I use CoMaps, it works great. You get notified in the app to download the updated maps you selected every 2 weeks or so. Could be wildly different than that, just what I notice.
It's timing estimates are often 5-15 minutes off Apple Maps, which I find accurate, on ~two hour drives, but I imagine it depends on the traffic.
To improve OpenStreetMap, which CoMaps uses as the data source, I use StreetComplete[1]–it puts quests around your location which ask you questions, it's user-friendly. A thoughtful feature is that it lets you download data in a location on wifi, in case you didn't want to use cellular.
OpenStreetMap is like Wikipedia for mapping, anyone can contribute and improve the map, and StreetComplete is like Pokemon Go in the sense that you walk around and complete quests, except StreetComplete helps humanity, while Pokemon Go[2]....
I should check to see if I can notice my StreetComplete edits getting onto CoMaps. Might be hard because they're often about accessibility at crosswalks. I've seen quests asking the number of stairs in a staircase. Seriously, is there anything they don't collect?
Last I checked, not with StreetComplete. But the OSM wiki has a table of Android apps https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Android which column "Record tracks" can be sorted by, to see which apps have that feature.
How I've done similar before is to record a GPS trace with an OsmAnd plugin, upload it to OSM servers, import it as an overlay in the web-based editor on desktop, and used that and satellite imagery as reference to draw in the missing trail.
In a pinch you can also record a trace and edit directly on it in the field with the Android app Vespucci, but its UX is clunky and much less friendly to new contributors than the web-based iD editor.
As the other commenter mentioned the web editor is probably the most beginner-friendly editor. It might seem a little daunting but it's actually not that difficult to edit OSM. When you save your change there's an option to request a review of it. That'll get an experienced contributor to take a look at it and help clear up any mistakes.
OSM also has a public database of GPS tracks that contributors use to aid in mapping. Even just walking the trails with GPS tracking on and then uploading the tracks to OSM without doing anything else is a valuable contribution that will allow other contributors to map the trails at some point in the future.
If you are in the U.S. please each out to OSMUS, they are amazing and can connect you with trail mapping resources. There is a vibrant community of folks keeping our trails mapped!
You can edit existing trails, but directly adding new ones is not intended. What you can do is create a GPS track, and then upload it with a note describing the problem.
I use the app Vesspucci for actual editing, it works well (but larger changes to OSM is a "full PC" kind of task). Notes from StreetComplete (from all users) show up on a TODO list in the app, so the more advanced users can decided on whether they want to create a node on the map from the note.
Yes!
Accessability quests I often see are:
- Do these steps have a ramp? (with several ramp-type options)
- How many steps are here?
- Do these steps have a handrail?
- Is there tactile paving at the top and bottom of these steps?
- Does this crossing have tactile paving?
- Are there sound signals for the blind here?
- Do these traffic lights have a button to request a walk signal?
- What's the height of the curb at this crossing?
- Is this place wheelchair accessible?
I've read both Organic Maps thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48794446 (as it's my favorite map app I use for years around the world, and I'm an active OSM contributor as well) which quickly became overrun with CoMaps followers trash-talking about OM, now this thread appears.
What I find interesting to see, and I think it's not just me who can see this - that basically every mention of CoMaps and why it is good and Organic is bad is it not only seems to be mostly written not by a regular users, but by people who contribute to CoMaps (!) - they all fail to show why exactly anybody should migrate from established app with authors who have years of experience of making Maps.Me and OM - to a basically a no-name (based on downloads) clone who is made by... "community"? We don't even know who that is, original developers and people with experience are not involved.
All the talk is not about functionality of the app or anything which is actually important to users - it's all basically complaints about some kind of _internal drama_, add some misleading stuff about "dying project" or "lost community" from some commenters. So many cries about "ads" which are not actually ads but affiliate links in hotels POI which nobody clicks anyway, it's so mild it's just weird to lament about, at least I as a long time user see no issue at all.
I can advise CoMaps community to focus on developing the app which can actually make real users migrate and use because of functionality, speed or other things that matter, instead of making your community look toxic because of this trash-talk. Show real improvements in comparison with OM - make live maps updates like OSMAnd, make bookmark folders with specific colors tied to it, make app barely eat any battery, make convenient and powerful interface to add data to the map - then people will move. But for now Organic Maps is totally fine and many people like me see no reason to move from it anywhere.
I dont know anything about this app besides your framing of "out-of-nowhere community builds an app" but am sometimes suspicious of nation states building these types of open source project forks. It's so easy now, and the cost seems incredibly low, to get into very intimate workflows (of very specific types of people).
We've already seen attackers simulate whole communities for attacks on individuals, and I'm just wondering when we're going to see someone simulate a whole open source community in a longer play, as an kickstart on a longer term strategy of compromise
To what end? I can think of 10 reasons immediately off the top of my head, but it’s far easier to fill existing open source projects with agent contributors for most of them.
Do you really need someone to rhyme out why state actors do what they do?
> We've already seen attackers simulate whole communities for attacks on individuals
I think we saw the "opensource app go rogue for financial interests" and all of its related drama much more than state actors faking communities. So, Occam's razor applies here, IMO.
> What I find interesting to see, and I think it's not just me who can see this - that basically every mention of CoMaps and why it is good and Organic is bad is it not only seems to be mostly written not by a regular users, but by people who contribute to CoMaps (!) - they all fail to show why exactly anybody should migrate from established app with authors who have years of experience of making Maps.Me and OM - to a basically a no-name (based on downloads) clone who is made by... "community"? We don't even know who that is, original developers and people with experience are not involved.
I don't think you read enough, I saw plenty of real problems with Organic maps described.
Affiliate links being included in the app, despite community objections? The lead dev using donations to pay for holidays? Those are a couple that come to mind.
Given the nature of the problems with OM, this makes sense. The dispute is about governance and money, which is something that only the people involved in development will deeply care about. It makes sense they're the main people talking about it.
I’m an Organic Maps user and from a cursory glance I can see no reason to use CoMaps instead, it looks like the same app and I’d wish they’d make an attempt to clearer differentiate themselves since this will be an obvious question.
