Magic earth update

nandohyphen1

RRZishe I guess Magic Earth just decided that people will pay to use it, so they may as well make money off of them. A shame.

mar2112

I always found MEs routing to be rather strange. On a recent trip it directed me to drive on 30ish miles of residential roads issued of a nearby highway.

nandohyphen1

mar2112 I always found MEs routing to be rather strange. On a recent trip it directed me to drive on 30ish miles of residential roads issued of a nearby highway.

Yeah I've found that too. If I was using GMaps, it would have directed me on the highway, instead of through the city and backroads. It also tells me to turn at the very last moment - when its too late.

tinymonster

I'm completely fine paying for Magic Earth. They've got to stay profitable somehow, and I'd rather that be thru my subscription than selling my data.

If you need a free, offline, private maps app just use CoMaps. Magic Earth is unique among privacy-focused options in that it provides live traffic data.

mrtoo

Organic Maps works great for me. I think CoMaps is similar, I am not sure why many people left Organic for Co.

nandohyphen1

mrtoo yeah, Organic Maps and CoMaps look identical

tinymonster

mrtoo am not sure why many people left Organic for Co.

https://itsfoss.com/news/organic-maps-fork-comaps/

MetropleX

mrtoo @nandohyphen1

FYI:

https://www.comaps.app/news/2025-04-16/1/

linux-dev

I just played with comaps,osmand~ and organic maps.
For me organic maps is the only interesting navigation app.

If you want to use android auto, you have to install from play store.
In this case you have to pay quite some money for the osmand+ version.
Comaps on the other hand removed speed traps in my country, not nice.
Organic Maps allows to enable warning for speed traps in my country.

N1b

It's a shame but somewhat to be expected. I'll try TomTom next as it has great routing (Magic Earth had some wonky routing for me over the years, but still my favorite as long as it was free and privacy respecting).

I just want to avoid Google and at least compartmentalize my data, but I need live traffic and none of the open source apps habe that...

DirtyDan

Magic earth was still not good enough to be a Google maps replacement (nothing is really) while at the same time not as private as OsmAnd/organic maps/comaps. It was always an awkward middle ground. I don't even understand where magic earth gets its traffic data. It wasn't even accurate.

Personally, I think using one of those open source maps options and Google maps as a fallback (and when you need live traffic) makes more sense.

I already compartmentalize my Android Auto apps to a separate user profile that I turn off when not in use.

I just need to figure out: Organic Maps vs CoMaps? What does this community recommend? For me, it needs to support Android Auto. Also, I tried comaps recently and not sure if it's the app or something I did, but the search feature sucked compared to organic.

Also, FYI, you can still use Google maps to look up places in your browser or the GMaps WV app from F-droid. Apple Maps also has a functional progressive web app for looking things up on. DuckDuckGo maps section is also a privacy proxy for Apple Maps, though it's not designed as a progressive web app.

nandohyphen1

Out of curiosity, I did not update Magic Earth and I've blacklisted it in Aurora Store. If I restore a Seedvault backup, will it keep the old version that I have installed?

Jandals

nandohyphen1 I downloaded the previous version from APK Pure and disabled auto updates. Old version still works great and receives the map updates.

fablpro92

Jandals Which version of the apk is it based on?

Woodythefirst

I have found something rather disturbing after the magic Earth update.

Tracker control has identified magic earth contacting Google firebase logging on my phone.

Firebaselogging.googleapis.com to be exact.

According to the recent Exodus analysis of the app, they were using Sentry for crash reporting, not Firebase. This seems like a major breach of trust to use a Google service while still telling everyone that they will not collect or share our data.

N1b

Woodythefirst According to the recent Exodus analysis of the app, they were using Sentry for crash reporting, not Firebase. This seems like a major breach of trust to use a Google service while still telling everyone that they will not collect or share our data.

It's expected behavior once you sell out or become a profit driven company. But to be fair, Exodus is merely an indicator and should never be your main factor in decision making, because it's badness enumeration. Being proprietary, Magic Earth could be tracking its users without consent for many years with their own implementations.

For me it was clear that I can't trust them from the beginning, but the privacy policy was a little straw to hang on (since I really want life traffic and radar warning). I replaced it with Tom Tom since the update and got better design and routing as a result, now that the straw is gone.

nandohyphen1

N1b I replaced it with Tom Tom

What's Tom Tom? A better (tracker free) maps app?

N1b

nandohyphen1 this app

And no it's not privacy friendly or tracker free. Going with them gives you two advantages over Google maps:

better routing
compartmentalization because likely you already send data to Google from elsewhere

If you want privacy and open source, comaps or OsmAnd are the way to go. Great for hiking, but subpar in street traffic in my opinion.

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