361
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] massacre@lemmy.world 84 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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)

[-] Blaze@sopuli.xyz 8 points 1 year ago

Thank you for your feedback

[-] palitu@lemmy.perthchat.org 4 points 1 year ago

somehow i got stuck on heads up display, and i cannot figure out how to disable it now!

[-] claymore@pawb.social 2 points 1 year ago

Settings > Navigation > Car > Head-up Display

[-] palitu@lemmy.perthchat.org 1 points 1 year ago

Legend thanks!

[-] SoManyChoices@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 year ago

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.

this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
361 points (93.7% liked)

Privacy

32169 readers
446 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS