Google Maps has pretty good support for offline maps. Select rectangular area, download, it expires after year. I am in Europe, maybe you have different copyright on data?
The support is terrible. You can only choose a rectangle with the same proportions as your screen and the allowed size is too small for a trip in lots of areas of the US. Like a lot of software there are restrictions that make no sense and are extremely user unfriendly.
I've generally been really impressed with it. Would it be nice if I could pick a bigger area? Yeah. Would it be nice if I could choose the dimensions of my rectangle, or a non-rectangular shape like a state? Yeah.
But the fact that I can download a map that has all of New York City, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Delaware, and sizable chunks of 4 other states in that area for 890 MB is pretty awesome. Especially when it comes with full driving directions, business information including hours and the search capabilities? And it'll keep it up to date periodically? I'll take that win.
There’s no walking directions. But they can definitely do it. I was able to start a walking route on a hiking trail in Rocky Mountain National Park at 12k feet. Then switch into airplane mode and see exactly how far we had left.
All of that impossible if I didn’t have signal to start the walking route.
Idk when you tried it last, but it works for me on the iOS app. If you search for something that is a 'region' there should be a download offline map option.
In any case, before traveling I try to download the offline maps in HERE wego too.
With Organic Maps (and Osmand and mapy.cz) I am able to download entire Poland, Belgium, Czech Republic and Slovakia. This was useful in my recent trips and can download more if needed.
If you find it "pretty good", I guess you have never tried an OpenStreetMap-based app like Organic Maps. I also like OSMAnd a lot (I use both for different use-cases).
> I also like OSMAnd a lot (I use both for different use-cases).
This is the first come I come across Organic Maps but I do use OSMAnd. I'm wondering how the two compare and would love to hear more about the use cases you have for each of them.
I use organic maps most of the time but osmand has much better support for hiking trails: you can see them (not just a path, but the name of the route, with a different color to separate it), I can tell the app to prefer it when building an itinerary, and the altitude info is way more detailed. You can spot the exact altitude and gradient at any spot. You can add a second map as an overlay, and I typically use a contour maps to quickly see where the peaks are, where the route will be flat, etc...
OSMand is slightly too powerful for everyday use, organic maps is the perfect good-enough, less-is-better example.
I tell people OsmAnd is a swiss army knife that does everything for power users (the cyclists or hikers or drivers who find it really important to do a few specific things that most apps can't do) whereas Organic Maps is the app I actually recommend to family and friends as soon as I know that there's decent address coverage in their area (it's OSM only, so if an address POI doesn't exist in OSM it isn't searchable in OM. But volunteers and everyday users are adding new addresses all the time.)
I dowloaded Organic Maps ten minutes ago so take my comparison with a grain of salt. I could have missed some features in OM. Here we go:
Moving the map is much faster in OM than in OSMAnd. I hope that OSMAnd study the code of OM.
The visualization in OM is much nicer. Another thing to copy.
OM is extremely better at displaying POIs and their information. Again, copy it.
Despite the claims it seems that OM does not show walking and cycling routes. OSMAnd shows them with their name, that matches the one you see on signposts along the routes.
OM does not seem to have a way to record a route and save it as gpx. OSMAnd does that.
OM does not seem to have a way to place markers on the map. I use them to plan new routes for biking, then I follow the markers. Navigation would bring me where it wants to go through, not where I want to.
OM is less than half the size of OSMAnd but it's still 58 MB. I wonder why these mapping apps must be so large.
Having to dowload all the maps again is very bad. I wish there is a way to share them among apps but I think that Android makes it impossible, unless we want to use a folder on an external storage (SD card) or root the phone or whatever.
I'll keep using OSMAnd because of recording, markers and routes. However I might recommend OM to friends that only need a replacement for Google Maps.
I find the UI in Organic Maps to be much nicer. OSMAnd seems to have a larger feature set and extensions and stuff you may or may not need/want/require. Navigation seem to add an announcement in OSMAnd whenever the OSM object for a road changes (seemingly), which leads to a number of totally unnecessary »Continue straight on road X«.
The support got better: downloading is good. It should be usable now, but there are basic things that are not supported, like searching for something or finding a path. I typically don’t need to search: I know where for things are, but there aren't other ways to mark something on the map: favorites and stars don’t appear consistently, and pointing at things is completely useless when logged-in and disabled when off-line. So much of it feels like it was never tested.
My main issue is that there should be a way to say, “Keep this journey on screen until I explicitly delete it, with a confirmation model.” I’m assuming that’s what “Pin it” is meant to do, but in practice, I occasionally see the path I last searched when I reopen my phone and map; I never see a pinned journey again if anything happens: rotate the phone, a quick switch to another app, the screen goes dark…
