It's inspiring to know that what we do helps people. Organic Maps is great for many outdoor activities, including hiking. If you are considering the Alps for mountain hiking, you can turn to the experts on this subject: The Hiking Club. They have a successful history of preparing and planning for long mountain trips.

The Hiking Club recommends Organic Maps to all their clients, so they can easily import a thoroughly prepared KML file with all significant features and descriptions. And that's great, because the most important thing in the mountains is not to get lost, and to save your device's battery. And here we are (in our humble opinion 😉) the best!

In the future, we want to make route and trip planning even more convenient. Stay tuned for our news and updates. And many thanks to everyone who supports our free app and our small team of enthusiasts with words, deeds, and donations!

Please test today’s beta version for Android and report all found issues at Github or at android@organicmaps.app. New beta for iOS will be available in a day or two after Apple’s review. Links to betas are available on our website.

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! 🙏🙏🙏

🎇🎈🎉 🎊🎄🎆

How are you planning your trips? Which tools, apps, or web services are you using? Please share it with us, and let's brainstorm how Organic Maps can be improved.

Is there anyone speaking Hindi, who can help with proof-reading the translations?

Congratulations to the OpenStreetMap.org with 10M registered users! Organic Maps would not be possible without OSM. https://osmstats.neis-one.org/?item=members&date=19-1-2023

We are looking for volunteers who can help us to prepare and translate Whats New for upcoming releases for all app stores and for our website on a more or less regular basis. Or for any other ways to help us speed up the translation process not only for Whats New, but also for other texts. Any ideas and help are appreciated! Want to peek at the full list of changes?

The full list of languages is available here for Android and here for iOS. We can add all languages to our website (its other pages are translated now using Weblate).

Drop us an email if you are interested at support@organicmaps.app

We are excited to announce our first update of 2023. We’ve included a comprehensive list of improvements, as always, thanks to the support and input from our dedicated Organic Maps community. Great work by all of us. 🙏

• New OpenStreetMap data as of January 21, 2023
• Fixed import of some KML tracks
• Automatic search for the current position in 30 hours of inactivity instead of 8 hours
• Improved search categories results
• Proper spelling of Australia in search results
• leisure=track is now searchable

iOS 🍏
• Fixed invisible text hints in Settings in the dark theme

Android 🤖
• Enabled Basque, Belarussian, Croatian, Norwegian, Marathi, Swahili in TTS

Routing 🚗
• Proper handling of elevation for hiking and cycling
• Fixed inter-region routing
• Fixed routing via some bridges
• Busways are supported
• Added Croatia to Schengen area

Styles 🎨
• Fixed Buenos Aires metro icons
• Added Bowling Alley
• Fixed historic=fountain and tourism=information-office icon
• Equal icon sizes for springs & hot springs

Editor 🗺️
• Allowed editing names with /\°[] symbols
• Added amenity=public_bookcase
• Increased the maximum editable building floors from 25 to 50

Translations 🌐
• Fixed Brazil, Czech, French, Hungarian, Spanish (Mexican), Turkish
• Fixed TTS translations for Finnish and Portuguese

Linux 🖥️
• Import upper-case KML and KMZ files on case-sensitive Linux file systems
• Use Organic Maps server to check if a connection is alive

This Android beta version installs separately from the "store" version. It includes changes by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) after the earthquake in Turkey and Syria.

Please let us know if there are any issues, and help us with release notes translations here.

What's new:

• New OpenStreetMap data as of February 8
• Filtered wrong search results in the list and on the map
• Fixed crash on opening
• Better icons for main and secondary building entrances
• Improved animation centering on the current position
• Improved next-turn voice notifications for smaller distances
• Fixed Persian, Polish, and German translations

This release includes the updated map data for Turkey and Syria, including the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team changes after the recent earthquake. Accurate maps are crucial in disaster response, as they may assist with better planning and navigation for those who help on the ground. We appreciate everyone who has ever contributed to the OpenStreetMap. If you would like to start contributing now, please follow this link.

The list of changes in this Organic Maps release:
• New OpenStreetMap data as of February 10
• Filtered incorrect search results in both the list and on the map
• Improved next-turn notifications for shorter distances
• Better icons for main and secondary building entrances
• Improved Persian and fixed some errors in the Polish and German translations

Android
• Fixed crash on opening
• Fixed not visible error messages in the Editor

iOS
• Fixed crash when opening om:// and https://omaps.app/ links
• Show the shared POI's name in om:// and https://omaps.app/ links

See more examples of our API and URL schemes for both Android and iOS at https://omaps.app/api

How was your adventure with Organic Maps? Please share your stories, they motivate us and our contributors to improve Organic Maps! Here is one:
https://github.com/orgs/organicmaps/discussions/4514