December 23, 2022

We wish you a Merry Christmas 🎅 and a Happy New Year 🎄! The best gift for us is to know that we are doing The Right Thing and that our time and efforts are helping someone on the Planet 🌎. Meet our small gift 🎁 to you: a New Year's release of Organic Maps is available in AppStore, Google Play, Huawei AppGallery, and FDroid!

We have to fix a lot of issues and implement many features (1200+ on our GitHub at the moment). Many of them are about improving the app. Some features are more complex and can be done as separate, independent open projects. For example, places photos and reviews, road traffic database, public transport service, cloud sync and backup, online maps, web editor for trip planning, map styles editor, travel guides, API/SDK for other apps, etc. Here you can help by donating, participating, or even leading such a project!

The main goal of the Organic Maps project is to create an open and privacy-friendly alternative to existing proprietary maps. With your donations, help, and support, we can reach this goal sooner while providing all services for free to everyone. Also, please let us know if you are aware of any grants that may help with the development of Organic Maps. For example, this grant can be used by contributors in Germany.

And, finally, here is the list of all changes in the New Year update:

Highlights:

• New OpenStreetMap data as of December 16, 2022
• Improved routing algorithm (there are still some issues to fix, please let us know!)
• No more routing over highway=construction 🙂
• Support multiple track geometry in KML files
• Fixed KML 2.3 track import from OpenTracks
• Faster parsing and rendering of complex KML tracks
• Allow adding some shops, galleries, music schools in the Map Editor
• Improved city borders in search results

Android:

• Fixed "Enable Location" system dialog in some cases
• Fixed crash in split mode & on portrait/landscape rotation
• More reliable compass arrow in Place Page
• Improved texts display in Help dialog
• New Mastodon icon

iOS:

• Settings & routing options headers are visible now in the Night Mode
• Fixed crash when displaying the menu

Map Styles:

• Improved, less bright icons in Night mode
• Fixed subway icons in some cities
• Properly draw barriers for areas and relations
• Fixed duplicated names on the world map
• Updated cave, mountain pass, peak, volcano, emergency phone, historic ship, ice cream, nightclub, music shop, stadium, video games icons
• Fixed wrong priorities of leisure=pitch, historic, post office
• More consistent filled/round icons (round means some kind of business/service)

Translations:

• TTS (Text-To-Speech) for Brazil, Mexican Spanish and Norwegian
• Fixed German and Hungarian search strings
• Updated Czech, Spanish translations

Many thanks to our community for your invaluable help, and many thanks to our users for choosing Organic Maps! 🙏 🙏 🙏

🎇 🎈 🎉 🎊 🎄 🎆