Marco: An unhosted maps app

App announcements
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As someone who travels frequently, I’d long been frustrated by this: none of the map apps I use let me store and sync my place bookmarks in a way that’s interoperable across apps and works equally well on desktop and mobile — a perfect use case for remoteStorage.

So over the last two weeks, I finally set out to scratch that itch and built Marco, an unhosted maps app for accessing and managing your favorite places.

I also published a new places data module, so other apps and automations can read and write the same place data. The goal is to make saved locations portable, scriptable, and not locked into a single app.

Screenshots

Desktop

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Mobile

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Technical details

  • POI search is based on OpenStreetMaps data, but you can add your own private places as well
  • The storage layout is based on geohashes, which make geographic queries possible.
  • The place document names/IDs are ulids, which are unique, but sortable by creation date

Current state

The initial version is focused on saving places you already know (or are currently at), while search/discovery of new places is on the roadmap for future releases.

Future plans

I’m genuinely excited about a number of potential new features for Marco. For example, place reviews that are 100% user-owned, or sharing lists of places with other people. I already added a few issues for what I think would be interesting to look at next.

However, any and all feedback is much appreciated!

3 Likes
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Great start :+1:t4:. I have been using Organic Maps on iOS and it works nicely but yes you can’t really have data on multiple devices yet. You might consider to link those OSM/Nostr links to their issues as an invitation for people who can contribute.

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Thanks!

I’m actually using Marco in combination with Organic Maps now. I bookmark places in Marco, and then open them in Organic Maps via the geo link to start navigation there. In almost all cases, it will actually open the POI, not just the coordinates, in Organic Maps.

I think long-term, there should be a Kotlin client library for remoteStorage, so it’s easy to add RS support to native apps like Organic Maps or OSMAnd. The latter already has a plugin architecture, which would be suitable for adding RS sync for favorites.

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I’m intrigued, but what are the user scenarios for it? I’m not understanding how to get value from it.

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Exactly what I described (for now):

The initial version is mostly useful for people who travel a lot and thus want to bookmark places so they can find them again later (could be years or decades later).

The next use cases on the roadmap will likely be more useful to more people.

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Also many people try to ‘save places’ in Google Maps and have no way to use it in other apps, this kind of app makes it possible.