For now I went with Magic Earth. Main reasons: runs well enough and laziness, i.e. just download from the Aptoide store without thinking and done… 
. The native Pure Maps would in principle be preferable. Plan to come back in future. Many thanks for all information (and the map-work)!
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I think the api that was missing is included in SFOS 4 so i believe at some point PureMaps will be available in the store. I hope at least.
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[Update] PureMaps works well and is now in the store.
MagicEarth worked also well but I like the UI a little less than PureMaps. This said as I was looking for .gpx route support I switched to OsmAnd~ (downloaded from F-Droid store). A bit complicated in parts but a very nice and as it seems popular app. Will donate.
(As has been mentioned, the title really is not appropriate: there are very useful map apps available for Sailfish (w/Android emulator) phones! Thanks again for all the helpful comments.)
Hi Rinigus,
Conscious I’m late to the party, I’ll offer my view on what’s missing in Pure Maps, structuring that by my own user cases.
Find where I am
Pure Map is excellent, even if there is no connectivity I have the OSM maps stored on the server. The compass is much better now, and there is nothing I can complain about.
Provide directions
- With pre-loaded gpx
Pure Map is imho the best choice for hiking or cyclotouring, enabling me to load any gpx I preloaded on the phone. There may be an easier way to load and save these gpx files (ie in a dedicated in-app library) but it’s already very good.
- Searching from scratch
If I want to reach a point with a car, a bike, or my legs, Pure Maps is still one of the the best apps I know. My only criticism would be that when you select a point on the map as a destination, Pure Maps will calculate a route using the previous setting used (walk/cycle/car/whatever) without making it obvious. It would be neater if the choice was asked just before calculation.
However, if I want to use other means such as public transports or city bikes, unfortunately Pure Maps is useless to me. I can select ‘Public transport’ in the itinerary types, but I’ve never managed to make it work, it keeps saying ‘routing failure’. This is where I miss the old Here Maps app, as I need to juggle with other maps such as National Rail, MultiModal or BikeMe when I’m in London to scratch the itch.
I hope that helps.
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My only criticism would be that when you select a point on the map as a destination, Pure Maps will calculate a route using the previous setting used (walk/cycle/car/whatever) without making it obvious. It would be neater if the choice was asked just before calculation.
Re route mode indicator: we used to have asking the mode before, but it was always on the way and resulted in extra clicks that you would have to do. Ideally, it should work in a streamlined manner as now, but would be clear to the user regarding the mode and how to change it. If you have an idea on how to implement UX, please file an issue at Github and let’s discuss it there.
However, if I want to use other means such as public transports or city bikes, unfortunately Pure Maps is useless to me. I can select ‘Public transport’ in the itinerary types, but I’ve never managed to make it work, it keeps saying ‘routing failure’.
Main problem is availability of public transport data. We used to have it for offline maps, but I couldn’t download it anymore when I tried last time. HERE maps support is planned, but so far nobody worked on it. It is issue #275 for Pure Maps.
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I’m a new user brought here by JP2026. I’m looking for a native app that does routing with public transit, ideally at least as good as HERE WeGo for Android (which is already not good). Pure Maps is a beautiful app (using the version on Jolla store due to security concerns), as are many others, but I couldn’t find any that actually offered public transport routing in main european cities.
Any advice or recommendations would be extremely welcome
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Idk if public transport is included but great navigation app anyway
Check Fahrplan, but the store version is outdated. There’s a fork in OpenRepos by poetaster. After installation, go to settings and choose proper backend for your area (I just use Transitous, wide multimodal coverage).
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Mapfish at openrepos.
Fahrplan is also available on chum 
I believe that @klarre Organic Maps port also has support for transitous and so fairly universal coverage of urban transit. I only recently added transitous after a user here pointed out that the Ubports fork of fahrplan had backends for it.
Anyone here who uses Mapy successfully on a JP2026?
Public transport native maps:
- Fahrplan: works, but needs improvement. Extremely poor routing for several european capital cities (poor engine that suggesting strange routes for conventional locations taking sometimes 2h more than necessary for a 30min trip). Unusable for where I live (large european capital).
- Pure Maps: routing fails for public transport (even after creating a HERE dev account and adding an API).
- Mapfish: no navigation as far as I could tell; only shows one alternative
- OSM Scout: no public transit navigation.
- Organic Maps: works! Still in dev (Releases · klahr/organicmaps-sailfish · GitHub ; Organic Maps port for Sailfish OS - #38 by klarre ). Suggestions seem reasonable. It’d be good to have more than one suggestion in both public transit and car and an easy way to select (there seems to be no impediment to having multiple possible routes, as I got that in some walking routes, but the selection of the route is by just clicking on it; some list/swipping method would be nice).
Summary: Organic Maps seems the best available and usable out of the box as the main maps app.
Thanks to all developers of all these apps!
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Original Fahrplan app actually got updates again
There has been a lot of controversy with organic maps and the community actually slip of and made CoMaps due to weird regulations. MapFish is a native CoMaps client, but both Organic and Mapfish are vibecoded.
Link to Wikipedia and a developer statement:
MOD EDIT: added English link
I’ve also made a port of CoMaps using Claude, with Mangrove Reviews support, and have made an issue at CoMaps’ repository in codeberg. I was thinking of posting it here to have a discussion regarding code review.
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Great work!
I think we should raise your request with the CoMaps team to show our interest in porting CoMaps to SailfishOS.
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Which backend? Have you tried the transitous backend? I may implement maps once other jobs are out of the way.
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@JE281 Thank you for the background. I’d like to support a community-led project, but I am a user with one phone, and my phone is running SFOS. So I do need a viable solution to move around. CoMaps sounds great, but Mapfish is not a great app. Even Organic Maps, which is significantly more polished, has severe limitations.
Unfortunately, even if people are happy to take up a somewhat worse app to contribute and improve it, at the moment there is no app that is even close to Google Maps or even HERE for using public transport. People need, for their day-to-day life:
- Navigation.
- Details on route.
- Multiple route suggestions and an easy way to select between them.
- Database that comprises reasonably complete public transport information (all have train/metro lines missing).
Yes, I did. For multiple capital cities. The suggestions are atrocious.
Hmm, I’ve only tested Vienna, Munich and Berlin where the suggestions are ones I know. Which city is good benchmark for ‘Bad’ so I can take a look at the data? Most backends are effectively the same as the transportation companies in question (nl and Munich, for instance).
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