CoMaps is a truly open-source, community-developed, and privacy-respecting map & navigation app which supports offline use.
Why I think this tool should be added
In April 2025 community contributors to Organic Maps published an open letter to Organic Maps shareholders seeking to address various concerns about the project, including undemocratic (for-profit?) governance, a lack of decision making and financial transparency, and the supposed needless inclusion of (or dependence on) proprietary software.
The majority of shareholders failed to address community concerns and thus CoMaps was born as a truly open-source and non-profit community-developed fork of Organic Maps. It seems CoMaps is becoming the preferred mobile navigation app in the community as awareness spreads. From a strictly criteria-focused perspective, it appears CoMaps would better fulfill the open source criteria. (To clarify, the proprietary code in Organic Maps is/was server-side.)
I certainly feel that there should be a discussion around this. Especially since this is a community fork of Organic Maps, which is an official recommendation. Of course any decision should be based on whether it meets the criteria for inclusion, and not on anything else.
I use Organic Maps nearly every day when out and about.
I just learnt about CoMaps pretty recently, and have now installed it. It seems great at first look, but I can’t say anything meaningful until I’ve daily driven it.
am I the only one who thinks it is ok with just using the original Organic Maps?
I mean yes the server is proprietary but the client is at least open and can be used fully offline after downloading/updating, am I crazy?
I think it’s mainly about how the project is being run, not the code. I haven’t dug into the specifics for myself, but apparently donations were being mishandled.
These shareholders have reportedly used the project’s donation funds for personal expenses, like holiday trips, raising serious concerns about financial transparency.
If there is no switching cost (quality, price, availability), I would rather use an open system than a partially closed one. More agency to the community and better transparency on resources used (usually).
Yeah, I just brought up the recency of the fork in our team chat too. That’s probably the best case against it, but it isn’t exactly the same situation as a browser or operating system which are handling untrusted code regularly.
Interested to hear whether anyone else has thoughts about whether we need a waiting period for new projects like this one.
Since it’s a fork of Organic Maps, I don’t think there should be any degradation of features or functionality. I haven’t had a chance to compare them myself, but based on other accounts it sounds like it’s currently basically just Organic Maps but developed by the more trustworthy community contributors, including one of the Organic Maps founders I believe. It will diverge more from Organic Maps as development continues, but it’s starting with more or less the same app.
Unlike a browser, there shouldn’t be any major security concerns. That’s not to say there shouldn’t be any waiting period, only that I think it’d be safe to get away with a much shorter waiting period than if we were recommending a browser or OS.
I use it on GOS. The maps part is, as expected, basically the same as organic maps. The navigation feature is still unreliable as it does not really account for traffic or anything so I rarely end up going the route it wants me to go. Which is fine, the bigger annoyance is it does not adjust or “reroute” very well, instead it spends a lot of time telling you to turn around before realizing you are taking a different path.
I do think that each case is different and would require certain considerations. Each resource added should have been carefully reviewed, tested, vetted and it should be also actively developed. But I wouldn’t just eliminate something because it’s “too new” or “too recent”.
Unless, of course, this is made part of the criteria. For example: “a project should be live for at least X amount of time” before it can even be considered.
I think you brought up that the organization behind a project us important too in other topics, their funding isn’t secured, i have very little tell of how well they are at running a new project. And migration is always a hurdle.
While I use it myself I find it difficult to recommend if I don’t know the future/stability of the project yet.
Thank you everyone for considering adding CoMaps to PrivacGuides!
At this point, CoMaps and Organic Maps functionality is exactly same for just about everything. A number of features have already been added to CoMaps. And CoMaps is moving quickly, so with time it will continue to diverge.
The concern with Organic Maps:
Code was being hidden even though the project is intended to be open-source, which can potentially raise privacy concerns
The project website says “No ads“ but a Kayak ad was added and even after a big community outrage, it was not removed
The project is positioned as “community-driven”, but a number of decisions were made where the community was not included or even aware
There is a risk of the project being sold with profits from contributor work going into pockets of shareholders
The vast majority of contributors have moved to CoMaps and the project is progressing rapidly. See development activity on Codeberg, out of 260,000 projects, CoMaps is already #8 by number of stars.
The financing for CoMaps is the same as Organic Maps - donations. All the work is done by volunteers. As donations increase, there will likely be enough to hire people by the end of the year (for context, Organic Maps ran without hiring a person for 3 years)
All financials are available here with full transparency:
Installed it yesterday, it’s pretty much exactly like Organic Maps was just with some improvements like mentioned above.
I like that you can now have the UI in dark mode while the maps are “light”.
If it’s true that the “vast majority of contributors have moved to CoMaps” switching our recommendation to CoMaps seems to be a no-brainer.
You can customize the left button at the bottom. There is a new setting for dark mode. I think that in opposition to OM, Google Fused location is turned off by default???
So yeah… as you can see, pretty much the same feature sise
Secondly, OM lied about open source (there was server and map builder drama).
Thirdly, they had argument with F-droid team and threatened to leave F-droid (i have even screenshots somewhere) which is plain unacceptable.
And finally, CoMaps has better interface, has customization (like hiding annoying info button in bottom left corner) etc. And now even working on adding ability to change CDN server to custom.
Just adding my take here. I agree that CoMaps has already added a few quality of life changes like being able to hide the help menu and I personally think the colors are slightly more legible and cohesive. I can’t speak to contributors or funding but if those mostly moved over from Organic Maps I’d fully support adding this to the site.
