Navigation apps with traffic that work without Google Services?

edisondotme

Hello everyone,

Up until recently, the HERE WeGo app was working with car traffic during navigation, but now it always tells me " Your connection is unstable. App will temporarily work offline." Whenever I go into navigation mode.

OSM projects haven't seemed to have made headway on traffic.

So the title… any car navigation apps that can work without using Google Play services?

Viewpoint0232

edisondotme Up until recently, the HERE WeGo app was working with car traffic during navigation, but now it always tells me " Your connection is unstable. App will temporarily work offline." Whenever I go into navigation mode.

Do you know that this is because of missing Play Services? It could be caused by something else. Did you try it in a second user with Play Services?

Satoichi

Organic Maps and Magic Earth are very good replacements.

harp

Satoichi Organic Maps and Magic Earth are very good replacements.

Organic Maps doesn't have traffic service and - I don't know for sure - Magic Earth also doesn't.

Catalyst4571

harp Magic Earth does have traffic, provided that you enable the use of Mobile Data and enable traffic in the Mobile Data settings.

mmobder

if that's ok, try Waze, it may not require play services if it's the same as in the old post (https://www.reddit.com/r/waze/comments/8y20g8/what_will_break_if_waze_doesnt_have_google/)

dc32f0cfe84def651e0e

mmobder Waze requires signing up.

mmobder

dc32f0cfe84def651e0e

Waze provides Guest mode, isn't it useful for you case?
OP has asked for "play services - less" navigation, not an account-less. And Waze doesn't require google account, I think, you can sign-up by email

hemlockiv

Waze absolutely does not require signing up. You can use it in Guest mode, and specifically in Anonymous/Ghost mode so you're not tracked as a regular "wazer." You can't create new reports, but you can up/downvote existing reports on the map.

Be aware Waze is owned by google now though, so even if it doesn't require GMS, the data does go thru their servers.

dc32f0cfe84def651e0e

hemlockiv Waze absolutely does not require signing up.

Not immediately, but within days.

hemlockiv

dc32f0cfe84def651e0e I've been literally using it for years without an account. It asked me maybe twice within the first day if I wanted to create an account, I tapped "Continue as guest," and it has not bothered me since. Have you enabled the "go invisible" mode? (That's what I meant by ghost/anonymous mode in my last comment)

blusterpilgrim

In the OsmAnd~ app you can add a traffic layer with instructions here: https://reddit.com/r/openstreetmap/comments/11i7la0/how_to_add_live_traffic_to_osmand/ I've been using this for about a month and it's one to one with th Google Maps traffic layer. This works on my phone with no play services installed.

hemlockiv

blusterpilgrim In the OsmAnd~ app you can add a traffic layer with instructions here: https://reddit.com/r/openstreetmap/comments/11i7la0/how_to_add_live_traffic_to_osmand/

(Worth noting that that link says the traffic data of solely visual, and is not actually factored into the app's navigation calculations. In that sense, this isn't do much a "navigation app with live traffic" as OP is requesting, and more of a "map app with live traffic.")

edisondotme

Viewpoint0232 Good point actually, I haven't done thorough testing if traffic will work without GSF. However I suspect it will because I tried reformatting the app storage and instead just using HERE WeGo without any downloaded maps and seemed to go back to using traffic data.

Unkn0wn-3nt1ty

Stuck in the same boat, it's the only Google owned product that I need to use. Would be eager for a good replacement, as well. Currently using Waze.

TranceSeven

I recently setup OSMAnd to use the Google traffic as an overlay and tested it out over a 100 mile / 160km trip.

As stated before and elsewhere, it's just an overlay that OSMAnd is displaying, there's no intelligence behind it and it has no effect on routing decisions.

Initially, after plotting my route, I found it useful. I could see where the traffic hot-spots were so was able to make an informed decision as to whether to route around that area or not (it helped that I was somewhat familiar with the route I was taking).

Once I started the trip though, the usefulness dramatically decreased.

For a start, I set the overlay's expiry period to 5 minutes, thinking that would be enough to get periodic updates. But as I started driving, and OSMAnd zoomed in to show the road ahead, only the old tile was visible at the previous zoom level, presumably because it had not expired. So I had fat blurry roads, upon which my route was drawn in high clarity.

Another issue was getting the transparency level correct. At one extreme, you don't get to see the overlay, so that's no good. In the mid point, you get labels from both the base level and from the overlay, and they're often for the same road, and they intermix and it looks confused. At the full visibility, you just get Google's tiles/info and again, with a long expiry period, these are not updated anywhere near as often.

Finally for me, there was the issue of essentially having no warning. OSMAnd is getting the tiles for your position and a set zoom level. It shows the road ahead for a finite distance depending your speed. Even if there were a total road blockage, you're not going to know about it until you're practically there. For it to work meaningfully, OSMAnd would need to get the traffic data for the road ahead and have the ability to raise an alert. Just having a tile with a road of red traffic isn't enough, unless a passenger was constantly scrolling ahead to check the roads.

In conclusion, I think I'll use the traffic overlay for checking the journey just before I leave and potentially checking again later in the journey if I'm on a long one and taking a break. I won't bother using the overlay for the live journey.