I got into OSM and StreetComplete to flesh out intersections, stop signs, and sidewalks in my area. I always felt like I was doing something wrong though. I created crosswalks, then OSM would prompt me to connect the crosswalk to the road via a crossing. In StreetComplete, it felt like I was filling in duplicate data. I had to add whether the crossing had crossing lights not only at the middle crossing, but on the sides as well. This probably doesn't make any sense.
Basically, I am never confident I am editing OSM correctly. Am I supposed to manually draw out sidewalks, or tag the road as having a sidewalk? After adding sidewalks in my area, StreetComplete is now asking me if roads have sidewalks, which I clearly see on the map. Reminds me of editing the various Wiki pages. There's several ways of documenting something, only one way is correct, and it's undocumented.
edit: after playing with StreetComplete more, I noticed you can mark sidewalks as displayed separately. This is tagged as "sidewalk:both=separate" on the road. Whether this is the right way to do things I do not know
When in doubt, look for adjacent localities and do what the others are already doing. OSM is chaotic and (usually) driven by consensus that can be slightly different in specific communities.
I discovered that recently, it's a very fun way to contribute to OpenStreetMap, and the UI is really well-done, it's totally beginner friendly!
I wish there was a way to do more than labeling though, like add simple roads and footpaths
I have used it one (1) time in my life, ans it was my first experience with OpenStreetMap in general. It was pretty fun!
It's very intuitive and makes you learn just how detailed and specific map data can be. Can't say much about missing features since I don't event know what can be done.
Recommended experience, it's like playing Pokemon Go without the evil part :)
Usually if I need to add a footpath I use the "Create new track recording" feature to trace out the path with GPS, then come back to it later on desktop. Adding paths is pretty awkward to do on mobile, especially since there's no satellite overlay.
It sucks that Google is probably using OSM data to check what they are missing and adding it to their maps, but we can't do vice versa. OSM should change their license to something like if you use our data, you have to make yours open as well.
Maybe I am misunderstanding the summary, but it says: "If you publicly use any adapted version of this database, or works produced from an adapted database, you must also offer that adapted database under the ODbL." <https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/summary/>
Yeah the problem is what's considered an adapted database. If it was strict it would mean apps like Alltrails (which is 90% openstreetmaps data) would need to list their trailmaps as open databases, but they don't.
The problem is that factual details aren't copyrightable in the first place, so no amount of licensing will prevent organizations with enough money to pay a lawyer from understanding this and using the data as they see fit. And on the flip side, those organizations can pay those same lawyers to write scary boilerplate to make it seem like their map data is “proprietary” and therefore “protected by copyright” even though it isn't.
> It sucks that Google is probably using OSM data to check what they are missing and adding it to their maps
If only. Maps are still super broken around where I live. I personally mapped everything in OSM (which thankfully is used by most third party services these days) a couple years ago, but Maps is still people's primary source for routing and traffic related stuff.
On the other hand, I've been trying to submit changes to Google for several new and vacated roads for over a year (having already updated OSM) and they are constantly rejected. I suspect it is much more that their updates are responsive to car traffic. The segments I'm submitting are or were low-traffic although they include a road that a local municipality has directed people to in official communication for overflow yard waste after some big, recent storms.
I had a similar experience with Google Maps, I used to live in a place where the house on Google maps was located on the wrong street, like one parallel street off.
I put in a few requests from time to time because deliveries were a huge pain, to no avail.
I opened a thread on some Google forum or support place and then it was mentioned that I actually can't change that because only the city is allowed to... why I get the option in the app I don't fully understand.
At some point it got fixed but I have no idea why. Of course it was a few months before I moved out
Google can cheat a little, especially for new roads since they notice when someone is driving over it. When there was a redesign of an intersection near here, someone marked the road as completed in OSM maybe half an hour after it was opened (we have a few quite active mappers), and Google had it open about two hours later and I suspect no one changed the data directly.
Are there other similar apps to stimulate soft "crowdfixing" ? I'm sure there are plenty of other aspect of society that would benefit from a light way to know where someone can contribute or notify so other can fix things (forest dumps, random trash). Homeostatic apps to ensure our surroundings are close to a good state :]
My city had a very vanilla, but very useful mobile app for submitting problems like missed trash pickup or dead traffic lights.
