Best GPS navigation app that doesn't require Google Play Services in 2023?

theDutchBrother@lemmy.world to Android@lemmy.world – 61 points –

I'm looking to never have to use Google Maps. Is OsmAnd+ the best?

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Organic Maps serves me well

okay I just tried it. lol. How does it serve you well? It is absolutely useless. seriously.. please explain.

anyone doubting me, go install it and try it out for yourself. You will see how useless it is. You put in a valid address and it says "no results found." It has literally nothing. except it encourages you to download an entire map of an entire huge city for 220 MB. Why? Why is the only option it offers to download a huge data-heavy city and it won't even take me to a simple address?

Of course you have to download the map ypu wanna use, duh. Plus I live in a third world country and it has everything so far including adresses and it works even for coordinates

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It was interesting trying to give Organic Maps a college try. In the US it seems about useless, even after downloading all 50 states. One can get navigation to work to the city or street (but not the address) at the destination, but it seems the easiest way to plot a destination is to just physically zoom in and find it on the map and tell it to navigate to that location. It seems incapable of looking up addresses, which makes one wonder if they're somehow missing from the base mapping data, or if the application just doesn't have the "smarts" to query addresses in certain countries correctly.

I've used all sorts of GPS mapping software over the years both on dedicated hardware, computers, etc. including the more arcane that have you start at street number or zip code and then drill down layer by layer so the backing software doesn't have to work so hard. This is the first I've seen that doesn't seem to have the ability to find simple street addresses.

It could be that in countries that it's popular, the base mapping data works better.

Maps.me (albeit, they seem to not be as good as they once were) and Here WeGo (which is an ex-Nokia commercial property that for some reason is free to use offline? So you're probably the product.) both seem to do a better job at both addresses and mapping routes that make sense. I agree with solrize@solrize@lemmy.world that Osmand seems very the opposite of user friendly.

That's interesting, Organic Maps is ok for navigating to addresses when I use it. Are you sure you have the right maps? There is a high level overview map of the US, but then there are a lot of more localized ones for the individual states and some other regions. You just enter the address into the search bar and press "route to". It has a few annoyances and the voice instructions don't give you the street names (just "turn left in 300 meters" instead of "turn left on Elm Street in 300 meters"). I would say it not as good as google maps, but it is mostly ok. I use google maps as a fallback when I have to.

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