I really want to stop using Google maps but the issue I have with every other option is that I can never just search for the place I want to go to. 99% of the time, the place I am going to is a business, searching "<shop name> <city name>" on anything other than Google maps either gives me nothing (OsmAnd in this category) or might give me some the shops of that chain but in a random order and intermixed with towns a hundred miles away which have the same name. More generic queries like "petrol station" are even worse. The best solution I have come up with is to use Google maps to find the actual address and then copy that into the other app but at that point I might as well just use Google maps.

Anyone have any solutions to this?

• dhx

  today at 2:19 AM

  The situation with retail chains is improving thanks to projects such as https://alltheplaces.xyz/ (disclaimer: I'm a contributor) and efforts of some OSM contributors to focus their contributions towards comparing OSM and ATP features to add missing shops, remove closed shops, update opening hours, etc. For one such example, see https://matkoniecz.codeberg.page/improving_openstreetmap_usi... for a tool (created by https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=matkoniecz) which is used to match and compare OSM and ATP features.

  This work has been slow to take off though as the OSM community has traditionally been stuck on time wasting debates about whether opening hours displayed on the wall of a shop are copyrighted (just the raw data, not a photo of their presentation), and debating the merits and pitfalls of armchair mapping vs. on-the-ground mapping. At least these historical roadblocks seem to now be mostly resolved.

  For OsmAnd, you might be able to use the OBF import feature (see https://www.osmand.net/docs/user/personal/import-export/) to add the raw ATP dataset, or potentially other open data such as Overture Maps if that is more to your liking. Data is mostly sourced direct from brand websites, APIs, etc (as if you were using a storefinder map on their website).

• sfRattan

  today at 1:35 AM

  I'm stubborn enough to use Google Maps in my web browser (signed out) and then copy/paste the actual destination address into the app for turn-by-turn directions (e.g. CoMaps, OsmAnd). It's inconvenient, but it's also one less Google app on my phone.

  The Google Maps moat has always been its breadth of accurate, current business information. It is unfortunately the Yellow Pages of the Internet era.

• dobladov

  yesterday at 11:14 PM

  Same issue, OsmAnd is great, but unless geocoding services like Nominatim get as good as Google Maps's search, I cannot use it unless I know the precise location of where I'm going.

• rzmmm

  yesterday at 11:04 PM

  I don't have solutions but I have similar experiences about this. It's probably a difficult problem since there are so many different queries and differences in the geospatial data.

• matkoniecz

  yesterday at 11:35 PM

  Sadly, often shop data is simply missing in OpenStreetMap.

  (I have an ongoing project attempting to make slightly easier to detect and add missing ones but it will be just tiny step forward, not solution)

A while back I was using OsmAnd on a ~700 mile route, and it was taking over 10 minutes despite most of the route ending up being on a single highway. I tried that same route just now and it took 7 seconds. Such a great improvement!

CoMaps is by far one of the best offline navigation map app available.

They forked from Organic Maps project which seems to have gone evil.

CoMaps calculation is very fast, map update is constant, it is very lightweight, it has a very clean layout, usability is top tier. CoMaps can find places by the business name, there is still room for improvement but it works.

I was using EarthMagic before that, it was the perfect 10/10 opensource app until they went greedy, and the app now has tons of problems.

I went back to Sygic which is an awesome offline map app, I have a lifetime Premium licensing and as expected, now there is a Premium Plus license which some features were moved to like TTS and limited map update.

CoMaps also works really well with Android Auto and I am running GrapheneOS, it was actually somebody within GOS who recommended it to me.

CoMaps also display trains line, buses stops, public toilets, even motorcycle parking. If you are tired of dramas, give CoMaps a go.

CoMaps is available via Codeberg opensource alternative to GitHub and they are pretty active towards reporting issues.

• lorenzohess

  today at 1:17 AM

  What happened to Organic Maps?

Some of those objections to Contraction Hierarchies are possibly a little out of date. Modern variants of the technique allow for rapid live traffic customisation, see e.g. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.10519 . I suspect that the "nested dissection" approach also allows for regional maps.

It's been a while since I looked at OSRM's implementation, but I don't think they've been keeping up with the cutting edge here.

For those of you using OSMAnd - do you think there is any chance that they will offer public transport routing?

I would at once get the 15-year XV plan if they got this, but perhaps it's at odds with their motto “Offline Maps and Navigation”?

(even if I personally could live with schedule-based routing, i.e. not real-time routing, at least for a while).

• yorwba

  yesterday at 9:57 PM

  You can enable the "public transport" profile in OsmAnd, today. It might not support your local area, though.

I love osmand. But every new update seems slower. Navigation speed is mostly ok, I use it for walking and cycling which means routes tend to be short. But panning and zooming the map is just annoyingly slow. It sort of works when I disable most map features, but the map features are the reason I use osmand...

