this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2024
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[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 month ago (2 children)

OrganicMaps is amazing. Strong recommend to everyone. I only recently found out about it.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Any details on why it's amazing? What does it do or doesn't?

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 month ago (3 children)
  • It has the map corpus from OpenStreetMap, so one of the best in the world
  • It works offline - just download the desired maps onto the device
  • That makes it really, really fast. Google Maps is slower
  • You can also use it in areas with bad reception. I'm using it for hiking in the woods where there is no cell phone connection available
  • I really like the UI - they are f.e. better at displaying house numbers and street names than Google.
  • No ads
[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)

On the hiking note, it also shows a lot of trails. I used it to navigate to a trail head and was pleasantly surprised to see a rough outline of the trails I would be using plus some others I didn't know were there.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

It even has water markers for longer trails where youd be hiking for weeks or months at a time. Sometimes those spots are dry, but you can clearly see water channels in the ground where it would be flowing.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Google's maps are decent and can also be downloaded to be offline...? But yeah, it seems like it's a nice alternative, especially if you want to be free from Google's grips.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

As a cyclist, organic maps never told me to go on the freaking autoroute, but google maps did..

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Maybe it's iOS specific but I had to go to a region and download the map to be able to search it, which is not great

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

It's the same on Android.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It shows me where the speed cameras are :)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Waze does that too + reported police, hazards

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I see no benefit to using Waze. Openstreepmap works better.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Well i didn't know it existed so I would have had a hard time using it in the past, I just commented from my perspective that's not an advantage over what I already use

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Waze isn't FOSS.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Same, I have recently installed LineageOS on my phone and was looking for various replacements for Goggle apps. What I really like about OrganicMaps is that it downloads the maps locally, so you can view it even if you aren't connected to the internet.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (3 children)

google maps can do that too though

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

@yetiftw @ILikePigeons

IIRC At one point Google Maps would let you download a map for browsing, but you couldn't do offline navigation. Don't know if that's still the case.

Organic Maps does the routing on the device.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

it's had offline navigation for years now

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Thanks, I wasn't aware of that. I should have really had this information a year ago when I was constantly screenshotting Google Maps, LOL.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

The feature looks made ugly on purpose though (compared to organic maps where you can just download the whole country or select more precisely what you want)