Release 2026.05.06 is out on Codeberg, F-Droid, iOS, and soon on Google Play and brings a big new feature:
From this version onward, updating the map files of CoMaps is no longer tied to updating the app. Which means we can bring you fresh OpenStreetMap based maps more often!
Read more about it on our website: https://www.comaps.app/news/2026-05-06/Release-2026.05.06-release-notes/
I never noticed that the maps couldn’t be updated before… I’ve just assumed that they could be, so, this is fine by me.
I hope that eventually all OSM apps share their data on my device. If I’m updating CoMaps, Vespucci & OSMAnd (etc), surely there’s a duplication of data there?
There’s some duplication - but it’s not that easy: Map applications like CoMaps and OsmAnd make their own choices on which types of data from OSM is included in maps and how it’s displayed, and also how the data structure behind the scenes work. This is necessary to create maps that load fast and work well for route calculations etc. So having them compatible between apps is extremely hard.
Vespucci in contrast is a pure OSM editor, so this just gets the ‘raw’ data from OSM for a given region, as it focuses on only editing/adding data to OSM, but not on end-user search, can’t navigate etc.
For that reason it’s unfortunately not likely that a shared format will emerge, as different OSM data users and apps have different needs!
Ok, yes, Vespucci wasn’t the best for me to select - similarly StreetComplete has a definitely different use case.
But, thanks for taking the time to lay it out for me, I had assumed that CoMaps would’ve just pulled out the same data from OSM…
No worries! It all is based on the same data, but then the processing can be quite different (e.g. the calculation of penalties for the routing algorithms goes into the maps during this processing), or which POI types are shown on the maps etc. Converting the raw OSM DB into something usable for mobile apps is quite a heavy processing step 🙂