I don't know how everyone is getting these faster speeds. I set my navigation to HH x C++ and it still takes several minutes to calculate routes of just a couple km. I love Osmand, but bugs like these are par for the course with the app. Going back to online Graphhopper routing.

Did they add any form of functional nautical navigation? It always jumps to the nearest road on LAND. The feature should be removed if it doesn't work.

• pwg

  yesterday at 7:29 PM

  Any chance the profile you were using had the "snap to nearest road" option turned on? If that option was on for the profile then that would be why it jumped to the nearest road.

• wtallis

  yesterday at 7:27 PM

  I've had the nautical navigation work fine when canoeing on rivers and streams where you're following linear features on the map. What it lacks is the ability to plot a sensible course across a polygon of open water.

  • RunningDroid

    yesterday at 9:38 PM

    Rumor has it that routers have the same issue with highway areas so best practice is to add a "spine" to them

    https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:area:highway#Routers

    https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposal:Area_highway/ma...

    • wtallis

      today at 12:57 AM

      The presence of such spines in open bodies of water just makes nautical routes come out particularly stupid, where the route presented calls for you to immediately go to that spine and travel along it, unnecessarily lengthening the route.

(2025)

Years ago I bought Sygic lifetime one, and it has offline maps with updates. Although I don’t use it as much anymore, but it was so accurate, and that was before google nav too.

At this point I prefer OsmAnd navigation over Google maps.

Maps reliably does stupid things like route through winding residential streets because it thinks that's faster and can obviously be done at the full posted speed limit.

OsmAnd on the other hand builds routes I would build: get on the main road and get close, then get to the destination.

• technothrasher

  yesterday at 9:39 PM

  OsmAnd has the annoying quark of suggesting that I drive off my retaining wall, through some woods, and then across some wetlands, in order to get to the road behind my house, rather than directing me down my long driveway to the road a little further away. This is because the driveway is marked as private in the OpenStreetMap data, because it is private. Obviously I know to just go down my driveway, but anybody trying to get directions to my house would be sent to the incorrect road behind it and then just abandoned. I contacted the OsmAnd folks and was told it was an OSM problem. But other apps using OSM data don't have this issue. I gave up with OsmAnd after that.

  • ndriscoll

    today at 12:22 AM

    You might get better results tagging the driveway as `access=destination`.

    https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:access%3Ddestination

  • yaomtc

    yesterday at 9:48 PM

    Settings > Driving > Navigation settings > Route parameters > Allow private access

    • snozolli

      yesterday at 10:17 PM

      Now you'll be routed through private roads anywhere. It should ignore the private flag if it's directly adjacent to the start or end of a route.

      • ndriscoll

        today at 1:01 AM

        Testing just now, it appears to not route through private roads unless it needs to (e.g. destination is on the private road) when you have that setting on, but it might just heavily down weight it so that if the public route is long enough out of the way, it will use it?

• brendyn

  yesterday at 8:34 PM

  I use osmand for privacy but I think it just emphasises main roads. In Melbourne it always suggests turning off cemetery road west because it doesn't know it's congested and will get me stuck for 20 minutes. And there are some missing slip roads. And navigation constantly fails to start. I wonder, how difficult is it to make minor edits to the map data?

  • gentile

    today at 1:51 AM

    To add, a bit complicated, but osm data can be edited with osmium (cpp) or pyosmium (python). Then the edited data can be put into osmandmapcreator to generate the file to use in Osmand. (I used this to route around ALPRs)

  • ndriscoll

    today at 12:26 AM

    To solve the problem for yourself, you can also long press a road you don't like and select Avoid Road.

  • pwg

    yesterday at 8:41 PM

    > I wonder, how difficult is it to make minor edits to the map data?

    The map data is OpenStreetMap, so you can make edits via the standard OSM methods:

    Web: https://ideditor.com/

    Local: https://josm.openstreetmap.de/

  • evertheylen

    yesterday at 8:39 PM

    It's just OpenStreetMap, see https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/How_to_contribute

• greenavocado

  yesterday at 8:33 PM

  If you lower max speed for your chosen transportation method osmand will alter your routing very significantly

  • XorNot

    yesterday at 8:38 PM

    I mean, sure? But I don't do that. For city driving OsmAnd makes a sensible route which sticks to main roads whereas Google Maps was getting so bad me and my wife stopped using it because it's choices were bafflingly weird, and would do things like "make 8 turns down residential streets, then obviously make a turn across the busy 4 lane main road you could've already been driving on".

    Google Maps for whatever reason routes like a residential street and turn can be negotiated at exactly the speed limit the whole way through.

    • macintux

      yesterday at 8:58 PM

      Not only annoying for the driver, but also for the residents.