Re: Best Offline Navigation App
Savage Doherty
Sorting through the multitude of navigation apps can be overwhelming, especially when you're seeking the perfect fit for last-mile delivery. To simplify your search, we've compiled a list of the best navigation apps tailored for Android users.
Pricing: Sygic offers a free version with offline maps only. The Premium+ subscription, priced at $19.99 annually, includes all features and live services. Available on the Google Play Store.
Besides the well-known names such as Google Maps, Waze, and TomTom GO, there are several other noteworthy apps with unique features worth exploring. These apps cater to specific preferences and requirements, offering a range of services from detailed offline maps to specialized routing for larger vehicles:
While a map app can direct your drivers to their destinations, you can boost its effectiveness by integrating it with a powerful route planner like eLogii. This partnership is particularly vital for last-mile delivery, where accuracy and efficiency are paramount.
Be the first to know when new articles are released. eLogii has a market-leading blog and resources centre designed specifically to help business across countless distribution and field-services sub sectors worldwide to succeed with actionable content and tips.
If you are looking for privacy respecting frankly you don't have too many options anyway. If you really want to know whats best for you I recommend installing all of them and have a play around with each.
Magic Earth is not Foss but its privacy respecting and probably provides the best experience. OsmAnd has the most options but I didn't like the "feel" of it. OrganicMaps is a friendlier version of OsmAnd, but perhaps lacking in comparison.
I use OsmAnd+ for hiking and biking, because it has so many possibilities and tools.
Organic Maps for navigation driving by car.
Magic earth I just tried, when I experimented with /e/ OS, whre it is the default map app. I liked it, but I prefer FLOSS. Magic earth has crowd sourced traffic alerts. That's a advantage compared to OsmAnd+ and Organic Maps.
Realistically there is no better navigation on mobile device than Google maps. So I am searching a similar one. I care about privacy, that's why I'm here.
What is best in your opinion and what is similar to gmaps.
I find that Magic Earth search is pretty bad. If you search before GPS lock, it'll return results from thousands of miles away. Doesn't seem to remember anything about previous position. Also, if your search isn't exact, it doesn't prioritize closer fuzzy matches, and again your results list will be filled with better matches from thousands of miles away.
Organic Maps seems to find POI much easier. Also easy to search by street name alone.
dlb Realistically there is no better navigation on mobile device than Google maps. So I am searching a similar one. I care about privacy, that's why I'm here.
What is best in your opinion and what is similar to gmaps.
dlb Actually, I have no idea. I use it as you can buy a subscription outside Playstore direct from Sygic, the maps are offline and are way better than Magic Earth. Additionally, there is something going on with Magic Earth that makes my phone overheat. This does not happen with Sygic.
pdagenius How were you able to buy the subscription? I have Sygic on my GrapheneOS P7, nothing Google installed, and when I click to buy the subscription, I get an error message. I tried uninstalling Sygic, installing Google stuff from Apps and reinstalling Sygic, still no luck.
Google maps only allows an offline map for 1 or 2 weeks. After that you have to connect again. And when you do connect it uploads all the data it has gathered from you since it was last connected. It gathers your location and records wifi data as long as its running and uploads all of it when it reconnects to the internet. Just FYI.
I used the excellent and default public transit layer on OsmAnd to look up bus stop locations AND the routes they serve, and the bus stop numbers just a few hours ago. Then I entered a bus stop number into the front page of my city's public transit website and got realtime arrival information for the routes arriving at that stop.
I did this while significantly protecting my privacy and not having to look at ads that are always major clutter to me (Google maps). I did not even have to install a public transit app which is piled with a horrific number of trackers and ads, or being tracked by Google because I had to enable Play Store (GMS) to use the app.
User2288 You say it gathers locations and wifi data.
Is this connected to your profile, or just uploaded as part of their map/location database?
And what if you use Google Maps without a profile? I do delete my Google account, so I'm not logged in Google Maps. Is this mitigating some of the data tracking this way?