Someone apparently decided it needed to be "more modern", making it nearly unusable for quick reports like traffic light problems while I was stopped at the light. Every page was a separate request to a server, slow JS, etc.
They've since improved the flow and performance, but it still asks me for contact information before I can submit it. Fortunately they haven't started server-side validations yet, so I can still submit bogus info.
Just let me tell you your traffic light is out! Why is this so hard?
Reminds me of when Microsoft released a new Flight Sim, and people immediately started spotting buildings and things that were out of the norm in the game, which in turn started getting reported to OSM for corrections.
Great app. There is also https://every-door.app/ that gives you slightly different set of tasks and allows you to place POI easily. I recently mapped a lot of trash cans and benches around my neighborhood while walking with my dog.
The UX is really bad. POI loading is taking 10+ seconds to update, then any zoom or pan reorders the list of locations. Most of the missing info (around me) is just phone numbers and hours of operation, which are boring and should be trivial to collect automatically.
The thing is that the best way to get the phones and opening hours is to walk in person and look them up. Any source for the automated collection is way more likely to be outdated/wrong than what the sign or the person behind the counter tells you. And can also have non-permissive license not compatible with the OSM license.
Raw Information cannot be licensed, and I am not sure why OSM sticks to the policy that it can.
Google Maps does not hold the rights to which opening hours Bob's Bakery keeps. If someone entered them from Bob's Bakery their site onto Maps, you are free to type it off of Maps onto OSM. Legally anyway. OSM themselves still hold the policy you can't, so you should adhere to that.
StreetComplete lets you place trash cans and benches too (among other things) using the "Things" overlay. IMO Every Door has a much more complicated UI, though it's also more of a full featured editor than StreetComplete. (Though still less so than something like Vespucci.)
Is that a new feature? I have over a thousand contributions on StreetComplete (casually using it during walks) and somehow I never noticed that button.
The overlays are intentionally a bit hidden, since they're more of a power-user feature and I appreciate that StreetComplete retains beginner-friendliness as a core tenet. But the overlays are indeed awesome for survey-type walks where you just want to make sure that all sidewalks are mapped correctly, or to see which shops are still missing.
Just downloaded and made 15+ small contributions in the vicinity of my area. Very well built app. Super simple to use. And gamification is top-notch. Recommended.
I naively thought that Duolingo's gamification was for a good cause, helping you learn a language by addicting you, but now I know it's not only an extremely ineffective way to learn a language, but they're an advertising/social media/data broker company, which makes the gamification unethical.
I wonder if there are any other FOSS apps or websites with gamification that are for a good cause, like StreetComplete.
> an extremely ineffective way to learn a language
thats only if you use duolingo exclusively without things like reading news in the language (which is common unfortunately).
its a problem with their specific design using a weird hybrid of spaced repetition with traditional separate lessons. you only learn a couple words for each section but if they decide you know a word they never repeat it again so its easy to forget.
if they made it harder with more open questions and removed combos/perfect lessons to compensate it would be a lot more effective. non linear with multiple paths would also be great, like you decide you want to learn more grammar so you click on that instead of vocab exercises.
the addictive and social pressure parts are the whole point. its giving people motivation to learn and well designed interactive tools are always better than passively reading textbooks [1]. even the ui is made with lots of animation, colors, positive messages to make you feel good every time you get something right.
if streetcomplete added daily progress bars and fireworks every time your edit gets accepted it would probably have a lot more users. ive actually been thinking about making a new anki frontend with this type of addictive ux. that would be more effective and more general than duolingo but lose some of the features like open questions. would need to integrate a llm to fix that.
This is very cool, I wish there was some way to use it on a bicycle though. For example, when moving into a street it could ask (using voice) if this street is paved, and I could answer it using voice too.
One thing missing on osm is pictures. Would defeats Google maps if it had some, where users would feedback and bad shots would get wiped to save space. We would get the best shots the world has to offer.
I had been using mapcomplete to add images of artwork, which in turn used panoramax. However I saw someone else use Wikimedia Commons, and to me that makes more sense. Wikimedia ties into more systems, so if you wanted to create a Wikipedia page about an artist, there will be readily available images to use.
