Hey all, I wanted to share what I’ve been doing for my hybrid maps setup.
I live in the US and our OSM data is decent but lacking any real searchability. I have Street Complete and am slowly working it into my walking routine, but this doesn’t solve me imediate needs of a Google near equivalent search. Some example queries that fail when I use Organic Maps:
- Half addresses “123 Some Street”
- Full addresses if the area was built in the last 5 years.
- Business or location names “Starbucks Libertyville, CA”
Sometimes when businesses are listed, they aren’t in the correct place on the map or they find an entirely other place that matches half the name.
Look and I get this isn’t the fault of OSM or Organic maps, this us the monopoly we’ve let Google become. But I really wanted to start using these maps as that will be my constant view into how I can fix things that are missing. If we want people to contribute we need a basic way to interact with the open app that works well enough.
So I found Geo Share and have used this workflow for a month and it works incredibly! Note: I haven’t dug into the code myself and there are no audits of this app so install at your own risk.
- Install Google Maps, Geo Share, and Organic Maps installed on GrapheneOS.
- I don’t log into Google maps and have location set to ask me every time for GMaps and Geo Share.
- I give Organic Maps full location permissions.
- I then set organic maps as my default mapping app.
- I use Google to look up an address, or if someone sends me a Google, Bing, or Apple link, I can also share that address to Geo Share.
- Geo-share grabs the coordinates and feeds them to Organic Maps.
- (Optional) If I have time I verify the address on Street Complete to update OSM
I’ll try to attach a gif of this workflow later, but for now I wanted to share this and open up if we should consider Geo Share as a recommendation and if so then I’d be happy to contribute this as a tutorial.