UKC

Ok, seems like View ranger have stopped the OS maps. This is the second reasonable app which has be replaced by something "better". Reading the reviews of the new app they suggest you use, I don't think I want to pay them anything for maps. 

The OS app is awful, so not going down that line.

What is there out there which just shows you maps? I don't want to track anything or plan routes on it. I just want maps on my phone!! 

I feel this shouldn't be so hard!

OS app works fine for me (now you can lock the scale), what don't you like? 

Backcountry Navigator TOPO. OS maps with GPS and a load of other stuff but you don't have to use that. For free! I paid for it anyway just because I use it so much and like it, but I'm not sure if it's got anything I use over the free version.

There is also another version by the same company called Backcountry Navigator XE, but this is crap. Don't download that one by accident. I have no idea why they have two versions.

How is the OS maps app awful if all you want to do is see maps? That’s literally all it does when you open it. There’s only the menu button that even suggests you can do anything else…

Just tried Backcountry Navigator TOPO.

OS maps requires upgrade to the paid version. Not unreasonably; the OS have clamped down on the misuse of the Bing mapping licence terms.

It also shares location for advertising purposes, and you can only opt out in the paid version.

If I could officially access OS mapping through OruxMaps, I would. It's the best mapping app I've used (the Spanish national mapping agency adopted it rather than developing their own; something the OD should maybe consider...). Fortunately,  I do have selected areas of OS mapping I can use with Orux.

It was a while ago I tried it, but it wouldn't keep maps open when you turned the screen off and put it back in your pocket. So had to load every time which means you have to have signal and can't just have the phone on aeroplane mode. It was also very slow and clunky.

I'd suggest another look as you can download areas for use offline.

It's not perfect, but it is much improved of late.

I'm currently using OS Maps (used to have anquet but refused to buy maps yet again after yet another update).

I'm not having any of the issues you describe, and it works just fine in aeroplane mode with the screen off.

However you stated "So had to load every time which means you have to have signal". That sounds like you don't have any mapping download on the phone.

Unfortunately the only way to do this is to download any paper maps you've bought (code is on the map), or have a subscription, which works out at £2 a week for the annual one. This allows you to download the OS mapping you need without purchasing a paper map.

I think the days of free digital mapping are coming to an end, and you can't really blame OS for wanting payment - they never handed out paper OS maps for free.

Anquet here. Paid subscription (cheapest annual deal that offers HD 1:50k & 1:25k mapping - £24 I think for full UK coverage). All offline on my mobile phone.

* I was annoyed that Anquet went from the 'buy outright' to switching to subscription model, having used them for many years. For various reasons I stuck with them after much grumbling. 

Ah, that must have changed. OS maps worked on the free version when I tried it.

Even so, it's a one-off payment of £12 (IIRC) which is a far better deal than any of the subscription apps.

It's worth checking out Locus Maps if you are on Android. Free, online only , but decent topographical maps which, unlike OS, show all the little paths in your local woods.

How do you lock the scale? Not sure if I'm being dim but I can't see it!

I never expected free maps, but I am not going to buy a new paper map just to get the download when I already have perfectly good paper version!!

When I tried it, I did try paying for the subscription and download the mapping, but it still never opened the bits I had supposedly downloaded without signal. The whole thing was clunky and awkward. 

I think I found it particularly frustrating because I had bought loads of map sections on the old app and then they just stopped doing it for newer operating systems. I had bought loads, downloaded them and they all worked perfectly all the time. It was a super simple app and it just worked. (can't remember what one that was now, but it was an OS app). I just feel they have tried to become too fancy and in doing so have become less useable.

Not sure why you are getting dislikes. My wife curses the OS maps app for similar-sounding reasons. She has lots of purchased, downloaded maps and believes that’s the reason it takes a good 20-30 seconds to load after launching it. Which it does.

ViewRanger has a couple of quirks that annoy me (biggest one being apps no clear one-click display of current grid ref… I’ve found a casualty ffs, just give me the *** grid ref now!), but it will be a sad day when they turn in off.

Yes, sounds familiar!

My viewranger OS subscription has now turned off, so it has effectively turned off for me now, which is frustrating. 

Maps aside, I have this on my home screen front and centre waiting for the day I need it.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.blerg

As others have said, the OS app is now greatly improved, but not frustration-free - I use the iOS version and find it takes an absolute age to show the maps on the screen, even when the map for the area I am in has been downloaded to the phone. That said, once it does show it is very good, and I have the subscription to stream maps which haven't been downloaded to the phone.

I'd be interested to hear if others have the same speed issue with it - I'm running it on an iPhone 11 with plenty of free space, so hardly trying to overload an antiquated piece of kit.

