mapsme/omim
But we have it back - Mapy.cz. It's basically like Maps.me but better across most dimensions.
I'm always confused why nobody know about it.
can you contribute to OSM like with maps.me ?
Sadly, no. Though there are some other ways to do this (OSM Go!, StreetComplete, Vespucci)
I don't see that it is opensource.
It’s published under the name Windy Maps globally. Yes, it’s a great app, but there are still no trashcans and no ability to contribute back to OSM.
The maps.me vector maps were better to me because much lighter. I could download a whole country in only 20MB.
I don't see to use another if all this is in one program
Could you please not use a centralized service like Telegram for organizing OSS.
I underand if you can't live with the limitations of IRC. But it's 2020 and we have Matrix. Protocols, not platforms.
> They made another Google Maps - clearly, a map that highlights businesses makes more money than a map that is useful
Suddenly the recurring removal of more and more details from the Google Maps visual style makes sense. Earlier I thought it was just a case of overzealous minimalism.
Mine doesn't seem to have updated yet - no "wallet" that I can see, icons not the new colours, and I can turn 3D buildings on. I just disabled auto-updates for it.
I use Maps.me all the time. It has detailed offline maps, with bike paths mapped (where I am, at least).
If the source data (world/map data) is untouched (silly example - the trashcan in the corner), then it's the front-end that has changed, aka the app version filters things differently in this new version and gives preference to "setA" data (e.g. banks) vs "setB,C,D" data (e.g. trashcans, burger places, trashcans, benches).
Then "all" we have to do is fork the front end and keep it steady (with the assumption that the API is open and it will allow 'foreign' apps accessing their data - for free), or stay on the same non-updating app forever. As a principle I don't update apps, unless I absolutely need to (app nags to update 'or else').
I'm not a dev, but without having to rebuild the universe, I don't see any other solution that does not take massive effort.
Also, Ondřej Sojka speaks on the interface. How about the many GB/TB required? Is the new company willing to freely hand out an API that will provide thousands of hits, for free? Are they that generous to pay for the storage, network for someone else's charity?
ADDITION: just because I know this area (of the map used) pretty well, if you are ever there, try the "Honest Burger". I hope they survived the COVID shutdown.. they make what I call honest burger (I use this term for everything of a fair price/value)(way before I discovered that place). I especially liked the fries with rosemary. You don't get that often in a burger palce.
MAPS.ME allowed me and my girlfriend to do a 16-day hike to the Everest Base Camp without a guide.
It had more off-road trails than I had ever seen on Google Maps, along with altitude information, lodge reviews, checkpoints, etc.
I vividly remember turning my phone on a couple of times a day to look at MAPS.ME before immediately turning it off to save battery (you can't easily charge your phone up there). Except for the camera, I basically haven't used any other app for a whole 16 days. I haven't experienced such digital minimalism in adulthood until and since this trip.
The article claims that they are sold to a south korean company “Daegu ltd.”, but I was not able to find any information on this company online. One site even claims that it is an American company[1]. Although I agree that it sounds very much Korean for it is a name of a big city here, it would be nice to see it clarified if needed because there’s already a comment with how greedy korean companies are.
[1]: https://mergr.com/daegu-acquisitions
Yeah the original press release from mail.ru [1] says "Daegu Limited (member of Parity.com Group)". It is not at all clear that this is a Korean company.
[1]: https://corp.mail.ru/en/press/releases/10761/
Looks like a Cyprus registered entity for Russian owned Switzerland headquartered company. No Korea in sight.
https://efiling.drcor.mcit.gov.cy/DrcorPublic/SearchResults.... https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/MAIL/mail-r...
Is there a reason why all the OSM alternatives on iOS (like maps.me, osmAnd, mapout, etc.) require you to download the more zoomed in maps?
I think being able to download is a nice feature but I don't often need it and would like to use an OSM-based alternative to Google Maps and zoom into any city without having to download it first.
Like: "Where was that place in Lisbon?" - "Lemme check... oh I have to download the city, one sec..." [Adding another few hundred megabytes that I will not need for a long time]
Actually, that’s what the „new“ MAPS.ME does - it’s just a wrapper around Mapbox, which is based on OSM and you can use it online.