I also tried Organic Maps and OsmAnd, but neither of it comes even close when searching for places. It is actually so bad as to be not usable. If you search for a building name, it doesn't suggest as a search result, but when you zoom in on the address, it is showing that exact building name?!
If you use Google Play Store/Services, or Aurora Store to install Google Maps directly into this profile, remove them completely afterwards). In fact, best to have no apps at all but Google Maps (and the default apps) in this 'GMaps' profile to be sure, since we are being extra careful in this scenario. Though, of course if you want, you could have a VPN app that you trust running in this profile too, to hide your IP address in the next step.
Also to be sure your efforts aren't pointless, never use any other profiles that are running any google services, or apps with google analytics, etc. etc. that also have access to your location. Or best not to have any apps at all with location access running whilst that profile is open (except system apps of course, don't mess with them.)
Then when your Google Maps app tells you that your downloaded maps won't work and you need to connect to the internet, go into the Google Map app settings and completely reset the app by clearing cache and data. Then I am pretty sure it would be fine to give it internet access and download the offline maps again, without it uploading more than the immediate info it collected since it was reset.
One more thing to also bear in mind is keeping the Google Maps app updated (as in the app itself, not the offline maps) without letting any of your 'travel data' leak. I guess you could do this in a few ways but one is installing Google Maps, and keeping it updated, in another profile/user (let's call this profile 'G-Updates') with the Play Store, or Aurora store, if you want. You can leave your 'GMaps' profile off while doing this, as it will update the app in all profiles Google Maps is installed in, when updated in the 'G-Updates' profile, but it will be unable to access user data from your 'GMaps' profile. You can even keep the Google Maps app disabled in this 'G-Updates' profile and the Play Store still updates it, no problem. I think in aurora store there is a toggle for updating disabled apps, haven't used it in a long time.
there may well be far easier / less complicated ways to do that and I might have some things wrong, I am kind of tired and not sure why I started writing this long message as it's a fairly convoluted way to do things, but I suppose some people might want to do it...
ve3jlg You may be right. In truth I really haven't used OsmAnd much at all. I generally don't need and don't use navigation and maps at all. My extent of using OsmAnd was probably half an hour. When I first installed it I fiddled around with it for half an hour to figure things out. I'm a technical person and not easily put off by complicated things, but rather quickly I felt overwhelmed with all the settings and not knowing what the hell is going on. Couldn't "get into it" easily.
Just playing around, the map layer also felt rather heavy and sluggish. The color scheme of the map also put me off as things didn't "look" as clear to me. This may be a "google" syndrome that we have all developed, if it looks different you are thrown off by "feel".
Anyway I left it to explore later and haven't opened the app since. I'm saying this to say that I may not be a good judge of OsmAnd at all because I really haven't used it enough. I also wanted to point out how easily "feel" and what we are used to can throws us off and have us not use something.
spiral With OSMAnd I downloaded my local map but since I do not use google services I could not get anything to work until I changed location source to android api. My default setting was for google play services
I Will be in italy in two days and would like to have a map/navigation app that works without internet connection on hand. Do you have any suggestions. I have an android. I Will be travelling to Venice, Florence and Rome. Thanks!!
I am leaving tomorrow, arriving Wednesday as well. The one I found for Android that works well for offline Navigation is "Navmii". Just download the Italy map and you should be all set. Just make sure you do your searches to enter your favorites when you have a data connection, as the search doesn't work that great unless you use the google search in the app. Once you have the favorites setup though for your stops it works great.
Our whole family used CityMap2Go while in Italy! It was great because it could tell us where we were as opposed to where we want to go... and if you're turned in the wrong direction, you can see the arrow. It does NOT give you directions like Google Map (turn Left down this street, then Right this street etc...), but it was more fun to use for us because we could choose our own paths.
Offline GPS is a vital feature for any maps app. You'll use it if you're exploring a foreign city and have data roaming turned off, or if you drive into a dead zone during a road trip. Here are the best free offline GPS apps for Android.
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