I've been trying to de-Google and de-Microsoft myself and am wondering if OpenStreetMap is a viable alternative to Google Maps. Any of y'all use it? Also are there any apps for IOS you would recommend for it?
Yeah I use it, it's really good if you're in a populated area, once you get rural it gets worse.
Alright, I live in an urban area so I think I'll be alright then. Going to download it now.
yeah, also don't forget if somethings missing you can and should add it super easily. I would go around looking for things I knew were mistakes or missing and add them to improve my area and now it's much more useful.
OsmAnd is probably the best app for both Android and iOS. It is a viable alternative, but there are 3 main issues:
- Search. Google Maps is just incredible for searching for businesses etc, and having the correct opening hours. You can help by contributing to OSM.
- Routing. OsmAnd tends to send you on some truly stupid routes sometimes. You'll get to your destination, but it may take a bit longer than it needed to.
- Live traffic data. You can get a visual overlay to show up with a bit of work, but it's less than ideal and isn't taken into account by the routing at all.
Osmand is quite good. The biggest pain point is searching for a specific local place. If you have a pin on a map you're good to go. Putting in an address is also usually fine (but not perfect). The actual driving navigation is really great imo and you can configure exactly how much or little it will talk to you. Also theres a streetview project called mapillary and the Wikipedia integration is really nice. You can click on a random monument and learn its racist history.
For searching for local places, try using duckduckgo in your mobile browser. First, go to "Other Settings" and set your "Open Directions in..." to OpenStreetMaps.
Then, when you want to search for a place,
- search for the place using duckduckgo in your browser
- click on the "Maps" tab
- select the correct result
- long press "Directions" button, and select "Copy link" (this may vary depending on your browser)
- paste that link directly into the search field in OsmAnd
Driving navigation has always been horrible for me though, maybe its better in other places.
And bike directions where you can choose how much of a slope you like and whether or not to avoid avenues full of c*rs.
I see. Do you know of any other Google Maps alternative that doesn't spy on you?
You're not getting live traffic without something uploading your locations to a central server. That's how they know traffic in the first place.
I know people who work on Google Maps, and I can say they take privacy seriously. If you opt out of location history then they're really not tracking you in any meaningful way. However, using it is still supporting a monopolistic corporation that provides a free map product to prevent other corporations from profiting on map products, because maps lead to local data which could be a meaningful competitor to their search monopoly.