Mapy.cz or WindyMaps don't.
Some of them make downloading more of a hurdle than others, insisting that you download a whole country, or figure out what region you want.
On MapOut at least, you zoom in too far & then click the tile you don't have. On a good network there's a little more friction than on (say) google maps, but not so bad. A few MB, never hundreds of MB.
(And on a bad to nonexistent network, it's golden to be absolutely sure that it still has what you looked at yesterday.)
Osmand's default map is drawn by the offline ondemand renderer, and that requires a download (there's the full blown map data and a road only version with ⅓ the size)
There's also the option to enable tile based online maps from a number of predefined providers, if you know the url scheme you can also define a new satellite or traffic tile source from certain known providers (and set opacity) to show those tiles on top of another base map
This news surprises me, as I was just preparing a route in the (iPhone) app. Seems like it hasn’t been updated for me yet.
I haven’t used maps.me much, but generally it’s been a good experience. Other than being told multiple times to make a right turn to keep going straight on a highway, it’s been nice having directions and search that is entirely client-side and blazing fast.
Using it has made me want to contribute to OSM to improve the quality. To hear that it’s changing owners and becoming more of a product is unfortunate.
Very sad to see it go, it was great of road trips and walks out in the country where LTE was patchy and would drain your battery.
I really wish there were more OpenStreetMaps based iOS apps as competition against Google maps.
Apple maps is mostly pretty decent in Australia these days (I actually find it better than Google Maps in Melbourne now) but would love to see more competition - especially open source or at least community driven mapping clients.
I use Windy Maps for this purpose. It also allows one to download maps for offline use.
The newsletter they linked to¹ has an atom feed² if, like me, you want to follow this but don't use Telegram or want emails.
1: https://mapsme.substack.com/ 2: https://mapsme.substack.com/feed
I found this press releases [1] on the Maps.me wikipedia page with some details about the sale.
[1]: https://corp.mail.ru/en/press/releases/10761/
Very sad to see. Maps.me has been invaluable when through hiking or bike packing. It will be missed. I would love to contribute to an open source version though, will check out the repo.
Edit: realised the developers open sourced it.
Wow, twitter blocks this link and you can't even share it through bit.ly
Agree with author, existing map design in Maps.me is by far superior to any other app I've seen and biggest reason I keep using it.
Man, i did TMB with the help of maps.me..literally a life saver on those mountains! So glad to see this efford
If any of the new engineers on any of the forks (?) read this, I'd donate my time on automation and server maintenance for the map tiles, if you need help. I'm an SRE so this is my day job.
There is https://maphub.net/ which offers markers, waypoints, picture uploads and you can choose from different base maps!
I didn't feel any problems at all,as everything was fine, so everything remained
The main difference between the two images the author showed seem to be the isometric buildings models.
Where do the data for these come from to begin with? I assume these can't be user generated.
For "basic" building structures (number of stories, roof type, etc.) there is different effort in the mapping community.
For different more complex buildings there are different sources of data. For isntance the city of Berlin published 3D models as part of their OpenData initiative. https://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/planen/stadtmodelle/d...
In other regions there are data sets from universities or others available.
Some limited info also on https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/3D
The 'updated' image basically replaces all of the old map markers with ones for local businesses like Pret, Eat, etc. The original one shows you tube stations (e.g. Cannon Street) and plenty of other non-commercial points of interest.
Still works for me ... they just switched payment model from pay one time and enjoy forever to pay every year. Should have allowed old users to enjoy forever IMO ...
I moved from maps.me to Osmand after maps.me changed.
Will you also be releasing the iOS version?
I was hesitant to use maps.me because it was Russian based. Dont know much about the company which bought it.
now i dont see the problem with it, there were many unknowns who did unreal things.
Sad news, Have been using this app for a long time and it was the best app for me.
as for the original project, the hard part will be to build incentives to contribute updates to the maps.
that’s where I imagine Google’s commercial incentives to be hard to build, but I’m not really versed in the topic, so maybe that’s just an uneducated guess.
The maps are from OpenStreetMaps, so that's not really a problem.
The bigger issues are likely going to the infrastructure for converting from the OSM format to the maps.me vector format, and hosting the download servers.
