Discussion summary
CoMaps is an open-source offline map solution praised for hiking and sharing features, but faces issues like low contrast in dark mode. Users express interest in desktop and car navigation integrations.
What the discussion says
- Protomaps is recommended as an open-source alternative.
- Dark mode map contrast is a concern.
- Users want desktop and car navigation support.
- Some prefer Mapy.com for rendering quality.
“Protomaps is also great for that. open source and straightforward”
“The dark map is basically unusable due to lack of contrast.”
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- Hacker News
- 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Let’s be clear, in the end I use Waze for routing due to the traffic updates, but I see sometimes outdated speed limits and know OSM is one of its sources.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.by nine_k
- 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
by raybb - 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...
by menturi - 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.
- HERE WeGo does traffic, if you want to ditch Google Maps.
- Magic Earth is fairly decent at traffic and dynamic routing. Worth the small subscription fee to keep them going, in my opinion.by MrDrMcCoy
- Don't worry, we have no proprietary code in all builds of CoMaps, not just F-Droid one :)by pastk
- 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.
by pastk - 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.
- I assumed the metro layer was specifically for underground lines, as they won't show up in the normal layer. I just checked for London and the tram lines and stops show up as expected in the standard view.by NoboruWataya
- 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.
by kreco - If by layers you mean tiles, you can make a server providing ZXY tile images. Some OSM clients (e.g. BRouter) allow adding custom tile servers for baselayer and overlays.by ivanjermakov
- This is all OSM-based. OSM is one big pile of data - we don't do layers.
It is also best to add it directly into OSM, importing data afterwards is tricky.
My talk at Why25 should be a good intro (https://media.ccc.de/v/why2025-198-openstreetmap-for-beginne...), but the OSM-wiki also contains some valuable sources: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tags , https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_features
There are also various libraries to show OSM as background map on a website and allow you to draw features on top. Those support various formats (GPX, GeoJSON, ...) Leaflet and MapLibre are the biggest here, with leaflet being the easiest and MapLibre being very flexible and performant
by pietervdvn - This is the only app that allows you to easily add stops and permanently save paths for biking. Honestly a life changer.by himata4113
- 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!
- 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.
by wraptile - The OSM foundation strictly keeps it with 'map data'. There are however many other, small projects that fill in the gap; for example 'Panoramax' for streetview imagery or lib.reviews for reviews. I've made a webapp that ties those services together (https://mapcomplete.org)
Keep in mind that Google Maps has a >1 billion yearly budget (citation needed, but other global maps have similar budgets)
by pietervdvn - 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.by mid-kid
- 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 ;)
by szszrk - 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
by zbycz - 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 submissionby ivanjermakov
- 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.
by nunobrito - 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.by femto
- Been using Comaps for a while, mainly for cycling, and it works very well. Before that I used also organicmaps and it was fine as well but I think made a few more mistakes in routing. That said, obviously this is not a parallel test but rather successive. Of course the split happened with drama, but I just like the Comaps vibe and am happy with it.by goobatrooba
- I prefer CoMaps' tile styling, they did a bunch of updates to it early on to differentiate it from OrganicMaps, IMO it's much nicer.
CoMaps also has a better system for distributing map data now which isn't bound to app updates. Not sure if this has made its way back to the other app, but it's quite nice.
by shrinks99 - 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.by mcv
- 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/reviewsby TheLNL
- 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.- 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 mapby Groxx