OSM on android
OSM on android
Hi everyone im new to the OSM community but eager to contribute. Im curious how many of you use OSM on android phones and how you interact with it. I'm interested both in terms of contributing but also using it for its map functionality e.g. navigation. Based in my early research so far the most popular apps seem to be:
- OsmAnd
- Vespucci
- Maps.me
- StreetComplete
- Organic maps
- Magic Earth
Im really looking for your opinions on what apps are worth using and for what purpose. Do you just use one app or multiple apps for different purposes. Which app would you recommend to your tech savvy friend and which to your mum? There's probably a bunch more i haven't mentioned so please also highlight them and any strengths or weaknesses they have. Thanks ๐
I have all of them installed except maps. me... kind of looking for the best one myself
Editors:
Streetcomplete is for quickly contributing small details - very easy and user friendly.
Vespucci is for advanced editing - advanced. It has its uses on the go but i personally prefer using the web editor for bigger contributions
Maps:
Osmand. Feature packed but can be slow.
Organic - lighter weight. Updates the map monthly (or longer)
Magic earth - not open source, but that gives it the ability to pull traffic data from closed sources therefore apparently very good for driving navigation
Hey that's really helpful thanks. I've also had most of them installed the last week and just trying them out (except not driving).
I agree street complete is really easy for quick edits, also organic maps for editing in a similar way to Google maps e.g. adding business opening hours, or business websites etc.
It's interesting to learn Magic Earth is good for driving I may have to try it out. I'm currently mostly using organic for navigation.
Do you recommend using the advanced editing apps (Vespucci, OsmAnd) for editing or using the ID editor on the OSM website?
I'd say thats honestly down to personal preference... For shapes/ polygons and bulk edits, im better using my keyboard and mouse. I only use the editing apps on the go to fill the odd incomplete detail or add a node/ shop. But thats just me. Use what you find easiest and most appropriate :)
Fully degoogled myself over a year ago, tested every OSM-based map software I could find, here's my short conclusion:
For non-techy users who wanna get rid of Google maps but want an easy no muss no fuss, Magic Earth. IMO, it's the closest you can get to Google maps without using Google.
Has basic traffic routing, pretty good with addresses and locations, clean UI, overall very solid app.
I also use OSMand, it's both better and worse than Magic Earth. It's NOT for beginners IMO, the defaults are pretty horrible. Messy UI, confusing interface, slow and cluttered. But OSMand is a tinkerer's app, if you have the time and interest, you can make it work very well and look pretty good too.
My first impression of OsmAnd was that it's cluttered and unintuitive so it's interesting to see how many people recommend it. Will try to tinker and see if I can get it to work for me.
Also magic earth and organic are both ones I'm gonna have to compare to find which suits me as my primary navigation app
Yeah, same impressions for me when I first tried it. I would say it took me a good 5-10 hours total of tweaking, testing, and tuning to get it to a point where it's usable for me, fairly clean looking, and practically functional.
Magic Earth is super easy, you download the app, search an address, and go there, nothing more, nothing less.
OsmAnd can do some really awesome stuff, fully custom profiles for walking, driving, boating, mass transit, hiking off road and more, fully modular UI elements, custom maps, custom voices, custom routing/navigation engines, custom layer elements with dozens of options, fully customizable navigation graphics, color, size, arrow style, etc.
But the documentation is spotty, unintuitive, and discordant. The community is generally friendly and helpful, but it still ends up being a lot of work to get OsmAnd working well IMO. Is it worth it? Only you can judge that for yourself. If all you care about is stopping big corpos from spying on you, Magic Earth and other OSM-based apps like Organic maps is fine.
If you insist on using FOSS software and want the maximal amount of customizability and fine-tuning, OsmAnd+ is the peak.
Funnily enough, from the first time I felt OSMAnd more intuitive than gmaps. Overwhelming setting options, yeah, but it felt like home to me.
Organic Maps is the maintained fork of Maps.me. See the wikipedia article for details.
I like to keep things "simple", so while I've tried pretty much all of the OSM-based apps for Android, I consistently use the following:
- OSMAnd+ (pretty much for all nagivation, route planning, etc.).
- StreetComplete (this is great for confirming/adding details for a POI based on a fun question and answer format).
- OSM Go! (both web and app. I use this mainly for quickly adding basic POIs like bike parking, water fountains, public toilets, etc.)
- Every Door (specifically for adding addresses and details to buildings).
Hey, thanks for your answer. I'll have to look into OSM Go! and Every Door since they're not ones I've heard of
I am back to using google maps here and there. I haven't been using it for 2 years but relying on gmaps in the short term is better than relying on nothing if the map is not yet covered by osm. At the same time I improve the osm map until it becomes usable.
Osmand is for hikin, biking, skating, quick overview for cars, map exploring, etc.. for actual car driving, I use magic earth because it's a navigation system. Osmand is a map with routing capabilities.
SCEE is better than SC. I ditched SE once SCEE came out. Every door is useful for bulk editing.
For armchair mapping josm, ofc.
I'd recommend that you use the app that's appropriate for the job and not the skill level.
Osmand is best for hiking. better than any other map, yes better than gmaps, here, bing, etc. Magic earth is better for car navigation than gmaps. Every door is very quick in documenting the number of floors buildings have. Josm is very efficient in documenting the roof color of buildings. SCEE is great for documenting road surfaces.
OSMand is great, I use it all the time for driving and also hiking - it's surprisingly good for footpaths.
Out of the box it's not great at UK postcodes (some are in the dataset but not all). However, there's an open source list of post codes defined as points of interest that you can import, which means you can just search (offline) for any post code and it will take you straight to it.
https://github.com/hvdwolf/OsmAnd-UKpostcodes/blob/master/README.md
People from other countries with different systems may not appreciate how useful this is, in most cases if you navigate to a UK post code you can see your destination so no further information is required.
Hey I live in the UK and that's super helpful! Definitely a feature I'll need so will have to figure this out although the setup looks a little complicated at least for only moderately techy people
Sorry, the page I linked to probably makes it look more complicated than it is. Really you only need to download this:
https://github.com/hvdwolf/OsmAnd-UKpostcodes/releases/download/202102/UK_postcodes_poi_europe.obf
And import it. The readme deals with how to create it from source.
Magic Earth is good for navigation but not open source sadly. OSMAnd is just too confusing for the average user. The routing on Organic maps is dreadful imo, but the app itself is pretty so I keep it installed.
@ntzm @JackOfNoTrades Yeah.. Also we have to be too accurate to search on #OsmAnd ,otherwise it won't show correct results. I hope the developers will fix it soon๐ .. Btw I love both apps ๐๐
here on degoogled android (LineageOS) i have been using OsmAnd~ (F-Droid version) for a couple of years, and i love it. it was a bit overwhelming at first, since it's deep in its customization, but it means you can make it be as you want. it's great for navigation (in my region OSM is a bit short on street numbers, tho) although it took some time getting used to they way it display things like changing lanes before an exit. i found it after i went looking for a replacement for Maps.me when it went closed source
i just recently started contributing through StreetComplete and i'm loving it, but eventually would like to move on to bigger edits (like adding buildings and roads) but haven't explored the best way to do that. i know you can make edits in OsmAnd~ but i suspect the OSM web page on desktop will be better for that
@ruplicant @JackOfNoTrades That's cool..Thank you for helping the open source world โค๏ธ