> it not only seems to be mostly written not by a regular users, but by people who contribute to CoMaps
How did you evaluate that? I use CoMaps, I am not a contributor to it, but in the comments I read I do not remember seeing many people specifying clearly if they are or not contributors (there might have been, but it did not feel like "mostly").
For me CoMaps worked well in the ~6 months for my use-cases (with some issues with the search as everybody reports for both projects). I like much better the site of CoMaps than of OrganicMaps, which influenced a bit my decision to use it. I also like they are hosted on Codeberg than on github.
I don't really think it's primarily the CoMaps devs and contributors warning others about OrganicMaps. It's mostly OpenStreetMap contributors (e.g., mappers) like myself who followed the relevant discussions and events and decided that the community is better off routing around the problem.
OrganicMaps could be the best app there is in terms of functionality (it isn't), but if there are significant issues with their governance they are harmful to the broader OpenStreetMap community.
So we recommend CoMaps and OsmAnd, and carry on mapping.
> made by... "community"? We don't even know who that is, original developers and people with experience are not involved.
FYI I've been the most active non-shareholder contributor of Organic Maps for 3+ years. Though you won't see me (or other ex-OM contributors who've left to start CoMaps) in OM github contributor stats anymore, because OM had banned us (and nowadays they also ban users in their chats and SM accounts for just mentioning CoMaps). But you can still see our PRs, e.g. I've authored Outdoor map style amongst many other improvements.
You're right though that CoMaps had been founded because of things like governance, transparency, community and FOSS values, while many users are just interested in features (and hence often prefer Maps.ME even, which is like 10x more popular than OM looking at downloads).
Well, after you intentionally leaked the map generation code (which was not intended to be published) before creating the fork, it's not surprising that OM banned you. How do your actions align with governance, transparency, community and values?
What do you mean, leaked? Isn't this a FOSS project? Why would it have secret code?
Also "not surprising that OM banned you" - what process of adjudication was there before the project decided to ban someone who, by his description at least, is a key contributor? How was this person found guilty, and who decided on the penalty?
---
PS - I'm not involved with any of OM, CoMaps, Maps.ME, and actually just found out the first two even exist.
I was the same, but did end up switching due to features. I'm not sure I remember which sealed the deal, but I remember at least being able to remove/change the left-most button that just points to an About screen IIRC, and updating maps without going through the app store? And just the fact that improvements to Organic Maps also seem to make it to CoMaps, whereas I don't think they flow in the other direction.
> Despite being advertised as a community-driven project, key decisions, including financial management, partnerships (with Kayak, for instance), and the inclusion of proprietary components in the code were made by a small group of shareholders, often without input from the broader contributor community.
You can look up who the contributors are, e.g. in their open-source repo: https://codeberg.org/comaps
There are also issues and projects with lots of discussions about what to prioritize, etc.
So, bashing that “community” is too fuzzy is perhaps not very warranted. (Although I guess they should add a section “Who makes CoMaps?” to the FAQs or so.)
The fact that OM leadership pulled the same open-closed game twice is telling. Many open source contributors who donated their private time and effort to the project just didn't want to do that any more when OM leadership started the game again.
That's the main reason they forked and started a new project.
To clarify - this quote pertains to the Organic Maps situation
> Despite being advertised as a community-driven project, key decisions, including financial management, partnerships (with Kayak, for instance), and the inclusion of proprietary components in the code were made by a small group of shareholders, often without input from the broader contributor community.
CoMaps had been started because Organic Maps shareholders were not interested fixing those governance and transparency issues.
One of the main things that keeps me from using essentially all OSM-based mapping apps as my primary is that search seems incredibly bad. I can't blend city and name, road and category, can't usually filter by features or open time, and results are almost always something like:
- a result 500 feet away that sounds nothing like what you searched for
- a result 23 miles away that shares one word but nothing else
- a result 572 miles away that has a business name that contains exactly what was searched
- ... nowhere is there an exact full-name match that is 1.3 miles away, which can easily be found by exploring the map
Are there any apps that do this better? Android and desktop (e.g. linux) ideally. I'd love to use them more, but I've had endless problems using them. Good map data is kinda useless if it can't be retrieved, and trying to work around it by panning around and manually saving a hundred or so favorites really kinda sucks.
True, although I do also have a lot of problems with Google Maps. Particularly, when I search for a small town 100km away, and instead it brings up a medium sized down in the USA. Or even more ridiculous cases, like I slightly got the name of a business wrong, so it went with a different business in the USA.
Could you try https://cartes.app and share your search terms and expectations ? We're using Photon, an OpenSearch search engine. We've build a dictionary of place categories to help in-browser with FuseJS.
Also thinking about using embeddings to complement this.
What FOSS maps need is user generated content. For example, having "swimming spot" on my map is not really that useful - it needs photos, some description, additional information of what it actually is and how to reach it as bare minimum to be actually competitive.
OSM argues that it's a "map database" but it stores labels like "opening hours" and "social media links" - why stop there? The UGC vs non-UGC debate has been the biggest crutch of all open map projects and no one managed to solve it yet.
I strongly disagree. Open maps don't have to compete in this space and it would make them worse.
Yes, that is something google maps excels in. Absolutely. But trying to compete here would mean they have to shift into being a social media and their biggest effort would be content moderation.
There are some intermediate options here. Osmand integrates Mapilary images (I'm not a fan personally), they have travel guides built in (they became usable now, even small cities have decent descriptions where I live) and tiny things like that.
On the other hand, OSM-based tools are crushing commercial maps in... being a map ;)
> shift into being a social media and their biggest effort would be content moderation.
I really don't buy this argument. You already have to moderate submissions - what's an extra field? Sure, UGC is more opinionated but just don't add star ratings and anything that promotes gaming of system. Just let users expand the dataset with more information, it's almost never a bad idea - isn't that entire point of crowdsourcing datasets?
That is not a flag "is the crossing wheelchair accessible?".
It's user created picture or text. This can be any kind of content, abusive, regulated by law, spam, subjective for chat control "age verification" controls, copyrighted and so on.
Moderation is a hard topic. Only very small communities can do that well.
