Some perspective from a user who’s been on Magic Earth for well over a year:
- It works very well. With a few quirks, it’s like 90-95% as useful as Google Maps for a majority of personas
- It’s a mature app, finds most addresses (with possible exception of recent changes like a business moving)
- Does surprisingly well with being current on traffic conditions
- While not FOSS, they seem to be open about what they sell of your information and it’s in aggregate, so I’m much less worried about location data being tied to other online dossiers I’ve left in my digital paper trail.
I found that Organic Maps and OsmAnd+ just couldn’t cut it at all for finding addresses, routing wasn’t super great (or intuitive), and otherwise rated very low on family acceptance as a replacement for Google Maps. I used Acastus Photon for addresses and frankly it’s not that much better and the workflow was janky and pretty useless when you want to plot route waypoints. Magic Earth was the bridge between fully de-googling and having a livable acceptance factor. So far I haven’t seen them doing anything they don’t claim (not getting in trouble privacy-wise), so I’m good.
I would say “privacy friendly” is accurate in the title - but this is not FOSS. Even so for those looking to de-google without losing utility, I recommend it and am glad it exists.
Edit: I wish some apps (looking at you Starbucks!) would use a default mapping engine like Magic Earth instead of expecing Google Maps on Android phones (Graphene, Lineage, Calyx)
Thank you for your feedback
somehow i got stuck on heads up display, and i cannot figure out how to disable it now!
Settings > Navigation > Car > Head-up Display
Legend thanks!
I agree completely with your review of Magic Earth. I will say that I keep some maps on my phone in Organic Maps as well. They are easier for me to follow when hiking on forest trails. When we went trailblazing on snowshoes, it made finding our way back to the main route simple.
It might be “privacy” focused, but it’s not open source
Do we have any indication they are trustworthy?
We have an indication they aren’t — they make claims that are demonstrably untrue.
[edit] actually, the website is pretty clear about what they do and don’t do. It’s only the poster on here who’s overplaying the availability, OSS and privacy angles.
I don’t see a single thing that’s claims they are Open Sourced. Not sure how you or OP are coming to that conclusion.
They use open street maps and crowd source the traffic pattern just like the rest of the map apps.
Putting those together doesn’t mean they claimed to be open sourced.
ya. I was confused at first because i went to try it out but no f-droid or any other way of getting it?
Could you elaborate, please?
The only other response of yours in the thread is that it’s not available in Canada, which doesn’t seem to contradict any of the claims in the thread title?
I didn’t say they were OSS (though I agree that it would be much better if it was), and I actually had no idea it wasn’t available in the US app store, since I installed it a while back when it still was. Not sure what’s going on there.
Then it’s a good thing it was posted to the privacy community and not the open source community.
Doesn’t seem to be available for iOS in the US App Store.
Can confirm, got a pop up saying same just now.
Ah that’s strange, I wonder why that is. I installed it from the app store a while back before it was removed, which is why I still have it on my phone. Not sure why they did that.
Apple has a competing Map app, just sayin’.
If that was actually the reason, Apple wouldn’t have allowed OsmAnd Maps, Maps.me, etc. and yet they’re in the US app store.
Meh, if that were the reason Google Maps would also be unavailable
Size matters.
Besides, Apple and Google conspi….rrr…collaborate on other projects and standards; can’t have an app queering that.
Fair point, and made me laugh
I tried switching my VPN to Netherlands, but still couldn’t access ME.
FYI, from the FAQ:
Why is Magic Earth free? What is the business model?
Magic Earth is free for all our end-users but we also have a paid Magic Earth SDK for business partners. For instance Selectric.de (a supplier for navigation solutions for ambulances and fire trucks), Smarter AI (developing ADAS systems) or Absolute Cycling (using the platform on bicycles). For more info on the SDK, you can check magiclane.com.
Just get OrganicMaps
Just downloaded and happy. Thanks for the recommendation :)
Organic routing just isn’t very good sadly. If it were I’d use it
Not open source no thanks. I’ll stick to Organic Maps.
Proprietary.
Not even joking, the fact that Magic Earth is still proprietary and comes bundled with /e/ is the main reason why I’m still not confident enough to use it as my ROM
So what’s the catch? Not sure if the answer in the FAQ really answers the question why it’s free. “Magic Earth is free for all our end-users but we also have a paid Magic Earth SDK for business partners. For instance Selectric.de (a supplier for navigation solutions for ambulances and fire trucks), Smarter AI (developing ADAS systems) or Absolute Cycling (using the platform on bicycles).”
I assume the user data like traffic and OSM contributions adds value to their paid SDK.
Don’t know but guessing, they are using open street maps so they can’t charge for it. Not sure as I have not looked into the licensing of it but assuming something like that.
Can anyone point to the source code please? They claim it is “privacy friendly”, so it cannot be proprietary, right? right? right?
Your comment got me curious so I had a look.
Will Magic Earth be Open Source?
No; since it is also used commercially (we have a paid Magic Earth SDK for business partners), we cannot make the code public.
Oh ok so there is no way to independently verify its privacy or security. Doesn’t belong in this community then IMO.
I think you have a wrong understanding of software auditing. Software can be closed source and 3rd party auditors can assess if it has good privacy and security implementations.
Being closed source doesn’t necesarily mean it’s bad (for privacy/security).
But then you have to trust, 1, the auditors (I assume by your comment you mean the people given closed door access to the code, reviews it, then publishes a statement saying their claims are valid, that kind of third party auditing?); 2, the code they disclosed to the auditors is the actual complete codebase; 3, that between the current version and the next they did not add anything fishy; and last but not least, 4, the binaries they give you is actually built from that codebase and nothing else, since you can’t build it yourself if you’re really that worried.
I don’t fully disagree that you can have a private and secure proprietary app, sure you can, but I argue that there are some really big hurdles and you can never have 100% trust in it. Whether these things is a dealbreaker depends on your own values, opinions, and threat model, of course. If you’re choosing between this and Google Maps, then this is almost certainly better in terms of privacy and security.
I suppose you can also decompile it and analyze it that way, but that’s very difficult and compared to reviewing an open source app, pretty much no one is going to do it. You also don’t have the same level of community attention and contribution on the code itself as an open source project would where people are forking it, implementing features they want and sending pull requests, and going through the codebase to learn how it’s implemented in order to develop their own projects. All of which gives many opportunities for other developers, usually ones very concerned about privacy and security themselves, to notice and sound the alarm on unethical or insecure code in the app, basically getting tons of community driven audits all the time.
How many people are actually auditing an open source app themselves though? And if they don’t, they again need to trust others’ opinion.
Shoutout: we have a community here to on lemmy: !openstreetmap@lemmy.ml
Joined, thanks!
Does it work with Android auto?
Project seems dubious based on other comments but I’ve yet to find anything that’s good and respects privacy while also being on Android auto.
It does yeah, the UI is very similar to Google Maps
It seems Like it doesnt work without gapps. I am in LineageOS without gapps, so Organic Maps wins.
No web interface?
It’s a good choice if using GrapheneOS. I had used OsmAnd+ before and was surprised when it had no voice for navigation because Graphene has no TTS service by default and the options I found were not great. Honestly TTS was one of the few things I missed from stock Android.
Android Auto won’t work either, but my car is just a little too old for that, so no loss for me.
How to make voice navigation works on magic earth with graphene os? I tinkered a bit and wasnt able to make it work
This might be Europe only. Blocked in US App Store
Edit: this is likely the case…at least for now. Screenshots on website are European
It’s not, I installed it in the U.S. just fine.
When and where
You must be android or something since it’s not available in iOS App Store in USA