On the flip side, panoramax can be used as an open source StreetView. Different sites for different purposes I suppose
Thank you for the reminder! I got out of the habit of checking StreetComplete since my previous neighborhood was well populated in OSM, but having just moved, I should check it out again.
I think the reasoning behind this is that ideally you're at the location where you can confirm what you see, instead of maybe referring to older media or from memory.
That being said, I agree with you and would like to see more ways to access the tool!
You can edit OSM from its main site [0], although there's a much steeper learning curve when using the site (as you have far more freedom and it's not super easy to figure out the standard way to tag some situations).
Adding to that: StreetComplete specifically creates only quests for information which must be checked in the terrain like opening hours, surfaces, traffic light sounds. Anything surveyable from maps and other sources should be edited using the web editors. OpenStreetMap iD is probably the easiest to learn.
StreetComplete is cool, fun and useful, yes. And there is its companion app StreetMeasure which makes it easy to add measurements like the width of a narrow street, for example.
As in can you add points of interest like shops? Yes, there's a places overlay with an add button, and a things overlay for things like benches, bicycle parking, etc. For adding buildings, roads, or paths you'd need something else.
I agree! It seems like their work on the iOS app would bring them a lot closer to web app support as well. In the iOS tracking issue, they say the main changes are moving to Kotlin Multiplatform and Compose Multiplatform, which both support web as a target.
Wherever you are and need to wait for a minute, there are quests to be solved there.
I recommend SCEE for those who are already familiar with OSM mapping or are in an area where the most common tasks are already covered: https://github.com/Helium314/SCEE
I enjoyed the simulated phone screenshots, particularly the choice of House of the Trembling Madness, a great beer stockist and drinking establishment on Lendal in York. I would like to think that the name in the input field is deliberately slightly wrong, ready to be fixed by someone. (It's "House of the Trembling Madness" rather than "The House of Trembling Madness".) Gamification at another level :-)
Been using this for my dog walks too. There's something oddly satisfying about turning a boring loop around the block into "wait, does that bin have a lid?" Never thought trash cans would be the thing that got me into mapping.
I got into OSM and StreetComplete to flesh out intersections, stop signs, and sidewalks in my area. I always felt like I was doing something wrong though. I created crosswalks, then OSM would prompt me to connect the crosswalk to the road via a crossing. In StreetComplete, it felt like I was filling in duplicate data. I had to add whether the crossing had crossing lights not only at the middle crossing, but on the sides as well. This probably doesn't make any sense.
Basically, I am never confident I am editing OSM correctly. Am I supposed to manually draw out sidewalks, or tag the road as having a sidewalk? After adding sidewalks in my area, StreetComplete is now asking me if roads have sidewalks, which I clearly see on the map. Reminds me of editing the various Wiki pages. There's several ways of documenting something, only one way is correct, and it's undocumented.
edit: after playing with StreetComplete more, I noticed you can mark sidewalks as displayed separately. This is tagged as "sidewalk:both=separate" on the road. Whether this is the right way to do things I do not know
When in doubt, look for adjacent localities and do what the others are already doing. OSM is chaotic and (usually) driven by consensus that can be slightly different in specific communities.
When I'm unsure I make a note with a photo and someone who knows more looks into it.
I discovered that recently, it's a very fun way to contribute to OpenStreetMap, and the UI is really well-done, it's totally beginner friendly! I wish there was a way to do more than labeling though, like add simple roads and footpaths
I have used it one (1) time in my life, ans it was my first experience with OpenStreetMap in general. It was pretty fun!
It's very intuitive and makes you learn just how detailed and specific map data can be. Can't say much about missing features since I don't event know what can be done.
Recommended experience, it's like playing Pokemon Go without the evil part :)
What's the "evil" part?
Probably https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/06/pokemon-go-players-unwitt...
Niantic would sell your children’s social security numbers if they thought they’d get away with it.
Usually if I need to add a footpath I use the "Create new track recording" feature to trace out the path with GPS, then come back to it later on desktop. Adding paths is pretty awkward to do on mobile, especially since there's no satellite overlay.