Thanks! The wikimedia_commons tag is very useful - I'll start contributing there. Though my point still stands that UGC integration could and should be much better.
I don't really need a tag saying how to reach the place, but better public transport support would go a long way. I also have this issue with places marked as parkings, to determine whether they're public, open or even reachable.
So for example there is a metro layer - but it's subway only.
No trams. I kinda need trams where I am - they're a major part of the public transport system, more so even than the metro.
Problem is of course a lot of people need a lot of different things, maybe you end up looking like OsmAnd, which much as it is irreplaceable, the config/setup is a bit of an upturned spaghetti bowl.
Anyone here has been using coMaps and care to share their experience, especially in comparison to OrganicMaps?
My only complaint to OrganicMaps was the slowness to calculate a direction, which in part is certainly because the path is calculated locally instead of some cloud server but old garmin devices also weren't online and can calculate paths on far less powerful hardware. So I'm guessing there is room for improvement on that part.
My biggest issue with OrganicMaps is that the search isn't very good. It really struggles to find my destination sometimes. That's the one thing I'm afraid Google will always be better at.
I was talking in deep in the weed OSM signal group and apparently its a split between the address data not being present, and OrganicMap / CoMap being bugged.
The way to triage is asking nominatim, the geocoder from OSM. If it can resolve : its on the client side, if not, its a data problem.
I'm just parroting here. Happy to learn more.
This is THE only issue I have with those OSM client ( I don't care about traffic )
For good (server) search, one needs many layers (Photon, Pelias with OpenAdresses, Overpass, in-house pmtiles, etc.) using many DBs, each needing server ressources or expensive paid APIs.
It's obvioulsy expensive in terms of ops + dev, but also just to host.
It can't scale with only 0,0001 % of users donating to the app.
Fortunately, NLNet's there to fund work, but it's still nonethless only a tenth of what would be needed.
Plus map applications and general search engines don't talk to each other... I don't know why, but it is so. Maybe because all the well-known search engines are closed-source ?
It doesn't take so much to enable a good server search on top of OSM + openaddresses.
Local search will always be slow and bad.
But server search doesn't need that much. It's just that OS initiatives are severely understaffed. OS apps that have a Photon instance are already rare to find. Let's not talk about having an Overpass instance...
What is very hard to reproduce is Google's place review data.
This can be due to missing address information in OSM. I also find the grouping sometimes odd, e.g. searching for a street, the place names are from one level higher.
Comaps and organic maps are very similar (they forked very recently). The only difference I can think of from the top of my mind is that organic maps is not fully open source (map files and generator are proprietary) and has some kayak sponsored suggestions/reviews
I used to use OrganicMaps. When coMaps forked, I changed to it. From my perspective there were no negatives. If anything, coMaps looked to be under more active development.
As great as Waze and Google Maps are for dynamic routing and responsive path-finding, I am using rental scooters now, and at this point I really need to design some bicycle routes with intention and purpose, and Maps simply refuses to save any "dragged" or "pinned" route in any meaningful way, and I suppose this is deliberate, because A.I. knows best, kids!
Even for driving the major apps are crappy about routes. I was on Foothills Parkway a while ago and wanted to keep Apple Maps running just as a "miles/time remaining" indicator. It can't do anything other than fastest route, with the option to ignore highways.
So unless you set a waypoint halfway between every single entry/exit, it will want to get off the parkway and take US 321 instead.
You can manually set up the route using a bunch of waypoints, but then it tells you the distance/time to next stop (which are arbitrary map points) instead of the distance to the end of the parkway, and you can't save the route so you'd better not touch it or want to look at anything else on the map once you have it set up.
Anything other than cars I believe google maps/waze is nearly unuseable for navigation, yah. I think they even removed "bike" pathing too. Public transport is pretty alright, but very inaccurate vs local app when they use the same data and routing is lacking intelligence sometimes.
That was incredibly frustrating when I had some driving restrictions on a learner's license - not every road was available for me and after planning it all out in detail, I realized there's no way for me to move it over to my phone.
Similarly, on a motorbike I'd choose some particular roads for more fun, but that also requires committing the route to memory.
Tangential, but does anyone know if an app exists that that the video feed of your phone with the GPS loc and reads the signs from the road and compare it to OSM to update it if necessary?
Let’s be clear, in the end I use Waze for routing due to the traffic updates, but I see sometimes outdated speed limits and know OSM is one of its sources.
Oh I don't have a link but there was a project just like this someone hacked together a while back. I think it used Gemini live or something and as you walked and scanned things it would suggest changed to the map. It was a rough demo but seemed promising.
I've been wanting to do something similar but just by taking photos of menus and updating the POI with new hours/website/phone etc
I remember seeing something like this where it could identify signs and things, but the quality from what I recall was not great (could be way off and have many duplicates). I might be remembering Mapillary, which has a Map data button at the top left and seems to show signs [0]. I don't think it auto-updates OSM based on these data.
I can't find anything more recent or for CoMaps specifically, other than auto-created "alternatives" pages. I would absolutely love to hear from anybody who has tried both!]
Think of it as a very stripped down and opinionated version of OsmAnd. It lacks a lot of power features, but is extremely fast and all of the options are easily available and work out of the box. So it's great for everyday use (especially in cities with a lot of POIs) but not as good for in depth travel and route planning.
For example, I've used F-Droid OsmAnd extensively when planning my trip to Japan, because its guides, WikiData and Wikipedia integration are godsend for finding interesting places to visit, but used CoMaps when I was there to look things up and build routes. I'm also exclusively using OsmAnd for writing GNSS tracks because I can fine tune the parameters of measurements it captures.
I use CoMaps, it works like a charm on GrapheneOS + Android Auto.
I have also contributed to the OpenStreetMap by adding POI and requesting logic to be changed.
The only major issue which I got used to but sucks, is the search when it does not involved famous places or streets or both.
Streets will be shown as minor or major and alike, I do need to use Google Maps Browser version to find the place, and the on CoMaps manually navigate to said place.
But the fact that I get a map update a week, sometimes two maps update a week which other apps will take months and subscription, that alone is worth hustle.
