I ask because I have tried both and neither consistently find destinations I need, and when they do, they don't route me there in the fastest or most efficient way possible. My first experience with Organic Maps, for instance, tried to turn what was usually a 4 hour drive into a nearly 6 hour drive. I used Google Maps to get there instead.

Google Maps is still the best navigation I've used, followed closely by Magic Earth, which gets the job done but still isn't all that great. I find myself resorting to Google Maps 9 times out of 10 because even Magic Earth will add 15-30 minutes to any trip. Even when I do use Magic Earth, I have to double-check it against Google's navigation just to make sure I'm not wasting any extra time or gas money on the road.

Also, a little gripe with OSMAnd that probably isn't too big of a deal, but OSMAnd can't find anything unless I download my state map. It tells me "nothing found within 5 miles" and gives me the option to expand the radius. But at 10, 15, 20, all the way up to 50 miles, it won't find I'm looking for. Like I said, not too big a deal since downloading the map of my state solves this issue, but it's still inconvenient and kind of a waste of internal storage space given that other apps can navigate successfully using online maps.

I'm wondering how any of you get by using OSMAnd / Organic Maps as I've seen people post on Lemmy that they do. Am I just missing something? Or are these apps really as bad as I think they are?

Edit: I should specify that I use navigation mainly for driving and Olive in the US. Seems like people biking / hiking in the EU have a bit of an easier time with some of these apps

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[–] priapus@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

I use Magic Earth. It's proprietary, but uses OSM and I trust it more than Google. It has features for detecting traffic which I care about. I occasionally run into businesses that aren't labeled on the map, but the majority are. The navigation itself is always great. I live near a college and the campus is far more detailed than on Google Maps.

[–] digdilem@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I often use maps.me in the UK, which sources the same mapset as OSMand, and it's.. Good? Very useful when you're out of signal. The OSM dataset is about the best I know of for walking, even compared to Ordnance Survey, which many consider the best. I find their online maps, even on dedicated GPS devices, cluttered and not very zoomable. I've spent many hours adding to OSM over the years and it's quite wonderful to see local features that I added popping up in all kinds of places - it's amazing how many commercial mapping options source data from there.

I do agree that Google Maps is the best at routing, especially for traffic and re-routing options. I often have it on even for commutes and more than once it's saved me getting stuck in bad traffic because a road was closed.

[–] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 year ago

I use Magic Earth for my motorcycle, since I'm often out of cell coverage and having fully offline routing is nice. I specifically have it set to avoid motorways, and choose the longer route on back roads if it can. And it works pretty well for that.

Have you customized the routing settings at all in Magic Earth? You can change some stuff for how it calculates routes.

That said anything doing local routing is likely always going to be worse than Google Maps which is doing routing calculations somewhere else based on a lot more data.

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