Is there a good Android app for using offline OpenStreetMap maps? My primary goal is to have maps that work when I have no connectivity. I’d like to download the entire US (or perhaps another country if I am traveling) and be able to navigate hiking trails where no cell service exists.
OsmAnd, best downloaded from Fdroid. It has profiles for driving and hiking so you can use it for both with different settings.
Yet buying the app on pstore doesn’t hurt the devs. Or donating to their bitcoin wallet.
OSMAnd and Organic Maps
I’m partial to the former and I’ve noticed, specifically while hiking, that it is better than GMaps for navigating and finding paths.
Both of these apps are meant to be used offline.
I wish there was a way to automatically contribute traffic data to get the same level of car navigation that google maps offers. I find myself going back to Gmaps for that because are a lot of road closures on my way to work right now and the fastest route changes daily.
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I think Organic Maps is the best.
Thank you. I am very much in favor of fully open projects, so I am giving this one a try first. I found there is a desktop version as well, but it does not detect the GPS dongle plugged into my linux computer, and crashes if I try to search my own address. I can put in a 1, but when I put in the second digit, the program crashes. Routing seems to work fine on the android app though.
Yeah I think the desktop app is more of a developer tool. The main apps are the Android and iOS apps.
Magic earth
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Android also lists offline support
OSMAnd does just that, I love it.
EDIT: On Google Play, you get the premium version for free if you make contributions to OSM once in a while. On F-Droid, you get the premium version, for free.
you’ll get the paid version for free if you make contributions to OSM once in a while
How does that work?
If you are an active OSMer you can activate the “OSM edits” plugins, connect it with your OSM account and you can get OsmAnd live for free every month (see official guide).
@Mannivu @scorpionix the Live updates are hourly not once a month.
I know, but the user contributions to get the Live subscription are checked every month.
It doesn’t, I’m sorry. I just checked and I was wrong - on Google Play, you get the premium version for free if you make contributions to OSM once in a while. On F-Droid, you get the premium version, for free.
It doesn’t, the paid version is completely free on F-Droid.
OSMAnd is very good, with a lot of features, but lately I have been using Organic Maps. It has fewer features but is SO MUCH FASTER when rendering maps.
I still mainly use Osmand but it’s pathfinding is completely bonkers sometimes (like when you need to go down a street (on foot) it instead takes a right into another street, then a left and left again, so you would walking in a square when you could just go straight ahead). It’s super obvious most of the times but I don’t know if I would trust it when I go somewhere by car (which I never do so I don’t care __).
One thing I like about Osmand for driving is that it tells you which lane(s) you should to be in for the next turn/junction/roundabout. It’s especially useful for large junctions and/or in busy traffic. I’ve had it do the “detour route” that you talk about, but it’s never been anything major like a complete square that’s lead to wasting time.