this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2025
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[–] lewdian69@lemmy.world 13 points 3 days ago (5 children)

What was the benefit of Organic Maps over OsmAnd or other options? I never understood why Organic Maps was getting so much traction.

I prefer the simple interface of organic maps

[–] joeldebruijn@lemmy.ml 30 points 3 days ago

OM and for now CoMaps are faster and easier to learn. For most people. With OSMand configurations are endless and people tend to get lost in them. Also the map data of OM is highly filtered OSM data. Meaning smaller files and a faster app.

The downside is less features, but as always ... if you dont need the absent features ... its a plus.

Now whats interesting how they both will keep it that way. My theory is when they listen to EVERY wish from random users (with other persona and user stories) they eventually become like OSMand too.

[–] teolan@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

Organic maps (and now comaps) have a much better rendering engine. It's much faster, while also being much more legible. It's routing engine is also faster.

OsmAnd does have the upper hand when it wcomes to features though. I have both and use OsmaAnd when I need to export a route to GPX or see relief.

[–] sunstoned@lemmus.org 3 points 3 days ago

For me its the android auto compatibility. OSM won't (and probably shouldnt) jump through the google hoops to do so. It's at least nice to have a more open option for an otherwise very proprietary ecosystem. Even though organic maps has room to improve

[–] pineapple@lemmy.ml -5 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Organic maps has traffic, osmand doesn't. I feel osmand is better in pretty much every other situation but organic maps has traffic.

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 21 points 3 days ago

My Organic Maps doesn't have traffic (or doesn't for my area). I can't see anything about it online either, except discussions about how it could be implemented.

Where do you find the traffic info? Even if zoomed in to New York I see nothing.

[–] apex@mastodon.uno 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

@pineapple @lewdian69 does it have traffic? Who provides that data?

[–] pineapple@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Thanks for asking i've been wondering myself actually. I looked it up and organic maps doesn't actually do traffic, although magic earth does (another not foss but apparenty privacy respecting map app that uses osm) It says it's just crowdsourced from the general public who uses magic earth (in an anonimous way, I guess there are enough magic earth uses for it to work since Some people say it works really well. (although others say it doesn't you should probably try it for yourself.)

On another note that I also found from my research just then, traffic knowing apps don't actually improve travel times but they do make previously congested places more congested. sources:

source 1

source 2

source 3

Edit: Magic earth is not foss so there is no way to varify that the app is actually respecting your privacy like it says it is, i'm sorry for any confusion.

[–] antipiratgruppen@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Magic Earth is proprietary, not FOSS.

[–] pineapple@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago

Your right, I'm sorry about that I made an edit to correct it.

[–] apex@mastodon.uno 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

@pineapple I use Waze and the traffic info are very very usefull, especially when there are closed road or accidents. I know, it's Waze and I'd love to be able to use OsmAnd (which I use for other purposes), but the traffic info that has Waze is the best so far (at least where I live)

[–] pineapple@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The construction cite issue is a fair point. If you really need traffic maybe you should try using magic earth. It's not FOSS but the privacy would still be leagues better than Waze (which is owned by Google)

[–] apex@mastodon.uno 1 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

@pineapple I am usually careful about my privacy (I self host most services that I use), but for traffic I've balanced the pros and cons since an app with a million download can't beat Waze, I'll use the latter ☹️

[–] pineapple@lemmy.ml 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Fair enough, I'll stop bugging you.

[–] apex@mastodon.uno 2 points 6 hours ago

@pineapple I don't see any bugging at all, just a share of information, communication! 🙂