This is what I use in my main GrapheneOS profile. I still have a dedicated profile for Google Maps though as I still have not been able to give up their greater datasets (i.e. traffic) in all cases.
Decent app though. I saw someone here mention proprietary code but I wouldn't worry about it, just install the F-Droid version. That's why I use F-Droid - to guarantee I don't get proprietary blobs.
Proprietary parts had been mentioned in the context of Organic Maps - their map generator is partially closed source, and even OM F-Droid build includes some proprietary assets.
In CoMaps we are serious about being 100% FOSS and this is one of the reasons we've forked from OM.
Just used it the other day while I was back-country hiking. Set some markers for some landmarks and calculated hiking distance/duration between them. CoMaps is awesome! It's also the reason I contributed to OpenStreetMaps for the first time a while ago, contributing the name of a landmark/structure up in a local mountain.
While I do use mapping programs for directions, I more often use them for a more accurate estimate of time and traffic density. I haven't looked very hard, but I haven't seen any OpenStreetMap data or equivalent that shows "Real" travel times and traffic density.
I used to use wikiloc, but most of the things that offer which were the most interesting things were by paying, so I think that it could be some opportunity for using these maps and vibe coding for creating something spectacular!
I just opened CoMaps. The first thing that happened was that it zoomed out from my previous location in another city, and then zoomed in on my current position.
Depends a lot on where you live. My village is pretty fresh cuz I update it lol. My impression is that it's quite good in western Europe, might take a month in major US cities, and probably years old in most other places. I think Indonesia, Israel, and Japan are decent as well.
Is it possible to change the maps' colors and contrasts now? Last time I checked I thought the lower contrast and washed-out colors compared to Organic Maps were a poor choice so I switched back to OM.
There is a subway overlay.
And there is marked hiking routes overlay being in development.
There is a also an outdoor-focused map style (some people call it a layer too).
perfect timing. i was using OpenStreetMap for my ios running app and I found out that there is a cap so I ended up switching to a paid solution and have been trying to build something like comaps by downloading all the tiles
Mapy.com does that really well [0] (not affiliated). Not open source though. It uses mix of sources - OSM included - to render map (best render imo - especially the "outdoor" layer) and they are pretty large contributor to OSM in Europe. In free tier you can have one country downloaded for offline use. Sharing .gpx is no problem. Traffic data only in Central Europe.
I use CoMaps, it works great. You get notified in the app to download the updated maps you selected every 2 weeks or so. Could be wildly different than that, just what I notice.
It's timing estimates are often 5-15 minutes off Apple Maps, which I find accurate, on ~two hour drives, but I imagine it depends on the traffic.
To improve OpenStreetMap, which CoMaps uses as the data source, I use StreetComplete[1]–it puts quests around your location which ask you questions, it's user-friendly. A thoughtful feature is that it lets you download data in a location on wifi, in case you didn't want to use cellular.
OpenStreetMap is like Wikipedia for mapping, anyone can contribute and improve the map, and StreetComplete is like Pokemon Go in the sense that you walk around and complete quests, except StreetComplete helps humanity, while Pokemon Go[2]....
I should check to see if I can notice my StreetComplete edits getting onto CoMaps. Might be hard because they're often about accessibility at crosswalks. I've seen quests asking the number of stairs in a staircase. Seriously, is there anything they don't collect?
[1] https://streetcomplete.app/
[2] Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48487029 26 days ago 317 comments
Do you know if you can add hiking trails using StreetComplete? I noticed some trails are missing in my area and I would like to contribute
Last I checked, not with StreetComplete. But the OSM wiki has a table of Android apps https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Android which column "Record tracks" can be sorted by, to see which apps have that feature.
How I've done similar before is to record a GPS trace with an OsmAnd plugin, upload it to OSM servers, import it as an overlay in the web-based editor on desktop, and used that and satellite imagery as reference to draw in the missing trail.
In a pinch you can also record a trace and edit directly on it in the field with the Android app Vespucci, but its UX is clunky and much less friendly to new contributors than the web-based iD editor.
> an overlay in the web-based editor on desktop, and used that and satellite imagery as reference to draw in the missing trail.
If you added a gopro and SLAM to the GPS trace and imported USGS topographical data I wonder if you couldn't fully automate the process.
A decent representation of the actual path is usually pretty straightforward. The metadata and topology are more of the work.
In areas where 3dep is recent, you can usually see a trail under forest cover. It's pretty great.
As the other commenter mentioned the web editor is probably the most beginner-friendly editor. It might seem a little daunting but it's actually not that difficult to edit OSM. When you save your change there's an option to request a review of it. That'll get an experienced contributor to take a look at it and help clear up any mistakes.
OSM also has a public database of GPS tracks that contributors use to aid in mapping. Even just walking the trails with GPS tracking on and then uploading the tracks to OSM without doing anything else is a valuable contribution that will allow other contributors to map the trails at some point in the future.
If you are in the U.S. please each out to OSMUS, they are amazing and can connect you with trail mapping resources. There is a vibrant community of folks keeping our trails mapped!
https://openstreetmap.us/
You can edit existing trails, but directly adding new ones is not intended. What you can do is create a GPS track, and then upload it with a note describing the problem.
I use the app Vesspucci for actual editing, it works well (but larger changes to OSM is a "full PC" kind of task). Notes from StreetComplete (from all users) show up on a TODO list in the app, so the more advanced users can decided on whether they want to create a node on the map from the note.
You can record tracks or add places right in the app.
I have been suspicious that streetcomplete is funded by intelligence agencies who want to increase the amount of OSINT avalible.
any OS INT we contribute can be by definition used by intel agencies. such is the way of the world.
But intellegency agencies would like an edge, not that everyone has the same info as them...
Very interesting. Can the Street Complete be used to improve accessibility of a region, say to mark the availability of a ramp?
yes, there are questions like that (steps, ramp, etc). Also questions about road surfaces, pavement/sidewalk, etc
Yes! Accessability quests I often see are: - Do these steps have a ramp? (with several ramp-type options) - How many steps are here? - Do these steps have a handrail? - Is there tactile paving at the top and bottom of these steps? - Does this crossing have tactile paving? - Are there sound signals for the blind here? - Do these traffic lights have a button to request a walk signal? - What's the height of the curb at this crossing? - Is this place wheelchair accessible?
