OpenStreetMap logo OpenStreetMap

Daily MAPS.ME data updates

Posted by Zverik on 25 August 2015 in English. Last updated on 15 April 2019.

If you are not yet using MAPS.ME, you are missing out :) The most frequent complaint from the mappers was that official maps in that application get updated only once a month, along with new releases. I usually map stuff the day before I’m going out, so this update cycle does not suit me. And since I work for them now, I can fix this.

Since this month, there are daily updated map files for MAPS.ME. To install downloaded files on Android, find MapsWithMe directory on your device (you can check “Settings → Map storage” in the app), and put new files there. You should delete old maps and directories with same names (the latter is to clear caches). And probably restart the app. On iPhone and iPad, just use iTunes: find and open MAPS.ME application, delete old maps, upload new.

Maps are published every day at around 5am UTC. Mwm files are maps, routing files are needed for car routing (pedestrian routing doesn’t need them). In a couple of days a new version would be released, and it will be required for daily maps to function.

These files are not official. The application may behave strangely (there will be notifications about outdated maps), data may be broken (it’s OSM, it is always broken), and your application may crash. If you encounter anything strange, you can clean the MapsWithMe directory and/or move the app from SD to the device memory, which must fix most bugs. Daily maps are my initiative, and MAPS.ME company is in no way responsible for these. Of course, I’m ready to answer any questions.

Update: the original URL is not updated, the new weekly-built maps are here. Subscribe to this issue for updates.

Discussion

Comment from Vincent de Phily on 25 August 2015 at 11:59

That’s great :) Any reason why we can’t get these via the official channel, bandwidth cost maybe ?

Comment from Zverik on 25 August 2015 at 12:07

We plan to make data releases more frequent, but that requires a lot of modifications in code: at least decoupling map metadata from app resources. Also, current regions are quite large: for example, Italy weights 650 MB, which is a bit much to download daily. That would eat bandwidth, but more important, baffle our users, asking them to update some gigabytes they downloaded just a day ago.

Comment from Larry0ua on 25 August 2015 at 12:44

Надо диффы для конвертированных карт. Только вот как это сделать - непонятно.

Comment from naoliv on 25 August 2015 at 13:16

Could some kind of differential/delta update be implemented?

Comment from Vincent de Phily on 25 August 2015 at 13:28

You could enable frequent downloads without recomending them. Display how old the curently installed map and available update are, allow a manual update whenever, and only display “you should update the map” hints when the local copy is past a certain age.

Comment from Zverik on 25 August 2015 at 13:36

Yes, we are considering diffs, but not at least until Spring: it would require drastic data model changes.

Vincent, thanks for that idea, it’s a nice way of notifying users. When time comes, I’ll recommend that. But for now, we’ve got my daily updates: they are built on MAPS.ME hardware and are pretty reliable (albeit still unofficial).

Comment from gosausee on 25 August 2015 at 19:04

my wish, a possibility to make notes on the surface. No transmission necessary. so new information could be hold on and at home entered to the database via josm,potlatch,…

Comment from Warin61 on 26 August 2015 at 01:53

The Australian map does not appear to be up to date. For instance I entered some road names some weeks ago that don’t appear with mapsme the downloaded today, they do under locus and on the OSM editmap. Around -33.81016 151.07847.

Comment from Zverik on 26 August 2015 at 07:28

Did you download the map from this daily repository? Official maps were created on July 13th, so it’s entirely possible they do not include recent updates.

Comment from Zverik on 26 August 2015 at 13:02

Daily maps are made every day (using planet dump from 10am UTC), and are as up to date as possible. You can trust these maps to correctly present OpenStreetMap data. Whether you can trust OSM is another question.

Comment from Tomio on 26 August 2015 at 19:15

Thanks a lot!!

Comment from DaCor on 3 September 2015 at 17:13

This is fantastic. I recommend this app to loads of folks regularly.

One way of folding the daily updates into the app could be to maintain the monthly updates as is, but offer a daily diff with the most recent monthly update as the start point so if you wanted to add a daily update on say, the 7th of the month, you are only downloading 7 days worth of changes

Again, great app, love whats being done with it and looking forward to seeing whats to come

Comment from rumpelsocke on 3 September 2015 at 19:28

Thank you, great work! Download (update) all my MAPS.ME maps with my mobile need 1 hour - now I can load the maps with my laptop and tranfer them to my mobile much faster!

Comment from Tomio on 26 November 2015 at 12:08

New maps update today!! Thank you !!

Comment from alarobric on 18 April 2016 at 18:56

This is great! I’ve been hoping your map update speed would increase. Is there any way the Maps.Me application can get updated to allow opening these .mwm files on iOS. Rather than having to add new map files through iTunes, it would be nicer to download the file on the device and then open with Maps.Me to insert it.

Daily diffs in the future would of course be great too.

Comment from David Dean on 29 September 2017 at 11:50

Any chance these will restart? It looks like they’ve been dormant since April.

Comment from Nmxosm on 5 January 2019 at 11:37

Sadly, it seems they only get updated with official updates. The last update in the linked folder aligns with the last maps.me update.

Comment from cucafera on 22 March 2019 at 16:27

Looks like they’re abandoned. As of March 2019, published files in daily directory are dated Nov’18. They’re even offer than regular updates.

Comment from Zverik on 22 March 2019 at 16:37

Yes, I have left maps.me in August, and nobody else in maps.me is interested in maintaining these files.

Comment from cucafera on 24 March 2019 at 15:54

What a pity. Anyway, thanks for the effort, Zverik.

Anybody at Maps.me reading this could please consider keeping it up to help the community?

Comment from Zverik on 15 April 2019 at 19:42

Turns out folks at maps.me made their own weekly-updated maps: http://opensource-data.mapswithme.com/regular/weekly/

Subscribe to this issue for updates.

Log in to leave a comment