Organic Maps is a free Android & iOS offline maps app for travelers, tourists, hikers, and cyclists based on top of crowd-sourced OpenStreetMap data and curated with love by MapsWithMe (Maps.Me) founders.
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While it's a conspiracy theory I would happily subscribe to, 1.1M is peanuts for G**gle. (plus that number is all time downloads on G**gle Play, not exactly active users, much less exclusive users (not hatin' tho, been using OM myself (from F-Droid tho)))
1.1M is peanuts for G**gle.
Growing competition is still threat.
Tried it. Still a ways to go.
Please elaborate which improvements are needed.
I use Organic Maps and OsmAnd. There are two things both suck at compared to Google Maps. First one is search. They are really bad at quickly finding local addresses. Maps whittles it down to local first which fits my use cases better. And the second one is POI data, like businesses and their info. For other POI it's fine, but I usually am looking for local shops and their opening times and open source apps just don't have that data.
I usually am looking for local shops and their opening times and open source apps just don't have that data.
I have been adding more business details to osm so this becomes less of a problem.
I do that too here. But it's still a far cry from Google's massive trove of data. I've been thinking about crawling some chain stores for opening times and adding them automatically. But I don't know what OSM's policy is on that.
I’m pretty sure you’re allowed to go on the websites of businesses and add their information in that way.
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
Business names are indeed searchable but I can't search addresses, e.g. "1234 10th Ave City". It's not like the address isn't registered, it's just refuses to fibd it. It usually offers the whole street as the top result.
So add the opening hours data yourself. I am proud to say that I spent 6 hours mapping every store in the largest shopping center in my city.
I tried it as well this year on my iPhone.
I remember two things that I didn't like, one was that it kept north on top when driving and using the app in CarPlay, the other was that it had latency in it's GPS tracking.
It's perfect to me. The version I have from F-droid does forward-is-up when you click "start" after doing a route, but I prefer north-is-up, so I don't click start, and it behaves exactly as I prefer.
It's the first OSM-based map app I've used that can navigate to a number on a street, and it does it perfectly.
The search works perfectly. I live on, lets say, 123 fake street w. If I search "123 fake st.", or "123 fake street", or "123 fake street w.", the correct result always comes up.
It has frequent enough updates to correctly route around road work.
I've struggled through many other open source mapping tools for smartphone since 2013, because I refused to use a proprietary app. This is the first one I recommend to everyone, including non-freedom-minded people.
Your experience with search is very different from mine. For me search is slow and error prone. Maybe the problem is that I live in a rural area and street names occur in many different towns in the area.
It was missing many points of interest, restaurants, locations, etc, even though the roads were accounted for. Definitely not ready for prime time until more spots get added. I don't need the reviews and photos. Just up the database of locations.
