this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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Privacy

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Some perspective from a user who's been on Magic Earth for well over a year:

  • It works very well. With a few quirks, it's like 90-95% as useful as Google Maps for a majority of personas
  • It's a mature app, finds most addresses (with possible exception of recent changes like a business moving)
  • Does surprisingly well with being current on traffic conditions
  • While not FOSS, they seem to be open about what they sell of your information and it's in aggregate, so I'm much less worried about location data being tied to other online dossiers I've left in my digital paper trail.

I found that Organic Maps and OsmAnd+ just couldn't cut it at all for finding addresses, routing wasn't super great (or intuitive), and otherwise rated very low on family acceptance as a replacement for Google Maps. I used Acastus Photon for addresses and frankly it's not that much better and the workflow was janky and pretty useless when you want to plot route waypoints. This was the bridge between fully de-googling and having a livable acceptance factor. So far I haven't seen them doing anything they don't claim (not getting in trouble privacy-wise), so I'm good.

I would say "privacy friendly" is accurate in the title - but this is not FOSS. Even so for those looking to de-google without losing utility, I recommend it and am glad it exists.

Edit: I wish some apps (looking at you Starbucks!) would use a default mapping engine like Magic Earth instead of expecing Google Maps on Android phones (Graphene, Lineage, Calyx)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Thank you for your feedback

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

somehow i got stuck on heads up display, and i cannot figure out how to disable it now!

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

Settings > Navigation > Car > Head-up Display

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

Legend thanks!

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

I agree completely with your review of Magic Earth. I will say that I keep some maps on my phone in Organic Maps as well. They are easier for me to follow when hiking on forest trails. When we went trailblazing on snowshoes, it made finding our way back to the main route simple.