OSMAnd: An App For Offline Maps and Navigation

OSMAnd is an offline map and navigation app for iOS and Android.

Everything works offline including turn-by-turn voice guidance (recorded and synthesized voices).

You can also search for places by address, by type (e.g.: restaurant, hotel, gas station, museum), or by geographical coordinates.

However, the search is problematic. It helps to look for the city first, then the street, lastly the house/business number.

I’ve also been told by the developers to zoom in the general area where I wanna go before doing the search.

It is available in both free and paid versions. The paid version unlocks the download limit for offline maps and provides access to Wikipedia points of interest (POIs) and their descriptions from within the app.

Other features:

  • Offers choice between driving, cycling, pedestrian modes
  • Allows you to create and manage GPX tracks, using contour lines visualization and altitude info (through plugin)
  • OSM editing

The maps are based on OpenStreetMap and Wikipedia data.

2 thoughts on “OSMAnd: An App For Offline Maps and Navigation”

    1. I used to recommend that app. But a reader sent me this information:

      But I would definitely not put maps.me on any list of privacy friendly apps. Besides their privacy policy not being good and them collecting a ton of data and the app having lots of trackers, etc., the app sends plenty of data to it’s Russian owners (that company has its own privacy problems). I love maps.me and used it for years. But once I read this article and started my own network analysis of the app traffic, I won’t put it on my primary phone any longer. Have a look at these:
      https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_p?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://mobilsicher.de/ratgeber/navi-apps-im-check-maps-me-nicht-empfehlenswert&depth=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sp=nmt4&xid=17259,15700002,15700019,15700186,15700190,15700256,15700259,15700262,15700265,15700271,15700283&usg=ALkJrhgAAAAAXdMoLQzz0UY79EjTy1_5__H5Swg927vp

      https://www.androlyzer.com/app/com.mapswithme.maps.pro/1735/e2e0167d27002392c21192a9e215ce0e480b0625

      Say what you want about Google data collection, but I still trust Google more than some Russian company that has had its own privacy problems (and doesn’t play by the same rules as US companies theoretically should).

      Now, if you are compiling maps.me app yourself from source (without all the gunk) and sideloading it, well that’s another story.

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