FYI someone else has probably already traced this through Strava, which is allowed to be used for tracing: <https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Strava#Data_Permission_-...>
StreetComplete doesn't have satellite overlays, but both Vespucci and EveryDoor support viewing satellite overlay tiles!
It sucks that Google is probably using OSM data to check what they are missing and adding it to their maps, but we can't do vice versa. OSM should change their license to something like if you use our data, you have to make yours open as well.
The license seems to already require this: https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright/
Maybe I am misunderstanding the summary, but it says: "If you publicly use any adapted version of this database, or works produced from an adapted database, you must also offer that adapted database under the ODbL." <https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/summary/>
Yeah the problem is what's considered an adapted database. If it was strict it would mean apps like Alltrails (which is 90% openstreetmaps data) would need to list their trailmaps as open databases, but they don't.
The problem is that factual details aren't copyrightable in the first place, so no amount of licensing will prevent organizations with enough money to pay a lawyer from understanding this and using the data as they see fit. And on the flip side, those organizations can pay those same lawyers to write scary boilerplate to make it seem like their map data is “proprietary” and therefore “protected by copyright” even though it isn't.
> It sucks that Google is probably using OSM data to check what they are missing and adding it to their maps
If only. Maps are still super broken around where I live. I personally mapped everything in OSM (which thankfully is used by most third party services these days) a couple years ago, but Maps is still people's primary source for routing and traffic related stuff.
Various driving/delivery apps ultimately use OSM data. Doordash and instacart both use it to various degrees via mapbox, for instasnce.
Change that to definitely. I added a brand-new road on OSM and a week later it was on google maps.
On the other hand, I've been trying to submit changes to Google for several new and vacated roads for over a year (having already updated OSM) and they are constantly rejected. I suspect it is much more that their updates are responsive to car traffic. The segments I'm submitting are or were low-traffic although they include a road that a local municipality has directed people to in official communication for overflow yard waste after some big, recent storms.
I had a similar experience with Google Maps, I used to live in a place where the house on Google maps was located on the wrong street, like one parallel street off. I put in a few requests from time to time because deliveries were a huge pain, to no avail. I opened a thread on some Google forum or support place and then it was mentioned that I actually can't change that because only the city is allowed to... why I get the option in the app I don't fully understand. At some point it got fixed but I have no idea why. Of course it was a few months before I moved out
Google can cheat a little, especially for new roads since they notice when someone is driving over it. When there was a redesign of an intersection near here, someone marked the road as completed in OSM maybe half an hour after it was opened (we have a few quite active mappers), and Google had it open about two hours later and I suspect no one changed the data directly.
Are there other similar apps to stimulate soft "crowdfixing" ? I'm sure there are plenty of other aspect of society that would benefit from a light way to know where someone can contribute or notify so other can fix things (forest dumps, random trash). Homeostatic apps to ensure our surroundings are close to a good state :]
> forest dumps, random trash
Likely you can report such occasions to local authorities via online form. Of course every city/county would have their own.
My city had a very vanilla, but very useful mobile app for submitting problems like missed trash pickup or dead traffic lights.
Someone apparently decided it needed to be "more modern", making it nearly unusable for quick reports like traffic light problems while I was stopped at the light. Every page was a separate request to a server, slow JS, etc.
They've since improved the flow and performance, but it still asks me for contact information before I can submit it. Fortunately they haven't started server-side validations yet, so I can still submit bogus info.
Just let me tell you your traffic light is out! Why is this so hard?
They likely provide plain email you could write to instead.
Reminds me of when Microsoft released a new Flight Sim, and people immediately started spotting buildings and things that were out of the norm in the game, which in turn started getting reported to OSM for corrections.
https://hackaday.com/2020/08/21/microsoft-flight-simultors-d...
Great app. There is also https://every-door.app/ that gives you slightly different set of tasks and allows you to place POI easily. I recently mapped a lot of trash cans and benches around my neighborhood while walking with my dog.
The UX is really bad. POI loading is taking 10+ seconds to update, then any zoom or pan reorders the list of locations. Most of the missing info (around me) is just phone numbers and hours of operation, which are boring and should be trivial to collect automatically.