Yes! If you want to you could even select to show only accessibility related "quests".
Are you aware of any app comparable to StreetComplete for iOS?
No, but: https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/issues/5421
I've read both Organic Maps thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48794446 (as it's my favorite map app I use for years around the world, and I'm an active OSM contributor as well) which quickly became overrun with CoMaps followers trash-talking about OM, now this thread appears.
What I find interesting to see, and I think it's not just me who can see this - that basically every mention of CoMaps and why it is good and Organic is bad is it not only seems to be mostly written not by a regular users, but by people who contribute to CoMaps (!) - they all fail to show why exactly anybody should migrate from established app with authors who have years of experience of making Maps.Me and OM - to a basically a no-name (based on downloads) clone who is made by... "community"? We don't even know who that is, original developers and people with experience are not involved.
All the talk is not about functionality of the app or anything which is actually important to users - it's all basically complaints about some kind of _internal drama_, add some misleading stuff about "dying project" or "lost community" from some commenters. So many cries about "ads" which are not actually ads but affiliate links in hotels POI which nobody clicks anyway, it's so mild it's just weird to lament about, at least I as a long time user see no issue at all.
I can advise CoMaps community to focus on developing the app which can actually make real users migrate and use because of functionality, speed or other things that matter, instead of making your community look toxic because of this trash-talk. Show real improvements in comparison with OM - make live maps updates like OSMAnd, make bookmark folders with specific colors tied to it, make app barely eat any battery, make convenient and powerful interface to add data to the map - then people will move. But for now Organic Maps is totally fine and many people like me see no reason to move from it anywhere.
I dont know anything about this app besides your framing of "out-of-nowhere community builds an app" but am sometimes suspicious of nation states building these types of open source project forks. It's so easy now, and the cost seems incredibly low, to get into very intimate workflows (of very specific types of people).
We've already seen attackers simulate whole communities for attacks on individuals, and I'm just wondering when we're going to see someone simulate a whole open source community in a longer play, as an kickstart on a longer term strategy of compromise
> sometimes suspicious of nation states building these types of open source project forks
Is there an example of this? To what end?
To what end? I can think of 10 reasons immediately off the top of my head, but it’s far easier to fill existing open source projects with agent contributors for most of them.
Do you really need someone to rhyme out why state actors do what they do?
> We've already seen attackers simulate whole communities for attacks on individuals
I think we saw the "opensource app go rogue for financial interests" and all of its related drama much more than state actors faking communities. So, Occam's razor applies here, IMO.
> What I find interesting to see, and I think it's not just me who can see this - that basically every mention of CoMaps and why it is good and Organic is bad is it not only seems to be mostly written not by a regular users, but by people who contribute to CoMaps (!) - they all fail to show why exactly anybody should migrate from established app with authors who have years of experience of making Maps.Me and OM - to a basically a no-name (based on downloads) clone who is made by... "community"? We don't even know who that is, original developers and people with experience are not involved.
I don't think you read enough, I saw plenty of real problems with Organic maps described.
> I saw plenty of real problems with Organic maps described.
What problems exactly?
Affiliate links being included in the app, despite community objections? The lead dev using donations to pay for holidays? Those are a couple that come to mind.
> lead dev using donations to pay for holidays
What's wrong with that?
Given the nature of the problems with OM, this makes sense. The dispute is about governance and money, which is something that only the people involved in development will deeply care about. It makes sense they're the main people talking about it.
I’m an Organic Maps user and from a cursory glance I can see no reason to use CoMaps instead, it looks like the same app and I’d wish they’d make an attempt to clearer differentiate themselves since this will be an obvious question.
> it not only seems to be mostly written not by a regular users, but by people who contribute to CoMaps
How did you evaluate that? I use CoMaps, I am not a contributor to it, but in the comments I read I do not remember seeing many people specifying clearly if they are or not contributors (there might have been, but it did not feel like "mostly").
For me CoMaps worked well in the ~6 months for my use-cases (with some issues with the search as everybody reports for both projects). I like much better the site of CoMaps than of OrganicMaps, which influenced a bit my decision to use it. I also like they are hosted on Codeberg than on github.
I don't really think it's primarily the CoMaps devs and contributors warning others about OrganicMaps. It's mostly OpenStreetMap contributors (e.g., mappers) like myself who followed the relevant discussions and events and decided that the community is better off routing around the problem.
OrganicMaps could be the best app there is in terms of functionality (it isn't), but if there are significant issues with their governance they are harmful to the broader OpenStreetMap community.
So we recommend CoMaps and OsmAnd, and carry on mapping.
> made by... "community"? We don't even know who that is, original developers and people with experience are not involved.
FYI I've been the most active non-shareholder contributor of Organic Maps for 3+ years. Though you won't see me (or other ex-OM contributors who've left to start CoMaps) in OM github contributor stats anymore, because OM had banned us (and nowadays they also ban users in their chats and SM accounts for just mentioning CoMaps). But you can still see our PRs, e.g. I've authored Outdoor map style amongst many other improvements.
You're right though that CoMaps had been founded because of things like governance, transparency, community and FOSS values, while many users are just interested in features (and hence often prefer Maps.ME even, which is like 10x more popular than OM looking at downloads).
Well, after you intentionally leaked the map generation code (which was not intended to be published) before creating the fork, it's not surprising that OM banned you. How do your actions align with governance, transparency, community and values?
What do you mean, leaked? Isn't this a FOSS project? Why would it have secret code?
Also "not surprising that OM banned you" - what process of adjudication was there before the project decided to ban someone who, by his description at least, is a key contributor? How was this person found guilty, and who decided on the penalty?
---
PS - I'm not involved with any of OM, CoMaps, Maps.ME, and actually just found out the first two even exist.
> make app barely eat any battery
> But for now Organic Maps is totally fine and many people like me see no reason to move from it anywhere.
In my experience OM drained my battery like crazy (I used it for KML tracks) and after consistently seeing that, I gave up on OM..
I can't speak for CoMaps, as I have never tried it.