Look up the OS Locate app - it does exactly that, instantly, without the need for the maps themselves.

Just tried this. The space given to the ad banner is more intrusive than others but I've added it to my pile of mapping apps. Others I like are Oruxmaps, Alpinequest, magicearth (for driving), and OsmAnd+ (the +version is free if you get it from fdroid or direct on their site). None of them helps if you're wedded to OS mapping.

Probably one of the first, and IMHO the best, grid ref app.

I'm running the OS app on Android. Just tried it from 'cold' and it took about 3 seconds to open up, fix, and show position on map. (I am at home so probably got an initial fix from WiFi, might be a bit slower using GPS only).

I too bought map tiles on the old OS Maps app, and then they deprecated the app and all my tiles are now useless. As far as I'm concerned OS Maps have ripped me off and they are never getting any more of my money.

Interesting - thanks. I've just done the same on my wifi connection and it locates instantly and shows the very local area, but zooming-out just shows purple, with any form of mapping taking fortyish seconds to show. And that is with the local map actually downloaded onto the phone, let alone a wider area needing streaming.

I think that's the business model for all apps now, not just OS.

The button on the bottom right of the map screen, gives all the different map options.

I’ve used Memory Map for over a decade (which itself uses OS maps). Maps for whole of UK downloaded to phone; works offline and shows your location/direction of movement, and a host of other useful features are in the app (which you can ignore if you just want to see the map). You can leave it open in background also.

I used to buy the perpetual license and so only updated maps very few years as I was not fussed about small changes, but earlier this year went to an annual license. I wanted a package of map scales (have 1:25k, 1:50k 1:250k, a street map, a road map, etc.*, and also kept previous 1:50K for historic viewing of changes) and decided I would now like to have the upgrades which are free during the license period. If I want I can go back to a perpetual license whenever I want (unless they stop this option of course in future!). * My choice to download - you can download only the map or maps you want as they are all separate downloads.

One thing I’ve noted since having multiple scale maps now available the zooming for ease of viewing and simplicity of rendering fine detail automatically changes to the “best” map to view. Slightly annoying if I want a specific map for seeing certain details, but it is really easy and quick to change back to preferred map.

MM give five devices under the license and so you can link phone, tablet and pc together for transfer data points, routes etc if wanted.

Really? I don't think I have any other apps where I've paid for content so I don't know. But in my opinion selling a map tile for permanent use and then making the app to view them unusable is a scam. 

Same here, tap the icon bottom right that looks like a stack of paper, then tap lock to 1:25k or 1:50k.

Also stuck with them but it cost me £10 pa to use all my maps which is ok as don't need full UK coverage.

OruxMaps will access a vast range of mapping sources (both vector and raster), including OpenTopoMaps. I found the latter very good when I did the TMB a few years back.

Locus is good, but I just don't get on with the UI for some reason...

Any decent mapping app should have a persistent tile cache so it doesnt have to keep fetching tiles. This is independent of the ability to download mapping.

The OS app seemed like they had given the job to the tea boy.

I was running it on an iPhone 8 until the other week when I upgraded and had zero problems with speed. 

For OS maps, ViewRanger has effectively already been turned off.  They're not taking new OS subscriptions, and existing subscriptions are not being renewed as they expire.  Mine went a few weeks ago.

Because I bought a load of map tiles on Viewranger they gave me a year's subscription to the 'premium' version of Outdooractive.  It's rather bloated compared to VR, has no 'satellite' layer and is an inferior product (for use in the UK anyway) in several other ways. 

The maps I bought outright were Irish OS maps, and as far as I can see if/when VR finally does stop working altogether not only will I lose the maps I paid about £130 for, they don't seem to be available online or via an app anywhere else.

The OS's own app does seem to have improved somewhat lately.  Certainly being able to constrain it to stick to 50k or 25k as you zoom in and out if you want is handy.

The main problem I had was that my phone is a bit old and a bit low on memory, there are only so many bloated apps I can have on there.  That's less of an issue now because I bought a relatively cheap second phone, a great big 'ruggedized' brick of a thing with a big battery, to use as a GPS and have on me 'outdoors' for emergencies.  That one has enough memory to support OS, Viewranger, 'Outdooractive' and Memory-Map.  (M-M is the cheapest way to get access to marine charts for UK coastal waters.)

There are lots of apps to just give you an OS grid reference for where you are btw.  I use the Arthur Embleton one called simply 'Grid Reference' (on Android).  It's free (and ad-free), tiny and it 'just works' as they say.

