this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2025
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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.
Magic Earth is proprietary, not FOSS.
Your right, I'm sorry about that I made an edit to correct it.
@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)
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)
@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 ☹️
Fair enough, I'll stop bugging you.
@pineapple I don't see any bugging at all, just a share of information, communication! 🙂