CoMaps

I use comaps, I feel like OSM isnt as good at cars as google maps, but it beats google maps easily in bikes and pedestrian traffic, like one time i plotted out a route where i could sit on a bench (which are shown on map) every 5 minutes or so on comaps. on trains its kind of a wash in comparison to google maps. the biggest issue is when you want to do a spur of the moment thing like ‘eat at a nondescript restaurant closest to me’, openstreetmap data here isnt great and the built in search engine for a nondescript restaurant isnt great, you cant write ‘closest vietnamese restaurant’ into the searchbar.

also one time i fell off a cliff and had no signal while hiking and comaps got me reoriented and on the right path in a no cell service area. if i used google maps it wouldnt have had the hikers trail i found on comaps either.

Co maps

OSMAnd supports custom backends for routing like BRouter and Graphhopper/Valhalla that you might want to use depending on what you’re doing. CoMaps uses strictly its own algorithm that AFAIK is less developed, but they’re trying to add support for things like live traffic.

(Although also having both accurate real-time traffic information and privacy is basically not possible.)

I use OSMAnd. But, offline I don’t really care for real time traffic updates. I know the city I live in and can guess fairly accurately how long any journey will take.

• Comaps for driving / street navigation
• Caltopo for backcountry navigation (has offline maps)
• Trailforks for public recreation trails (hiking, mountain travel, mountain bike)
• Relief Maps for 3D landscape visualization / viewing

I havent found a fully FOSS one that is usable for me. Wanted to use Comaps but couldn’t get into the UI.

I’ve been using Here Wego and it’s really easy to use

I use a combo of osmand and gps-coordinates.net. osmand generally does not do good with addresses, so I put the address into gps-coordinates.net and have osmand navigate me to the coords. I find if you’re looking for a business, you might be able to do it. But if you’re looking for residential addresses, you can generally forget about it with osmand.

Chiming in to say you can use Wayz its owned by google but you dont need google services installed. Basically googlemaps. Not foss though.

I used to use GmapsVW to browse places and send to OSM. So it didn’t matter about missing osm data. But I keep google maps in a private profile (butay swap to wayze) as its got traffic updates and is much easier to use in a pinch.

Cartes.app has been developing very rapidly. Its great for public transit, biking, car, and milti-modal.

Its only a web app so its weak for turn-by-turn navigation but it easily lets you move your itinerary to comaps.

Mapy.com (its an app) and Magic Earth have traffic. Neither are open source but they arent google.

I usually go with CoMaps. If it doesn’t work, then I go to GMaps WV (I have my VPN on, so Google doesn’t know my IP), get the coordinates of the destination, and open it in CoMaps.

Links:

CoMaps: https://codeberg.org/comaps/comaps

GMaps WV: https://github.com/woheller69/maps

I use Comaps, but all the open source map apps are using OpenStreetMaps on the backend. OpenStreetMaps varies from way better to way worse than google maps depending on where you are, but can be manually improved by anyone willing to take the time!

Agree that maps is one of the harder ones to replace and I’ve settled into a few different apps by use case.

Here WeGo has been a nice compromise of having a solid search function, good routing, offline maps, some reviews via trip advisor, supports my local transit system, and has a sane privacy policy even if its not FOSS. Can also save locations accountless.

CoMaps I use as my main offline walking/biking and would love to see the team make more improvements over time.

I use GMaps WV for the random times I still need to use GoogleMaps usually for looking up reviews or as a backup when other maps fail me.

So really Here WeGo is the closest one to one replacement but I still use the other two as the need arises.

I personally find all the open source Open Street Maps based apps to be extremely lacking. 90% of the places I’d try to find aren’t there and for some. of them navigation was off too. I use Here We Go.

Good: No missing locations. Uses Trip Advisor for reviews. Database & navigation is good. Less features than Google but low bs. Privacy policy states that no personal user data is collected without consent, and is pretty short & sweet. Telemetry is opt in, though you can’t get traffic data without it. There are buttons to delete history or delete all data collection taken. Based in the Netherlands. Owned mostly by German car manufacturers.

Bad: No search along route or Voice Assistant in Android Auto. Closed source. 2 trackers (Facebook login, Google Crashlytics, both optional though). Rarely any pictures. Requires you to download from the Play Store to use in Android Auto (no Aurora).

CoMaps is probably the best of these, uses open maps as the back end but has a much better up