The thing is that the best way to get the phones and opening hours is to walk in person and look them up. Any source for the automated collection is way more likely to be outdated/wrong than what the sign or the person behind the counter tells you. And can also have non-permissive license not compatible with the OSM license.
Raw Information cannot be licensed, and I am not sure why OSM sticks to the policy that it can.
Google Maps does not hold the rights to which opening hours Bob's Bakery keeps. If someone entered them from Bob's Bakery their site onto Maps, you are free to type it off of Maps onto OSM. Legally anyway. OSM themselves still hold the policy you can't, so you should adhere to that.
Google's ability to make life difficult for contributors to a project should not be underestimated.
StreetComplete lets you place trash cans and benches too (among other things) using the "Things" overlay. IMO Every Door has a much more complicated UI, though it's also more of a full featured editor than StreetComplete. (Though still less so than something like Vespucci.)
Thank you!
Is that a new feature? I have over a thousand contributions on StreetComplete (casually using it during walks) and somehow I never noticed that button.
The overlays are intentionally a bit hidden, since they're more of a power-user feature and I appreciate that StreetComplete retains beginner-friendliness as a core tenet. But the overlays are indeed awesome for survey-type walks where you just want to make sure that all sidewalks are mapped correctly, or to see which shops are still missing.
Sort of. It was added in 2023. (https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/pull/5373)
Each to their own, I use both for different things, I like EveryDoor UI better for placing POIs.
oooo what a fantastic idea. I have always wanted to map as many clothes donation boxes as possible.
You can do that, little free libraries, water fountains, etc. all in StreetComplete as well.
Just downloaded and made 15+ small contributions in the vicinity of my area. Very well built app. Super simple to use. And gamification is top-notch. Recommended.
I naively thought that Duolingo's gamification was for a good cause, helping you learn a language by addicting you, but now I know it's not only an extremely ineffective way to learn a language, but they're an advertising/social media/data broker company, which makes the gamification unethical.
I wonder if there are any other FOSS apps or websites with gamification that are for a good cause, like StreetComplete.
> an extremely ineffective way to learn a language
thats only if you use duolingo exclusively without things like reading news in the language (which is common unfortunately).
its a problem with their specific design using a weird hybrid of spaced repetition with traditional separate lessons. you only learn a couple words for each section but if they decide you know a word they never repeat it again so its easy to forget.
if they made it harder with more open questions and removed combos/perfect lessons to compensate it would be a lot more effective. non linear with multiple paths would also be great, like you decide you want to learn more grammar so you click on that instead of vocab exercises.
the addictive and social pressure parts are the whole point. its giving people motivation to learn and well designed interactive tools are always better than passively reading textbooks [1]. even the ui is made with lots of animation, colors, positive messages to make you feel good every time you get something right.
if streetcomplete added daily progress bars and fireworks every time your edit gets accepted it would probably have a lot more users. ive actually been thinking about making a new anki frontend with this type of addictive ux. that would be more effective and more general than duolingo but lose some of the features like open questions. would need to integrate a llm to fix that.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11933506/
This is very cool, I wish there was some way to use it on a bicycle though. For example, when moving into a street it could ask (using voice) if this street is paved, and I could answer it using voice too.
One thing missing on osm is pictures. Would defeats Google maps if it had some, where users would feedback and bad shots would get wiped to save space. We would get the best shots the world has to offer.
There are ways to add pictures as the tags of the OSM objects
- https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:wikimedia_commons
- https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:panoramax
- https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:mapillary
Mobile apps can use this data to either give links to them (e.g. CoMaps) or display them in the app (e.g. OsmAnd)
OSM does have a pictures layer.
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Panoramax
I use https://mapcomplete.org/ to add images of artworks to OSM objects.
I had been using mapcomplete to add images of artwork, which in turn used panoramax. However I saw someone else use Wikimedia Commons, and to me that makes more sense. Wikimedia ties into more systems, so if you wanted to create a Wikipedia page about an artist, there will be readily available images to use.
On the flip side, panoramax can be used as an open source StreetView. Different sites for different purposes I suppose
Hi! Is this yours? Would you like help porting this to iOS?
