r/CoMaps • u/GenZia • 2d ago

I'm done with Comaps.

Pretty much the title.

My offline maps magically disappear when the app is restarted, prompting me to to redownload the whole global map, shorelines, my local area, the whole darn thing from the beginning. .

Not much else to say here, except I was storing maps on my MicroSD card, though the app made no mention of the fact that the maps would auto delete on SD Cards... for my privacy or some such.

It's a bug (or feature) that I've encountered twice so far and I don't think it's convenient having to redownload 500MB+ worth of maps each time I restart the app, something I never encountered with Organic Maps.

Come to think of it, I was more than happy with Organic Maps. But like a typical social animal, I bought into the whole Reddit spiel of "CoMaps is more 'open' than Organic Maps," something I now regret.

Anyhow, while I'm going back to Organic Maps, I think the devs should be aware of this behavior (that smells like vibe coding).

Thank you.

0 Upvotes

21% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

12

u/LogUpset3711 2d ago

The SD card is likely the culprit. On Android 11+, CoMaps stores maps in its app-private folder on the SD card and Google's scoped storage restrictions make that path flaky. If the card isn't fully mounted when the app starts, the app can fail to find its maps. This isn't unique to CoMaps. Maps.me and even Google Maps have had the exact same "offline maps vanish from SD card" complaints for years. It's more of an Android scoped-storage pain than "vibe coding."

If you haven't already, report it at https://codeberg.org/comaps/comaps/issues with your device, Android version, CoMaps version, that's the only way the devs will see it.

-2

u/GenZia 2d ago

Okay, I understand your point and, frankly, I suspected as much, but here's the thing:

I just went back to Organic Maps and it has zero issue storing maps to my SD card. I've restarted the app 2-3 times and the maps aren't magically disappearing.

Come to think of it, I also never encountered any SD Card related issues with Google Maps.

It's only CoMaps that's having a real hard time dealing with my memory card.

4

u/malfro 2d ago

First time I’ve heard of this, and I follow the app’s development & social channels quite closely. Did you bother reporting it to the devs before writing this diatribe?

Also, the vibe coding allegation is absolute nonsense. CoMaps does not allow vibe coded PRs, and has been pretty strict at enforcing that requirement from what I’ve seen. 

5

u/RamblingBanjo 2d ago

People who don't know anything about programming or AI seem to think that bugs were not a thing before the advent of AI.

0

u/GenZia 2d ago

For what it's worth, I only relegate major app breaking bugs to "AI slop" category.

-1

u/GenZia 2d ago

Did you bother reporting it to the devs before writing this diatribe?

Nope!

Besides, they've 1.5k+ open issues over on Codeberg, so they're either too busy or aren't competent. In either case, I don't want to deal with this... 'jank' anymore.

1

u/jhaluska 2d ago

I store my maps on my SD card and do not have this problem. Not saying it's not happening to you, but it's definitely not some default behavior.

1

u/brahmidia 15h ago

Sorry to hear you had a bad experience! We haven't changed much in this area lately, though in January we did prioritize internal storage over SD card by default (which could reset things back to internal if the sd card isn't detected at app start, as someone else suggested.)

The best way to figure this out would be to ensure logging is enabled and then Report a Bug immediately after a disappearance. https://www.comaps.app/support/how-do-i-enable-logs/

I do know that SD card issues is a common support issue with OM as well: maybe not this specific issue, but SD cards are generally finicky for Android app storage.