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 😊
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.