I was the same, but did end up switching due to features. I'm not sure I remember which sealed the deal, but I remember at least being able to remove/change the left-most button that just points to an About screen IIRC, and updating maps without going through the app store? And just the fact that improvements to Organic Maps also seem to make it to CoMaps, whereas I don't think they flow in the other direction.
Relevant thread from yesterday's thread on the original project this was forked from
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48794575
https://itsfoss.com/news/organic-maps-fork-comaps/
> Despite being advertised as a community-driven project, key decisions, including financial management, partnerships (with Kayak, for instance), and the inclusion of proprietary components in the code were made by a small group of shareholders, often without input from the broader contributor community.
Nitpick: Organic Map is not original project. It's a fork of Maps.me.
Also forked for similar governance concerns :))
Another nitpick: at least OM is made by people who made MapsMe. CoMaps is not - developed by a community, whatever it means.
You can look up who the contributors are, e.g. in their open-source repo: https://codeberg.org/comaps There are also issues and projects with lots of discussions about what to prioritize, etc. So, bashing that “community” is too fuzzy is perhaps not very warranted. (Although I guess they should add a section “Who makes CoMaps?” to the FAQs or so.)
The fact that OM leadership pulled the same open-closed game twice is telling. Many open source contributors who donated their private time and effort to the project just didn't want to do that any more when OM leadership started the game again.
That's the main reason they forked and started a new project.
To clarify - this quote pertains to the Organic Maps situation
> Despite being advertised as a community-driven project, key decisions, including financial management, partnerships (with Kayak, for instance), and the inclusion of proprietary components in the code were made by a small group of shareholders, often without input from the broader contributor community.
CoMaps had been started because Organic Maps shareholders were not interested fixing those governance and transparency issues.
One of the main things that keeps me from using essentially all OSM-based mapping apps as my primary is that search seems incredibly bad. I can't blend city and name, road and category, can't usually filter by features or open time, and results are almost always something like:
Are there any apps that do this better? Android and desktop (e.g. linux) ideally. I'd love to use them more, but I've had endless problems using them. Good map data is kinda useless if it can't be retrieved, and trying to work around it by panning around and manually saving a hundred or so favorites really kinda sucks.
Open source? Not that I've found. I use HERE WeGo for searching and driving, and CoMaps for walking around.
True, although I do also have a lot of problems with Google Maps. Particularly, when I search for a small town 100km away, and instead it brings up a medium sized down in the USA. Or even more ridiculous cases, like I slightly got the name of a business wrong, so it went with a different business in the USA.
Yeah, it really loves to suggest US options.
Could you try https://cartes.app and share your search terms and expectations ? We're using Photon, an OpenSearch search engine. We've build a dictionary of place categories to help in-browser with FuseJS.
Also thinking about using embeddings to complement this.
What FOSS maps need is user generated content. For example, having "swimming spot" on my map is not really that useful - it needs photos, some description, additional information of what it actually is and how to reach it as bare minimum to be actually competitive.
OSM argues that it's a "map database" but it stores labels like "opening hours" and "social media links" - why stop there? The UGC vs non-UGC debate has been the biggest crutch of all open map projects and no one managed to solve it yet.
I strongly disagree. Open maps don't have to compete in this space and it would make them worse.
Yes, that is something google maps excels in. Absolutely. But trying to compete here would mean they have to shift into being a social media and their biggest effort would be content moderation.
There are some intermediate options here. Osmand integrates Mapilary images (I'm not a fan personally), they have travel guides built in (they became usable now, even small cities have decent descriptions where I live) and tiny things like that.
On the other hand, OSM-based tools are crushing commercial maps in... being a map ;)
> shift into being a social media and their biggest effort would be content moderation.
I really don't buy this argument. You already have to moderate submissions - what's an extra field? Sure, UGC is more opinionated but just don't add star ratings and anything that promotes gaming of system. Just let users expand the dataset with more information, it's almost never a bad idea - isn't that entire point of crowdsourcing datasets?
"Just let users expand the dataset with more information, it's almost never a bad idea"
Thanks for the laugh.
> what's an extra field?
That is not a flag "is the crossing wheelchair accessible?".
It's user created picture or text. This can be any kind of content, abusive, regulated by law, spam, subjective for chat control "age verification" controls, copyrighted and so on.
Moderation is a hard topic. Only very small communities can do that well.
To be fair there are examples of freeform text tags in OpenStreetMap already, e.g. “description”.
You can already add photos to OSM database. Eg. via wikimedia_commons tag.
There is already plenty of apps which show them, like OsmAnd or https://cartes.app , https://osmapp.org or https://openclimbing.org where you can even upload the photos from the map UI
Thanks! The wikimedia_commons tag is very useful - I'll start contributing there. Though my point still stands that UGC integration could and should be much better.
I don't really need a tag saying how to reach the place, but better public transport support would go a long way. I also have this issue with places marked as parkings, to determine whether they're public, open or even reachable.
Sorry for the slight off-topic:
Is there any standard protocol/format for "layers" that could be added to such Map apps?
Let's say I want to write a plugin to add my own kind of data, and then I want to export this new kind of data so that someone can import them.
Or I want to create a website with my own data on top of existing one.
Probably posted because of related recent discussion on OrganicMaps https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48794446
Which was in turn probably posted because I mentioned it on the same day under another submission
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48793684
Seems like a minimal OsmAnd.
Map rendering is nice, and crisp.
Functionality really is bare-bones, though.
So for example there is a metro layer - but it's subway only.
No trams. I kinda need trams where I am - they're a major part of the public transport system, more so even than the metro.
Problem is of course a lot of people need a lot of different things, maybe you end up looking like OsmAnd, which much as it is irreplaceable, the config/setup is a bit of an upturned spaghetti bowl.
Anyone here has been using coMaps and care to share their experience, especially in comparison to OrganicMaps?
My only complaint to OrganicMaps was the slowness to calculate a direction, which in part is certainly because the path is calculated locally instead of some cloud server but old garmin devices also weren't online and can calculate paths on far less powerful hardware. So I'm guessing there is room for improvement on that part.
