CoMaps

What hackers pick instead

• Organic MapsA privacy-friendly Google Maps alternative that works fully offline, is strong for hiking and small POIs, and has a clean UI; critics cite governance disputes that spawned the CoMaps fork.111recommend
• OsmAndA powerful, deeply configurable offline map app built on OpenStreetMap, especially good for hiking and non-car travel; expect a clunky interface, weak place search and slowness.97recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 200 comments. Each links to the original.

1. CoMaps does have this exact UX flow actually. Unfortunately it is somewhat flaky and frequently falls back to not doing it.

   Mixed · Jul 2026 · in “Organic Maps”

2. When you have an option like CoMaps that is opensource friendly and very active, I got 2 maps updates within like 2 weeks

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “OsmAnd's Faster Offline Navigation”

3. Comaps also has offline wikipedia entries. So you can be on a hill, and read about the iron age fort that was once there.

   Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Local Wikipedia: Wikipedia, but only for things a half hour walk from you”

4. You download the map(s) you want and it just works, no forced updates or ads or anything in the way of upselling.

   Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Apple Maps Ads Are Here, and There's No Way to Turn Them Off”

5. her Google Maps was not working, so we got to an albergue, asked for wi-fi and downloaded CoMaps on her phone

   Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Tell HN: docker pull fails in spain due to football cloudflare block”

6. From my perspective there were no negatives. If anything, coMaps looked to be under more active development.

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “CoMaps – FOSS Offline Maps”

7. Apps like CoMaps and Organic Maps make it super easy to contribute data for businesses, landmarks, and such.

   Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Why Book Corners won't sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap”

8. CoMaps would be a good map app, and it will also display when POIs and opening hours were last confirmed

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “How Google Maps allocates survival across London's restaurants”

9. It's pretty excellent! The improved integration with OpenStreetMaps to provide edits/additions is great.

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple”

10. My family members, especially the older ones, all use CoMaps because it is much more friendly to them.

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “CoMaps: The Offline App That Guided Rescuers Without a Signal in Venezuela”

11. They decoupled this, processing went from 10 days to about 3, now fresh data weekly for whole planet

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “CoMaps: The Offline App That Guided Rescuers Without a Signal in Venezuela”

12. It lacks a lot of power features, but is extremely fast and all of the options are easily available

    Mixed · Jul 2026 · in “CoMaps – FOSS Offline Maps”

13. the lack of accurate (or sometime any) topo or additional map layers in CoMaps is the most galling

    Mixed · Jul 2026 · in “Organic Maps”

14. map updates that are independent to an app update, and they try to update maps like once a week

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “CoMaps – FOSS Offline Maps”

15. The offline map support and being able to load and display GPX tracks are really helpful there.

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “CoMaps: The Offline App That Guided Rescuers Without a Signal in Venezuela”

16. the simplicity of CoMaps makes it much more pleasant to use for the thing I mostly use it for

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “CoMaps: The Offline App That Guided Rescuers Without a Signal in Venezuela”

17. The problem I have most of all with the routing is that it seems to default to my location

    Mixed · Aug 2026 · in “CoMaps: The Offline App That Guided Rescuers Without a Signal in Venezuela”

18. I've found CoMaps actually has more features, like I was able to submit a new Place to OSM

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “GrapheneOS will remain usable by anyone without requiring personal information”

19. It is missing a couple of commonly-used features though, most notably traffic information

    Mixed · May 2026 · in “Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent”

20. Performance is the main reason to prefer CoMaps but they've gotten a lot better at it

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “CoMaps: The Offline App That Guided Rescuers Without a Signal in Venezuela”

21. I think having an offline map of at least the region you live in can come in handy.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Iran Protest Death Toll Could Top 30k, According to Local Health Officials”

22. CoMaps is a much simpler and faster interface, that I use for driving navigation.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Organic Maps”

23. Track recording in comaps is super finicky, at least for me. I've lost multiple recordings while checking the map mid hike.

    Criticizes · Jul 2026 · in “Organic Maps”

24. the routing for bikes is bad. The routes are avoiding lots of bike lanes and miss completely oarks and forests.

    Criticizes · Nov 2025 · in “CoMaps emerges as an Organic Maps fork”

25. The very first UX experience this app gives is "I am primarily for people interested in maps and geography"

    Criticizes · Jul 2026 · in “Organic Maps”

26. apparently its a split between the address data not being present, and OrganicMap / CoMap being bugged

    Criticizes · Jul 2026 · in “CoMaps – FOSS Offline Maps”

27. I thought the lower contrast and washed-out colors compared to Organic Maps were a poor choice

    Criticizes · Jul 2026 · in “CoMaps – FOSS Offline Maps”

28. fix the long-standing bug: make it possible to use the navigation in "north is always up" mode

    Criticizes · Aug 2026 · in “CoMaps: The Offline App That Guided Rescuers Without a Signal in Venezuela”

29. CoMaps is tainted by being a reactionary fork, has less features and lags behind on bug fixes

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “GrapheneOS will remain usable by anyone without requiring personal information”

30. Unfortunately I have yet to find an OSM app that offers a properly usable modern interface.

    Criticizes · Jul 2026 · in “Organic Maps”

31. CoMaps really struggled to know what address I was referencing for driving directions

    Criticizes · Nov 2025 · in “CoMaps emerges as an Organic Maps fork”

32. That has been possible for a long time, by pressing the location button to toggle it. And recently some more edge cases regarding this were fixed.

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “CoMaps: The Offline App That Guided Rescuers Without a Signal in Venezuela”

33. Trails and 4WD tracks have a distinctive colour semi-continue lines. I am using exactly that to discover new places and it has been awesome.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Organic Maps”

34. When I downloaded it via F-Droid earlier today it did what wanted. Unfortunately Android Auto is only enabled in the Play Store Version

    Mixed · Jul 2026 · in “Organic Maps”

35. I'm active in a travel subculture highly reliant on OpenStreetMap data, and I have only pissed my peers off by recommending OSMAnd

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “CoMaps integration with the wider FLOSS ecosystem”

36. Nice lil gateway to an awesome ecosystem. Mega kudos to the CoMaps devs for doing such a great job with it.

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “CoMaps: The Offline App That Guided Rescuers Without a Signal in Venezuela”

37. I recently tried the CoMaps fork of Organic Maps and was surprised by a few quality of life improvements.

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “CoMaps: The Offline App That Guided Rescuers Without a Signal in Venezuela”

38. They would definitely chose coMaps over Organic Maps just to lessen the risk of that happening again.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Organic Maps”

39. Great for hiking and sharing path. So nice to be able to do that locally and just send a .gpx file

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “CoMaps – FOSS Offline Maps”

40. I strongly recommend you to seriously look into comaps or organic maps if you don't know them.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Organic Maps”