MAPS.ME the best offline navigator for walking and travelling

Today I’m going to show you the best offline navigator in my opinion: MAPS.ME .

This gps app is an essential instrument you should always keep ready on your smartphone or tablet before leaving for a trip, especially if you are going to walk a lot or visit a city.

Why?

  • Are you leaving for holidays and you have a lot of places you want to see but you don’t actually know where they are, the walkpath to reach them, the position of the beaches, a place to park, where to find a bar or restaurant for a break in the surroundings?
  • You need to catch public transportations and you need to know the exact locations of the stops and the stations?
  • You’re searching for some nightlife or pubs but you’re not sure about which corner of the city you can find them?
  • You don’t have internet connection or just a limited data plan and you want to download offline maps of a little area without clogging up the memory of your smartphone with an entire nation’s map?

If you said yes on at least one time then MAPS.ME is best offline navigator for your needs.

You can download this navigation app both on Android and iPhone, it is based on the very detailed maps from OpenStreetMap.org and allows you downloading on your phone maps of single areas like islands, cities, provinces, letting you navigate them anytime without data connection.

These maps shows lots of details that you usually can’t find on other known navigation apps or maps, like mountain walkpaths, beaches, less known panoramic points that can help you reaching some uncommon corners without wondering where to go.

It’s hard to describe it’s power until you try it!

It also shows any kind of point of interest, like bus and metro stations, public transportation lines, gasoline, ATMs, shops, bars, restaurants, bike rentals, public activities, hotels, supermarkets, churches, historic places, but also little details like panoramic points, miradores, fountains, parks, stairs, crossing, toilets, parkings… everything you could need!

Here you see an example of what you see while walking in the center of Venice with MAPS.ME on your smartphone.

Miglior Navigatore offline MAPS.ME
The new graphical look of the best offline navigator MAPS.ME

If you (like me) don’t like this new graphic style MAPS.ME recently introduced, you can still move to the old graphic style, that is much clear and helpful in my opinion!

To do that, type ?oldstyle  (without any space) into the search box, and you’ll see all the symbols changing with others much more intuitive:

MAPS.ME oldstyle
The old graphic style of MAPS.ME

If you want to go back to the new visualization instead type ?light into the search box.

This trick may disappear in the future MAPS.ME versions, so if you want to keep the old graphics you may load on your smartphone an older version of the app (for example the v6.4.4 I’m currently using) manually downloading it from the website UpToDown (Only for Android users).

Obviously while browsing the maps, whether there are lots of points of interest, you should zoom more to see them all.

Finally some other useful functions of this best offline navigator :

  • It obviouly calculate routes to reach a destination, both by walking and by car… it’s a navigation app! 🙂
  • Save same favourites points of interest, adding colors and notes;
  • Import bookmarks lists using .KML or .KMZ format;
  • The recent integration with Booking.com allow you to see details on the hotels and book them if you have internet connection.

Other reasons why I think MAPS.ME is the best offline navigator? It’s free! No hidden costs neither for the app nor for the maps, that are constantly updated!

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Fabio M.

I work in an airport and no, I don't have any flight discount as people think :)
Working in the IT and planning travels in my free time.
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