My biggest issue with OrganicMaps is that the search isn't very good. It really struggles to find my destination sometimes. That's the one thing I'm afraid Google will always be better at.
I have the same grippe.
I was talking in deep in the weed OSM signal group and apparently its a split between the address data not being present, and OrganicMap / CoMap being bugged.
The way to triage is asking nominatim, the geocoder from OSM. If it can resolve : its on the client side, if not, its a data problem.
I'm just parroting here. Happy to learn more.
This is THE only issue I have with those OSM client ( I don't care about traffic )
For good (server) search, one needs many layers (Photon, Pelias with OpenAdresses, Overpass, in-house pmtiles, etc.) using many DBs, each needing server ressources or expensive paid APIs.
It's obvioulsy expensive in terms of ops + dev, but also just to host.
It can't scale with only 0,0001 % of users donating to the app.
Fortunately, NLNet's there to fund work, but it's still nonethless only a tenth of what would be needed.
Plus map applications and general search engines don't talk to each other... I don't know why, but it is so. Maybe because all the well-known search engines are closed-source ?
It doesn't take so much to enable a good server search on top of OSM + openaddresses.
Local search will always be slow and bad.
But server search doesn't need that much. It's just that OS initiatives are severely understaffed. OS apps that have a Photon instance are already rare to find. Let's not talk about having an Overpass instance...
What is very hard to reproduce is Google's place review data.
It's golden to enable good search.
> What is very hard to reproduce is Google's place review data.
fake anyways (quite easy to get negative comments deleted), and even for bad reviews.
Best look elsewhere or not at all.
I'm not talking about stars, we don't care about stars for search engines.
What's important is people talking about "has air conditioner" in a hotel review or "has vegan" in a restaurant. OSM has none of this data.
It's not like Google reviews can be trusted.
This can be due to missing address information in OSM. I also find the grouping sometimes odd, e.g. searching for a street, the place names are from one level higher.
Comaps and organic maps are very similar (they forked very recently). The only difference I can think of from the top of my mind is that organic maps is not fully open source (map files and generator are proprietary) and has some kayak sponsored suggestions/reviews
> organic maps is not fully open source
Organic Maps is a for-profit venture that accepts donations. That's sketchy. Management also seems to have prior Kremlin links. Which is sketchy.
> Organic Maps is a for-profit venture that accepts donations. That's sketchy.
I don’t understand why it is “sketchy”. Also do you have any proof on “Kremlin links”?
> Management also seems to have prior Kremlin links
You mind sharing links / sources / etc. ?
I used to use OrganicMaps. When coMaps forked, I changed to it. From my perspective there were no negatives. If anything, coMaps looked to be under more active development.
This is the only app that allows you to easily add stops and permanently save paths for biking. Honestly a life changer.
As great as Waze and Google Maps are for dynamic routing and responsive path-finding, I am using rental scooters now, and at this point I really need to design some bicycle routes with intention and purpose, and Maps simply refuses to save any "dragged" or "pinned" route in any meaningful way, and I suppose this is deliberate, because A.I. knows best, kids!
Even for driving the major apps are crappy about routes. I was on Foothills Parkway a while ago and wanted to keep Apple Maps running just as a "miles/time remaining" indicator. It can't do anything other than fastest route, with the option to ignore highways.
So unless you set a waypoint halfway between every single entry/exit, it will want to get off the parkway and take US 321 instead.
You can manually set up the route using a bunch of waypoints, but then it tells you the distance/time to next stop (which are arbitrary map points) instead of the distance to the end of the parkway, and you can't save the route so you'd better not touch it or want to look at anything else on the map once you have it set up.
Anything other than cars I believe google maps/waze is nearly unuseable for navigation, yah. I think they even removed "bike" pathing too. Public transport is pretty alright, but very inaccurate vs local app when they use the same data and routing is lacking intelligence sometimes.
That was incredibly frustrating when I had some driving restrictions on a learner's license - not every road was available for me and after planning it all out in detail, I realized there's no way for me to move it over to my phone.
Similarly, on a motorbike I'd choose some particular roads for more fun, but that also requires committing the route to memory.
Tangential, but does anyone know if an app exists that that the video feed of your phone with the GPS loc and reads the signs from the road and compare it to OSM to update it if necessary?
Let’s be clear, in the end I use Waze for routing due to the traffic updates, but I see sometimes outdated speed limits and know OSM is one of its sources.
Looks like a glue-together narrow-purpose kind of app that AI is relatively good at producing.
Oh I don't have a link but there was a project just like this someone hacked together a while back. I think it used Gemini live or something and as you walked and scanned things it would suggest changed to the map. It was a rough demo but seemed promising.
I've been wanting to do something similar but just by taking photos of menus and updating the POI with new hours/website/phone etc
I remember seeing something like this where it could identify signs and things, but the quality from what I recall was not great (could be way off and have many duplicates). I might be remembering Mapillary, which has a Map data button at the top left and seems to show signs [0]. I don't think it auto-updates OSM based on these data.
[0] https://www.mapillary.com/app/?lat=52.4758193487485&lng=-1.8...
Tried it today. Works fine for navigation. I am missing live traffic info. This is the one thing keeping me in Google Maps the past years.
Same. Apparently there's ongoing work to integrate live traffic: https://codeberg.org/comaps/comaps/projects/21877
CoMaps is my daily. From time to time I also use it's share my location, add place or record track functionality.
How does this compare with the F-Droid version of OsmAnd?
[Edit: To answer my own question a little bit, I found a post from September 2025 that compares OsmAnd and Organic Maps (which this project forked from): https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2025/09/OSMAnd_vs_Organic... .
I can't find anything more recent or for CoMaps specifically, other than auto-created "alternatives" pages. I would absolutely love to hear from anybody who has tried both!]
Think of it as a very stripped down and opinionated version of OsmAnd. It lacks a lot of power features, but is extremely fast and all of the options are easily available and work out of the box. So it's great for everyday use (especially in cities with a lot of POIs) but not as good for in depth travel and route planning.
For example, I've used F-Droid OsmAnd extensively when planning my trip to Japan, because its guides, WikiData and Wikipedia integration are godsend for finding interesting places to visit, but used CoMaps when I was there to look things up and build routes. I'm also exclusively using OsmAnd for writing GNSS tracks because I can fine tune the parameters of measurements it captures.