I've just tested OSmaps because I don't recognise the problems you describe.

It's quick and easy to download large areas at 1:25k and 1:50k, with mobile data disabled it takes about 4 seconds to launch the app and display the map for my location and it doesn't shut down when i switch my phone off and pocket it.

Have you given permission for the app to run in the background?

Ah, great suggestion, thanks. Seems a bit silly to have to switch to another app for an insta-grid-ref, but if that's what it takes then I'll definitely try that out!

Thanks very much, I’d missed that option on the list!

Maybe I am missing something but mine tells me the grid ref at the top, if I press the current location button at the bottom it takes me to my current location (but not showing because I don't want everyone on UKC to have the gridref of my house...)

In reply to:

I still have an ancient version of Anquet on my PC, which is fine for printing OS maps but the proprietary route file format is a pain when interfacing with a GPS which uses GPX these days, so I’ve started using the OS subscription app instead. Ordnance Survey seem to go to great lengths to avoid suggestions from their users so their software is quite irritating (e.g. huge margins on printed maps) so prompted by this thread I thought I’d have a look at the alternatives from Memory Map and Anquet. It’s hard to choose which of them has the worse website. Doesn’t bode well for their software. Does anyone have a preference for Anquet, Memory Map or others? I’d mainly be plotting routes on a Windows PC or iPad and following them on a simple GPS with a printed map. Being able to sync waypoints and routes between devices would be good. 

I'm a bit late to this chat but totally agree that OS Maps does not stack up against ViewRanger. Other posters are misplaced in their thoughts that 'you can't expect something for nothing'. This is not the issue, I paid for ViewRanger OS tiles before and I'm paying about the same for OS Maps now. It has everything to do with interface and functionality, where it seems to fall well short.

It routinely crashes. Not rarely, but often. Sometimes when moving around menus, also when drawing plot lines it just freezes, hard restart needed (and begin plot from scratch if that was what did it) 

No indication of time or distance gone while tracking?! I find this one hard to believe but as far as I can tell, I just can't see real-time stats on the move.

Plotted lines and real tracks appear to be held in the same list together, with no good distinction between which is which. I'd like to see my real tracks, or plots - ones past, ones future - but not together.

No way of dropping points of interest in specific places. I did this all the time in VR. Pull around a crag grid ref until its exactly right and save it - then when tracking I can watch my progress as I get toward the crag. Useful for really esoteric features. Doesn't seem possible in OS Maps.

The app reloads every time I come out and go back in - it would be nice for it to stay where I left it. At least sometimes would be nice.

Viewranger displayed grid ref (or coords, by choice) and altitude in the centre of frame which was really handy. In OS you have to go off and find the index contour markings and trace it back. It wouldn't be hard to add this as they have the elevation info. 

The list goes on.

BTW I don't wish to sound negative. If someone has a solution to these then let me know? But I feel I've had a very fair look around and there aren't many menus. 

Even more I'd love to send these thoughts to OS so they might do something about it.

To the contrary, there's aspects I like a lot - the satellite imagery is superb, the real-time graphs beside route plots are handy.

Anquet user and yes the website is a mess. It's not changed much since back in the day.

That said picking one of the subscription options is straightforward (go HD if using on a mobile phone is my suggestion, the quality from SD is astounding). 

I've always gone for this type of straight download to device/no signal required option as I'd already bought into it years before. 

Their support is good in my experience to the point of being geek-level. 

I get the impression that it's run by a one man band (or a very low staff company). 

​​​

Everyone and everything is switching to the 'subscription model' so they can make more money without having to do anything over and above. Even car manufacturers, Volvo for example.

I wonder if it might be an oversight with the iPhone app - or indeed a setting I could change somewhere. For me that strip with the grid ref *only* appears when I have my finger on the screen, and disappears the moment I take my finger off. So unless I hold my finger dead still the GR readout changes, and wanders away from the current location slightly!

Edit: AARGH, THE SHAME! I have now found the setting option that says "always show coordinate bar". Which has solved my problem, obviously. Oh well, even if I've made a public fool of myself, at least I now have the feature I have been grumbling about being missing

Thanks Stuart. 

Does this mean that my purchased OS map tiles in Viewranger will disappear? I can still see them at the moment... 

Yeah, they are hopeless at responding to constructive criticism (I provided feedback on those margins years ago). Their digital mapping solutions seem very much to be a minority, neglected part of their service.

However much of a faff it might be printing maps off the OS website, it is at least possible.  That's one area where Viewranger clearly fell down (while it did actually offer access to OS maps) - superior as the app undoubtedly is to the OS alternative, I never found a way to print a useful map from Viewranger.  Was I missing something?

