Looking for offline map app

MarkG_108

Does Ubuntu Touch have an offline map app (that maybe uses Open Street Maps)?

When I was using LineageOS, I used OsmAnd+ along with UnifiedNlp. The latter (UnifiedNlp) is likely the more important of the two, in that it allowed for me to access maps (or location services) to use offline (one being "lacells"). I haven't seen anything like this in Ubuntu Touch. Does it exist? If so, do please let me know. Thanks.

TotalSonic

@MarkG_108 - there are two native map apps -
Pure Maps - https://open-store.io/app/pure-maps.jonnius
and uNav - https://open-store.io/app/navigator.costales

uNav currently has some limited offline abilities. Pure Maps, which seems to function better than uNav for most users, is planning on adding offline ability in a future update.

Other than that - there are a number of webapps, that might be able to help in route planning - https://open-store.io/?sort=relevance&search=maps

Best regards,
Steve Berson

MarkG_108

@TotalSonic Thanks for the reply Steve. Pure maps says, "Offline maps, search and routing is not possible at the moment." I've tried uNav, and it (supposedly) is possible to set it up for offline maps, but extremely difficult. If that's the only option, then, well, I suppose I'll take it.

TotalSonic

@MarkG_108 - yeah - uNav is a bit clunky in usage in my experience - but I think offline maps for Pure Maps should end up happening within a month or two - I've been really encouraged by how well it works, and it was just ported to Ubuntu Touch a couple weeks ago.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

Lakotaubp

@MarkG_108 https://open-store.io/app/osmscout.fransschreuder May help

MarkG_108

@Lakotaubp Thanks. I did check out OSMScout but I wasn't able to figure it out. I'll likely have another look at it.

normandc

OSMScout seems to be no longer maintained, it comes without any maps, and contrary to a one-year old topic I found (sorry don't have the link ATM), it's impossible to install maps from within the app. It's basically useless.

advocatux

@normandc the xenial version is https://open-store.io/app/osmscout.zubozrout but yes, that app needs some love.

AppLee

@advocatux
Yes OsmScout needs some love and I have hight expectations for pure map.
Rinigus made an excellent work there.
I'm eager to see the offline mode available too.

Regarding the present, OsmScout works well and I can download maps from within the app.
I had to reduce the font size and now it's a bit rough on the edges, but good enough for my nneeds

saveurlinux

I've tried OsmScout, unfortunately no maps are available to download.
Maybe no more accessible from: http://schreuderelectronics.com/osm/

AppLee

@saveurlinux Oh it seems you're right.
I downloaded a map end of june, but now there is no download list...

But I guess you can manually download them from another source and put them in the expected directory: /home/phablet/.local/share/osmscout.zubozrout/Maps/

saveurlinux

@AppLee sould try and fix up the app source

halucigenia

I was happily using OsmScout myself until recently trying to update the maps. I have England and Scotland but deleted Wales while trying to download others.
Would it be possible for users to copy their existing possibly not entirely up to date maps to each other until we get an alternative?

MarkG_108

This post is deleted!

MarkG_108

@AppLee I tried doing that but I could not get it working. I started a thread about it here.

Giiba

I don't know exact details, but Puremaps seems to work in 'Mixed' mode without an internet connection; as long as you browse to download the maps ahead of time. I am not sure if navigation works offline though.

MarkG_108

@TotalSonic Well, I took another look at uNav, and I think I may have succeeded. From uNav's offline instruction page (which frankly is too sparse), I did ultimately manage to download map tiles using the program downloadosmtiles. The link suggested "zoom=5:18", but a zoom of eighteen, I discovered, is nuts. So, after it was downloading for a while (like, for many hours), I stopped it, content with a zoom of 17 (which had finished downloading).

Anyway, searching locations works on it, and the maps look good (tiles are from OpenStreetMap). I don't know if GPS on the phone works okay or not, though (I'll have to test it outside).

[edit] Well, I walked around outside, and it knew where I was going. So, that's very good. It's a shame that the directions function in offline mode doesn't work. But, in general, my main concern for having a mapping program is to be able to always know where I am. So, I'm very pleased with its performance. And it seems to be very good in finding locations that I search for.

rinigus

When we get OSM Scout Server ported over to UT, Pure Maps will be able to use the map data from that server for offline operation. This includes search, navigation, and map matching, in addition to MapboxGL map tiles.

Plan is to do it soon, but I will depend on packagers. On my side, I will use the same GUI abstraction as we have for Pure Maps for UBPorts support. On the server side abstraction is ready, I have to just add and test UT platform code.

danfro

While we are waiting for PureMaps to provide offline functionality, here some instructions on how to get offline maps for uNav working using downloadosmtiles. I do post this here because I did encounter a few stones on the road to success.

download downloadosmtiles from the left hand menu
extract to a folder on your harddisc, i.e. Downloads/osmtiles
run the script with perl downloadosmtiles.pl --link='http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=49.5782&lon=11.0076&zoom=10&layers=B000FTF' --zoom=5:16 --destdir=somewhere/maps

of course replace coordninates with your target coordinates, the area seems to depend on the zoom value after the coords
replace the path for destdir with another one, default is the current working directory
change zoom levels, levels above 16 do take quite some time to download, you can download 5 to 16 first, and only level 17 or above later if you really need it

copy the map-files (foldernames = zoom level i.e. 5) onto your phone i.e. in a folder Documents/uNav_maps
[zip the map tiles and copy the zip file, that is much faster than copying thousands of files]
in Terminal app run the following commands:
cd Downloads/uNav_maps
rsync -avp . ~/.local/share/navigator.costales/maps
[rsync is faster than cp and gives you progress information]
open up uNav, goto settings, change Modus to offline maps

EDIT:
To specify a bounding box for the tiles do be downloaded the command in step 3 needs to look like this:
perl downloadosmtiles.pl --latitude=47.35371:49.93708 --longitude=7.38281:10.54687 --zoom=5:7 --destdir=somewhere/maps
edit finished

Have fun! Don't get lost!

for lazy guys like me:
If you do this regularly, you may wish to create yourself a small shell script in your phones home folder called i.e. cpbash.sh. Then only open Terminal and run bash cpmaps.sh. Put the following two lines into the script:
cd Downloads/uNav_maps
rsync -avp . ~/.local/share/navigator.costales/maps

Troubleshooting: (on ubuntu 18.04)
... Can't locate Geo/OSM/Tiles.pm in @INC ...

open the file downloadosmtiles.pl in a editor
before line 6 add the following line: use lib '/Downloads/OSMtiles/Geo-OSM-Tiles-0.04/lib';, replace the path with your download location

... Can't locate Geo/OSM/Tiles.pm in @INC ...

install YAML.pm by running: sudo apt-get install libyaml-perl
you may need to create the folder maps to be like this: ~/.local/share/navigator.costales/maps, then map data wants to be in there in a structure like this (see https://unav.me/offline/) :
~/.local/share/navigator.costales/maps/10/
~/.local/share/navigator.costales/maps/10/523/
~/.local/share/navigator.costales/maps/10/523/331.png

99

Hi, Unav does support offline maps; in settings it tells you (via a link) https://unav.me/offline/ how to do this. I am a big fan of Foxtrot and Tango GPS; I copied my PC offline map cache to the right file. It all works on my Nexus 4. Happy travelling.