I use CoMaps, it works like a charm on GrapheneOS + Android Auto.
I have also contributed to the OpenStreetMap by adding POI and requesting logic to be changed.
The only major issue which I got used to but sucks, is the search when it does not involved famous places or streets or both.
Streets will be shown as minor or major and alike, I do need to use Google Maps Browser version to find the place, and the on CoMaps manually navigate to said place.
But the fact that I get a map update a week, sometimes two maps update a week which other apps will take months and subscription, that alone is worth hustle.
Stop shilling graphene. We can tell.
This is what I use in my main GrapheneOS profile. I still have a dedicated profile for Google Maps though as I still have not been able to give up their greater datasets (i.e. traffic) in all cases.
Decent app though. I saw someone here mention proprietary code but I wouldn't worry about it, just install the F-Droid version. That's why I use F-Droid - to guarantee I don't get proprietary blobs.
Magic Earth is fairly decent at traffic and dynamic routing. Worth the small subscription fee to keep them going, in my opinion.
HERE WeGo does traffic, if you want to ditch Google Maps.
Don't worry, we have no proprietary code in all builds of CoMaps, not just F-Droid one :)
Proprietary parts had been mentioned in the context of Organic Maps - their map generator is partially closed source, and even OM F-Droid build includes some proprietary assets.
In CoMaps we are serious about being 100% FOSS and this is one of the reasons we've forked from OM.
Does anybody know of a feasible alternative to Google Timeline?
Just used it the other day while I was back-country hiking. Set some markers for some landmarks and calculated hiking distance/duration between them. CoMaps is awesome! It's also the reason I contributed to OpenStreetMaps for the first time a while ago, contributing the name of a landmark/structure up in a local mountain.
While I do use mapping programs for directions, I more often use them for a more accurate estimate of time and traffic density. I haven't looked very hard, but I haven't seen any OpenStreetMap data or equivalent that shows "Real" travel times and traffic density.
Indeed, because gleaning telemetry data from millions of active users isn't a map applications normal intended use-case.
Does it work on iOS app integration and does it has support for building application layer stuff like how MapBox sdk enables?
CoMaps an end-user app, not an SDK.
I used to use wikiloc, but most of the things that offer which were the most interesting things were by paying, so I think that it could be some opportunity for using these maps and vibe coding for creating something spectacular!
CoMaps starts maximally zoomed out (showing the whole world). Organic Map starts showing my neighbourhood.
That‘s the simple reason I‘m using Organic Maps and not taking a fifth look at CoMaps (and I downloaded CoMaps yesterday after the HN thread).
CoMaps remembers the zoom and position of your last session and returns there on launch
Which isn't particularly helpful if you're moving around a lot.
Would be nice for a preference.
I just opened CoMaps. The first thing that happened was that it zoomed out from my previous location in another city, and then zoomed in on my current position.
Does anyone know how fresh the business data is? like opening, closure, phone, address of businesses?
i think one thing that's going for google is the network effects and what it's able to do.
Depends a lot on where you live. My village is pretty fresh cuz I update it lol. My impression is that it's quite good in western Europe, might take a month in major US cities, and probably years old in most other places. I think Indonesia, Israel, and Japan are decent as well.
Agreed, same here. But I don't update shops I don't support, such as tobacco, big chains.
Honestly in my experience is that in some parts of the world, or even particular neighborhoods even google maps is useless.
Even for routing google maps still fail with some one way streets directions.
It's as fresh as OSM databse : it depends.
You can take the initiative here.
CoMaps project celebrated its first birthday recently!
https://www.comaps.app/news/2026-05-12/celebrating-the-first...
Very good for trails
How does it compare to AllTrails in America?
Unless I’m mistaken they both ultimately use OpenStreetMap data. So, effectively the same coverage of trails.
AllTrails has its whole review system sitting on top of course.
Is it possible to change the maps' colors and contrasts now? Last time I checked I thought the lower contrast and washed-out colors compared to Organic Maps were a poor choice so I switched back to OM.
There is an outdoor map style which is more contrast to the general/default style, if that helps.
Do CoMaps somehow support overlays, like bus routes? OSMAnd does that, but I see no such option in CoMaps anywhere (a map layer, a separate map, etc).
There is a subway overlay. And there is marked hiking routes overlay being in development. There is a also an outdoor-focused map style (some people call it a layer too).
I understand this is an Organic Maps fork without the PE rugpull.
protomaps is also great for that. open source and straightforward
I would love to switch to this, but the dark map is basically unusable due to the lack of contrast.
perfect timing. i was using OpenStreetMap for my ios running app and I found out that there is a cap so I ended up switching to a paid solution and have been trying to build something like comaps by downloading all the tiles
> I found out that there is a cap
A cap for downloading rendered tiles from osm.org? That exists, but is quite generous.
Other (free) options are https://openfreemap.org/ or https://versatiles.org/ to generate your own tiles.
How is this different from OpenStreetMaps? Or does it just use OSM as its underlying engine?
Its a renderer. It bakes live OSM data once very few weeks.
Since a few weeks CoMaps updates its map data roughly every week, so maps are a lot fresher now (also compared to Organic Maps :))
OSM is mostly a db with an old website for contributors, osm.org.
Great for hiking and sharing path.
So nice to be able to do that locally and just send a .gpx file
I tried a TON of hiking apps and this is the best free one hands down.
Being able to download maps, tap to set destination, and see elevation all for free makes it top tier.
Mapy.com does that really well [0] (not affiliated). Not open source though. It uses mix of sources - OSM included - to render map (best render imo - especially the "outdoor" layer) and they are pretty large contributor to OSM in Europe. In free tier you can have one country downloaded for offline use. Sharing .gpx is no problem. Traffic data only in Central Europe.
[0]: https://mapy.com
Traffic info is for Central Europe plus favorite vacation destinations like Croatia and Italy. I don't know how reliable though.
I agree that the outdoor layer render is probably the best there is!
Tried today, I like the record track feature
Would love to see a Windows desktop version.