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Comment by VZXvZXVBZ | Hacker News Reader

I want to love OsmAnd~ but the ux and search features are spectacularly terrible.

I was recently in Pomona, and searched for a Walgreens. The first result was for Livermore, with the next couple results being 100-200 miles away. 4th or 5th on the list was a store in Ontario, and the rest were 30+ miles away. I discovered there was a store in Pomona while driving to the store in Ontario.

For UX, several months ago my phone decided to display pot leaf icons for all the pot stores in Seattle. This only happens in Seattle, and I've spent at least 30 minutes searching through the app trying to figure out how to toggle off the pot stores. Mind you the pot stores stay up even along side the results for more recent searches.

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OSMAnd search is awful. For everything else it's pretty good! However, in years past it failed spectacularly: instead of navigating straight through an intersection, it requested I turn right, immediately u-turn, then turn right again. Laughable glitch.

I use it all the time for bicycle route planning with elevation considerations.

I've seen that with commercial (Waze) software too. It might be common bug in navigation software.

maybe waze also uses openStreetMap?

As far as I know, Waze has their own map data, and is a subsidiary of Google. Their Wikipedia page mentions that

> Waze continuously insisted to crowdsource data without using external sources or projects like OpenStreetMap that would restrict commercialization of the Waze map data.

Fun story, driving through Croatia toward Split Google Maps kept telling me the main freeway was closed and to take each and every exit. Someone is maliciously reporting roads closed. Obviously the same could happen to OSM, but there isn't the same 'no way to fix it until Google decides to fix it'.

Similarly when I was in Bangkok wandering around, Google wanted to cross the train tracks at a road that tripled the walking distance to the destination. In reality it was possible to cross the train tracks (i.e an actual crossing, not just anywhere). Worse it was much more dangerous to walk the Google route.

Fixing it on OSM was easy. Fixing it on Google was a pain because it had to be submitted and checked and approved (which it eventually was).

There are definitely places where OSM is far outstripping Google maps. Especially when it comes to non-roads.

  > OSMAnd search is awful. For everything else it's pretty good!

I stopped using Open Street Maps because it won't turn off! I close the app, I close the notifications, but the damn thing keeps playing loud audio telling me directions when I've long since left the car and the phone is in my pocket.

Of course the inability to exit an app without restarting the phone is a failure of the OS itself, but OSM is the only app that this happens with. What am I doing wrong? How does one exit OSM?

OSM != OSMAnd ;)

I‘m on an iPhone, so can’t check; but can you not simply stop the navigation of your route and then OSMAnd shuts up?

I'm sorry, yes, I'm using OSMAnd.

  > can you not simply stop the navigation of your route and then OSMAnd shuts up

Possibly, but my goal is not to just get the voice to shut up but to actually close / quit the app.

I suggest to raise an issue here: https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd

Thank you, filed here:

https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd/issues/13842

The fun part of OSM is that if you find a glitch like that (likely in the map itself), you can fix it yourself. There was an intersection near me where you could physically not turn left, but it wasn't recorded in the map. It was like a few minutes to fix that once for all.

Check out Organic Maps.

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