Not mine, but you can check this issue: https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/issues/5421
Wow, that is one well-documented migration project! Thanks for sharing, I wasn’t aware they are so seriously on it.
I downloaded this, and I'm slightly amazed at how much detail there is. What material the utility poles are made of?
My favorite one is smoothness, I find it very useful when building cycling routes.
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:smoothness
StreetComplete's trick is hiding the tagging model until you actually need it. Most contributor tools expose the schema too early.
Thank you for the reminder! I got out of the habit of checking StreetComplete since my previous neighborhood was well populated in OSM, but having just moved, I should check it out again.
Does it have to be a mobile app? Id love to do this when im bored at work but i dont wanna make it seem like im just sitting on my phone.
I think the reasoning behind this is that ideally you're at the location where you can confirm what you see, instead of maybe referring to older media or from memory.
That being said, I agree with you and would like to see more ways to access the tool!
A web app would also make it work on iOS (and other non-Android platforms) at the same time
You can edit OSM from its main site [0], although there's a much steeper learning curve when using the site (as you have far more freedom and it's not super easy to figure out the standard way to tag some situations).
[0] https://www.openstreetmap.org/
Rapid Editor is a good web app for editing OSM: https://rapideditor.org/
You can edit OSM from their web apps. This is intended to be used in the field but I guess you could use it to find things that need fixing.
Adding to that: StreetComplete specifically creates only quests for information which must be checked in the terrain like opening hours, surfaces, traffic light sounds. Anything surveyable from maps and other sources should be edited using the web editors. OpenStreetMap iD is probably the easiest to learn.
StreetComplete is cool, fun and useful, yes. And there is its companion app StreetMeasure which makes it easy to add measurements like the width of a narrow street, for example.
Some more info in an earlier thread [1]
[1] CoMaps – FOSS Offline Maps | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48808928
I really love this - fantastic that it's open source too as would love to contribute. Is there an opportunity to add fresh new sites on this?
As in can you add points of interest like shops? Yes, there's a places overlay with an add button, and a things overlay for things like benches, bicycle parking, etc. For adding buildings, roads, or paths you'd need something else.
Is there something equivalent for iOS?
StreetComplete has been making steady progress on an iOS port over the past few years.
https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/issues/5421
It would be nice if they made a web app, that would make it work on iOS but also desktop and every other platform with a web browser at the same time
I agree! It seems like their work on the iOS app would bring them a lot closer to web app support as well. In the iOS tracking issue, they say the main changes are moving to Kotlin Multiplatform and Compose Multiplatform, which both support web as a target.
I'll take a look and see if I can help out. Thx.
> ANDROID WILL BECOME A LOCKED-DOWN PLATFORM IN XXX
My guess is no because of the developer linking too below (and how it's always existed this way for iOS)
https://keepandroidopen.org
I wonder why this needs to be an app at all, instead of web based.
See also, https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/SCEE
scph1001.bin
More like scph1002.bin in this case. 1001 is for SCEA.
Every day I take a 2 hour walk and contribute as much data as I can to OSM using this app.
This is such a great idea. Are there ever any plans for a web app?
I love this tool.
It brought me back to mapping on OSM.
Wherever you are and need to wait for a minute, there are quests to be solved there.
I recommend SCEE for those who are already familiar with OSM mapping or are in an area where the most common tasks are already covered: https://github.com/Helium314/SCEE
I enjoyed the simulated phone screenshots, particularly the choice of House of the Trembling Madness, a great beer stockist and drinking establishment on Lendal in York. I would like to think that the name in the input field is deliberately slightly wrong, ready to be fixed by someone. (It's "House of the Trembling Madness" rather than "The House of Trembling Madness".) Gamification at another level :-)
Just through your comment I found out that they have different screenshots for all their localization settings. Cool!
If anyone is interested in where StreetComplete is used or which quests are the most popular, you can check out: https://piebro.github.io/openstreetmap-statistics/stats/04_s...
See also:
https://gurumaps.app/
Been using this for my dog walks too. There's something oddly satisfying about turning a boring loop around the block into "wait, does that bin have a lid?" Never thought trash cans would be the thing that got me into mapping.
Muy bien