I loved maps.me, especially when travelling to new countries - best of luck with this
Maps.me is likely going to launch some cryptocurrency/blockchain integration.
I'm writing from Spain. I believe in maps.me!
very simple app. Everything you need is available and in a convenient location
Are you planning to build this as an open source project?
MAPS.ME is already Open Source. The issue for maps apps is the cost of hosting the tiling service.
in my country there has never been such an application as maps.me where all roads really converge
I wish openstreetmap used elevation data for hiking. Say I want to climb to a hill back, it should calculate distance w.r.t elevation.
Right now it assumes a straight line be it on a road or up and down a mountain.
“OpenStreetMap” is just a dataset. Whether the app/site you’re using to do routing includes elevation in its calculations is up to that site, and plenty do. Even the routing options on openstreetmap.org are third party services.
OpenStreetMap doesn’t have any official router associated with it. (Note that the basic router on openstreetmap.org is just a tech demo.) Instead, developers are encouraged to come up with their own routers that take whatever features they feel important into account. For example, some routers based on OSM data pull in third-party publicly available elevation datasets.
The most commonly used routers for bicycle touring – Brouter and Cycle.travel – certainly take elevation into account and helped me personally out all over the world. Brouter has a hiking mode, though it is still in beta, and perhaps there are hiking-specific elevation-aware routers out there.
There's OSRM and a very good commercial routing engine from Graphopper. I believe they also offer the core features as an opensource Java routing server. For cycling it has three separate profiles favouring one route over the other and two profiles for walking and hiking. The commercial version allows multi routing and route optimisation. You give it a fleet of vehicles and a number of POIs for them to visit and it splits the work between vehicles and optimally routes them.
I use osmand so that one is missing features
Brouter can be installed as a routing engine plugin for OSMAnd, it’s on the F-Droid repository. Also, recent versions of OSMAnd are elevation-aware anyway.
i did not know that. i will check it out
> Note that the basic router on openstreetmap.org is just a tech demo
Huh? On the OSM.org website you can use Graphhopper or OSRM routing engines. Both are not "tech demos", but proper real routing engines for real world use. They are hosted by volunteers, so you shouldn't rely on them to be free for everyone for ever. If you want to build a business on them, both OSRM & Graphhopper are open source & self hostable
With regards to hiking in the mountains, the difference in distance between straight line vs corrected distance is quite irrelevant though. But the elevation profile of a track is important of course. Many applications do include elevation data in route analysis.
For tracks with steepness up to 30°, the straight line distance will be off by max 15%. If it's steeper then that, the actual terrain is the thing that determines how fast you can move.
When using GraphHopper this is not the case. For hiking elevation is considered but hills are not explicitly avoided only slower for up and downhill. For bike we avoid uphill.
https://graphhopper.com/maps/ (click the dots near the bike icon for more profiles)
And the best is: everything is open source and you can easily tweak it according to your needs.
for my opinion program is one of the most spectacular, you always can find new roads foe walking or playgrounds for my children
after update i used it as usual. some functions was gone but i think when they fix most errors it will be a great app again
always finds what you need, shows you the right way
for me maps.me is a big chance to open new places in my city
it takes a little time for everything to return to normal, I am sure that everything will work out
maps.me became better for me, always helps me with searching the streets in my new city
Let's wait until the new owners of the app fix the flaws and find new features for their app
New interface better, like in google
quick search for places in the maps.me
maps me is better for me, because using is very easy and comfortable!
thanks to this product I found a lot interesting place for photo
Osmand is not good enough?
Maps.me uses it's own map file format and it's own 3D map renderer. It was created in 2014, — OsmAnd used to be quite slow and clumsy back then (not sure how they compare today)
Osmand is quite clumsy and has an overloaded interface. And is often even slower than slow maps.me.
(I use it, but I see drawbacks)
a simple program to find the right places by city and country
makes it easier to find parking without problems
maps.me it won't just go away,everything is just ahead.I hope so,as I have been using the app for a long time
maps.me it will come back, fix all the errors and everything will be as before, perhaps even better than it was
everything will be fine with maps.me.They try to add something new and they do it!