this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2025
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I just got a new(ish) phone and am reinstalling all of the apps that I used to have on my old phone, and I remember that there was an app out there where I could type in an address, and then it would auto-open OSM by passing in the geo-coordinates. I cannot find this app again for the life of me. Does anyone have any idea where I can find this?

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[–] balsoft@lemmy.ml 1 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (5 children)

I have no idea about that specific app, but wouldn't (almost) any OSM app have this functionality? E.g. in OsmAnd you can search for the address, open that point's description, tap on the coordinates and then copy the openstreetmap.org link from the coordinate menu.

[–] articpiecitylights@lemmy.ml 4 points 19 hours ago (4 children)

Yes I'm aware you can search for addresses in OsmAnd, but the reality that I've experienced is that the address data in OSM in general is wildly unreliable (aka OSM and CoMaps often don't have the business name in the app, and many times even searching the address yields no results).

I believe that this app used a different geocoding service where address data was more reliable to do geocoding, and then when you picked the address you were searching for it would auto-open OSM and pass the geodata into the search field. It legitimately enabled me to use OSM / Organic Maps. Now without the app I'm back to being forced to use GMaps much of the time because places I'm navigating to are literally not findable via the search bar.

[–] paperBark@slrpnk.net 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I don't know enough about the why but I think it comes down to licensing incompatibility but it sure would be nice if someone who knows how this shit works could get the publicly available Canadian address data into OSM at minimum.

I'm in the same boat where a solid 90% of the time I search for a street address its not in OSM regardless of which Canadian city I'm in. Sometimes its able to find a block number on a street but not the individual address so atleast that gets me on the right side of town most of the time 🤦‍♂️

Business name searching seems to have improved for me a few updates ago and it atleast finds business names that have already been added by someone most of the time as it should. Sometimes it shows a business name on the map but it doesn't find it and I can't click on it to select it.

[–] InsertUser@en.osm.town 2 points 15 hours ago

@paperBark

Looks like half of them have incompatible licenses and can't be imported:

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Canada#Open_Data

@openstreetmap

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