this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2026
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CoMaps

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Cooperative community open-source fork of Organic Maps, an offline privacy-respecting not-for-profit OpenStreetMap GPS app for your phone.

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For context I switched to Magic Earth a while back as it was the best Google Maps alternative to me, however with the recent switch to a Freemium model that also introduced a ton of bugs, I'm looking for other alternatives.

One thing I noticed immediately about comaps is its misssing a LOT of addresses and places here in the US that were available on Magic Earth. Can I somehow manually import better address/maps data? It's to the point it's really not usable for me but I'm struggling to find anything else that works nearly as good as Magic Earth.

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[–] Zwiebel@feddit.org 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Can you check wether these adresses exist on openstreetmap.org? (CoMaps uses data from OSM)

[–] rb411@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago (2 children)

No, looks like they're not, except one I added in CoMaps, so that explains it.

How does Magic Earth have all those addresses then? There was even a restaurant I was looking for the other day that I found on Magic Earth but not CoMaps. Is Magic Earth's map data open-source or can that somehow be loaded into CoMaps?

[–] Zwiebel@feddit.org 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

No idea honestly :/ But if you have some free time I recommend trying out StreetComplete, it's a slightly addictive app for adding adresses and such from your area to OSM :)

[–] eutampieri@feddit.it 1 points 3 days ago

Is there any similar app for iOS?

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Pretty sure Magic Earth uses several databases.

[–] rb411@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Do they publish a list anywhere? I'd love to see what they're using and see if I can get it into CoMaps somehow

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)
[–] rb411@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yes this is what I was looking for, thanks!

Now is there any way to add this data to comaps? Specifically address data?

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don't know, I'm not a developer. Looking at some of those databases, some of them are obviously open and others are paid licenses that the community probably can't afford.

[–] rb411@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago

Looks like they use both Open Addresses and NAD, a government-provided address database. Both appear free to download, but I don't know how easily it could be actually integrated into an app as I'm assuming that would require some time of API or something. I am also not a developer, just trying to figure out the best solution for navigation without giving all my data to Google. I did notice there's a "Custom Map Server" option in CoMaps settings, so maybe I could manually add something there? Not sure how that works though and maybe that overrides the default database instead of adding to it.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

Unfortunately this is a problem in all OSM apps, for reasons I don't understand. I really don't think anyone should bother developing anything else until this problem is solved.

My solution is to use GMaps WV (private-ish frontend for Google Maps) and search for locations there, and then share them to Comaps.

[–] rb411@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Well the only solution I can see is for us to start manually adding everything we can find to OSM unless there's some way to import better data into OSM or CoMaps.

[–] pinhead77@piefed.social 3 points 4 days ago

Check out the StreetComplete app that makes it easy to complete missing OSM data in your GPS area.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org -1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Adding more data isn't going to fix a broken search function.

[–] rb411@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago

I haven't noticed search being all that bad, there's just straight up missing data.

Also wouldn't the search function be fixed at an app level, not across all OSM?

[–] Dequei@piefed.social 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I use GmapsWV to search the place I want and then I use Geo Share to transform it to CoMaps.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 1 points 3 days ago

No need to transform anything, you can just hit the share button and paste it into comaps.

[–] Zwiebel@feddit.org 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Same as my other comment, do these adresses exist in OpenStreetMap?

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 1 points 4 days ago
[–] thomas@friendica.tomforge.de 1 points 4 days ago

@rb411
This is because ME imports other external data.

[–] thomas@friendica.tomforge.de 1 points 4 days ago

@rb411
This is because ME imports other external data.