this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023

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Best GPS navigation app that doesn't require Google Play Services in 2023? (lemmy.world)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

35 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm looking to never have to use Google Maps. Is OsmAnd+ the best?

all 41 comments

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 11 months ago (3 children)

lots of people will comment about organic maps

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (3 children)

It’s actually really good. I just wish the maps were as up to date as the big three (Waze, Apple, google). It would be awesome if each city, state was required to publish map data to openstreetmaps. I know my city has everything in arcgis and you can browse it. But they should definitely publish to openstreetmaps.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I have found OSM data (and therefore Organic Maps) more up to date than the others, at least for roads. In the past six months for me that was three different cities, and two different countries. Small sample size, but including my city there were several places that google had not updated for years.

As for your city to OSM integration: OSM does not take data dumps. But your city could encourage people to update the data in OSM or better still leverage OSM as a data truth and curate it, and load ArcGIS datastores from it.

You can help using Street Complete which is a very easy to use android app that fills in the details of whereever you are at: Is this road paved? What are the business hours here? Is there street lighting? etc.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

street complete is awesome

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Saying Waze and Google in the same phrase is, unfortunately, redundant

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Even though they're governed by the same entity, they function quite differently from each other.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

+1 for organic maps

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Like the kind you fold up?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Into a swan.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago (1 children)

OsmAnd+ the best

That's what I use. Some may get too overwhelmed with the feature set it has, so Organic Maps would be a more basic nav app.

But... OsmAnd+ is far more advanced than Google Maps, and can be customized every which way.

Another bonus: You'll never see ads masquerading as POIs on a map.😀

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Any way to get live traffic? I'm not finding anything very useful online

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

For live traffic, try Magic Earth. I haven't used it in a while, but it's another alternative to consider. :)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Thanks. It's been about a year since I've tried this one. Just grabbed it again. Trying to find alternatives for when I 'de-google' my life. Hopefully sooner than later

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Not for Route calculation. But you can use the googlemaps interface as an overlay.

https://hoerli.net/osmand-google-traffic-anzeigen/ It's German, but the pictures should be enough.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Thanks. I'll check that out

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I use Magic Earth, it has the best UI IMO.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

Google maps actually works ok with Play services Internet access blocked. And it has local downloadable maps now. I prefer Organic Maps on principle and use it when I can, but sometimes resort to Google maps. I've never liked Osmand since I've found it confusing.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Organic Maps serves me well

[+] [email protected] -8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

okay I just tried it. lol. How does it serve you well? It is absolutely useless. seriously.. please explain.

anyone doubting me, go install it and try it out for yourself. You will see how useless it is. You put in a valid address and it says "no results found." It has literally nothing. except it encourages you to download an entire map of an entire huge city for 220 MB. Why? Why is the only option it offers to download a huge data-heavy city and it won't even take me to a simple address?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Of course you have to download the map ypu wanna use, duh. Plus I live in a third world country and it has everything so far including adresses and it works even for coordinates

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It was interesting trying to give Organic Maps a college try. In the US it seems about useless, even after downloading all 50 states. One can get navigation to work to the city or street (but not the address) at the destination, but it seems the easiest way to plot a destination is to just physically zoom in and find it on the map and tell it to navigate to that location. It seems incapable of looking up addresses, which makes one wonder if they're somehow missing from the base mapping data, or if the application just doesn't have the "smarts" to query addresses in certain countries correctly.

I've used all sorts of GPS mapping software over the years both on dedicated hardware, computers, etc. including the more arcane that have you start at street number or zip code and then drill down layer by layer so the backing software doesn't have to work so hard. This is the first I've seen that doesn't seem to have the ability to find simple street addresses.

It could be that in countries that it's popular, the base mapping data works better.

Maps.me (albeit, they seem to not be as good as they once were) and Here WeGo (which is an ex-Nokia commercial property that for some reason is free to use offline? So you're probably the product.) both seem to do a better job at both addresses and mapping routes that make sense. I agree with solrize@[email protected] that Osmand seems very the opposite of user friendly.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's interesting, Organic Maps is ok for navigating to addresses when I use it. Are you sure you have the right maps? There is a high level overview map of the US, but then there are a lot of more localized ones for the individual states and some other regions. You just enter the address into the search bar and press "route to". It has a few annoyances and the voice instructions don't give you the street names (just "turn left in 300 meters" instead of "turn left on Elm Street in 300 meters"). I would say it not as good as google maps, but it is mostly ok. I use google maps as a fallback when I have to.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I have the same issue and figured the app only worked in the US. I'm in a 5 eeus country but every time I've tried the app I can only navigate to a street. Never a number on that street. Even after download the maps. Most sure what's going wrong.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I have been using MapFactor Navigator for decades already. It uses OSM for maps (or Tomtom maps, if you want to go commercial), and you can configure every aspect of the navigation; you can completely geek out on it, if you want.

Not affiliated at all, just a happy user.

[+] [email protected] -9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

GPS became available to the public in the 80's. I'd say that counts as decades old

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

GPS tech is definitely decades old, I could dig out a couple of handheld units I have in a box that would qualify for that distinction (circa 2000) and those were a few models into what was available to consumers let alone unis and governments.

Using that specific application for decades is more of a stretch, but technically possible if you count all Mapfactor navigation and they first used it on a PC (released 2002 apparently). Even on mobile devices it's not that far off qualifying as possible though (released 2007 on Windows CE so 16 years).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

YMMV honestly. It depends on where you live. If your city is mapped out well, OsmAnd+ will work for you. For me, unfortunately Google Maps still works far far better than anything else I've tried :(

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Best one I've found with real time traffic is HereWeGo and it's just... OK. If anyone knows of a better one for a privacy respecting traffic maps please let me know.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

It's been a while since I've had this one. Going to try it out again. Thanks

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

This one... Doesn't seem so bad, privacy wise. It can be also used offline, afaik.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

It used to be better. They rewrote it a while back and made it not as good.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

MagicEarth is decent, I've not had any luck with osmand or organic maps.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Waze for me unfortunately owned by Google tho. Doesn't require play services