I print and laminate maps fairly regularly from the OS website (is that what we're talking about here - I don't think you can print from the app can you?)  In my case they're usually A3, and the margin that's clearly excessive on A4 paper is about the same size and much more reasonable on the bigger sheet.

As a workaround to have no margin at all on A4 paper, you can centre the bit you're interested in, print to an A3 pdf instead, then open the pdf and print that to A4 with the scaling turned off and allow it to crop what doesn't fit on the page.  I'll sometimes do that to print an OS map to scale on A4 waterproof paper to use with a thumb compass like an orienteer while exploring a new route for a walk or a run.

It might be possible to do that without the pdf bit, I haven't tried.  I always print to pdf anyway, and keep the file - if the map is useful that means it'll be easy to print another copy in the future.  (Whether the subscription has expired by then or not.)

Which team are you, I'll try make I never work that way more seriously it took me 6 months to realise if I didn't have the maps downloaded it wouldn't show the grid ref of where I was, resulting in a desperate scrabble for my map to get a hasty grid ref of a CAS site 

4-5 seconds for me on an iPhone SE. No appreciable difference between WiFi or 4G, and although I’m home at the moment that feels pretty typical. That includes showing the wider area if I zoom out from the initial location fix. Obviously I’d expect a bit more of a lag if I try to stream maps somewhere with patchy signal, but that’s nothing to do with OS. 

OS app appears to do this on iOS at least. I routinely use it in airplane mode with no problems at all, both for areas I’ve chosen to download and areas that I’ve just streamed before turning on airplane mode. No issues with screen being turned off and on again either. Been regularly using the app for probably 2 years and not had this issue. 

Gah.  Prompted by the above I was playing about with various apps.  (I have OS, VR, Outdooractive and Memory Map - I know, I know.)

As if there wasn't already enough to curse Outdooractive for, it seems to be impossible to extract an OS grid ref from it for your current location but it does give you sodding what three words by default.  Aargh.

PS:
Said it already but bears repeating - if you just want a nice clear OS grid reference on the screen (with the option to copy/paste or text it to somebody if you want), Arthur Embleton's 'Grid Reference' is superb.  Very small app, simple and free with no adverts.  No maps or data involved, it just converts the lat/long that it gets from the phone's GPS chip directly to an OS grid ref.

Agreed. I use OS and don't have the problems described by the  OP, although it can be a little fiddly to use until you get used to it. I do the £24 pa full coverage which gives both 1:50.000 and 1:25,000. The only draw back is trying to assess in advance just how large an area you need to pre-download before a trip, otherwise you have to resort to data use which can prove costly on my phone package.

Long term Anquet user.

1.  I agree about the website - definitely not the best

2. The iOS app is brilliant - make sure you download the map from home on wifi

3. The PC version is usable and stable and great for printing / dreaming of running routes / avoiding work etc

4. The Mac version is definitely a bit of an afterthought - usable, but not intuitive.

5. I have had good experience of support from them

Some experience also with Routebuddy - ZERO support of any quality

I would buy Anquet again knowing what I know and do use it all the time. For the £32 recurring subscription you get 1:50000 (normal and high density), 1:25000 (normal and high density) driving maps and a UK overview map. I also have some IGN maps of France and Superwalker Maps and which I bought from them before the subscription model and they still work, although I am not sure if these are still available. 

I have the same question - clearly the subscriptions are no longer available - but what about purchased tiles.  As Siward says - still there so far.

Can you download the full uk Os 1:50000 and 1:25000 maps onto your phone with MMap?

As I understand it, the maps will remain on your phone but at some point an update to your phone will not be supported by Viewranger at which point it won't work any longer.

Yes you could as far as I see.

However, I’ve only actually downloaded for Scotland and for the rest of the UK I have MM’s base map software which support the “live” viewing of the full mapping of the whole of the UK at both scales “if” you have a mobile/wifi connection. This saves a huge amount of storage (over 2Gb I think for 1:50k alone for the UK).

I have the option to either download certain parts of England/Wales or the full download if I want to.

A warning though that applies to the annual subscription I now have (not the perpetual license) - MM check your license and so have a “restriction” in that you need an initial internet connection with their server to open and load your maps even when fully downloaded! Once the app is open though you can view your downloaded map that is open. Any change of map though needs a brief connection with the MM server to verify the license of the one you are changing to!

The latter is one of the reasons why I have retained my old downloads - they were perpetual licenses so still allows me to view all of the UK (stored on my phone) without any online connection. Something to be aware of it there is a chance you will not have at least a brief internet connection if having an annual subscription.