CoMaps is the community fork of Organic Maps that moved its home to Codeberg

A fork with a different home, a different governance and a different name

The repository description is blunt about what this is: a mirror of the Codeberg repository at codeberg.org/comaps/comaps, and a community fork of Organic Maps, based on principles of openness and transparency, not-for-profit and in the public interest, community-driven and accountable, fully free and open source software.

So there are three things to hold at once. The GitHub repository is a mirror, not the source of truth; the source of truth is on Codeberg, and the releases are published there. The code is a fork of Organic Maps, which was itself based on Maps.ME. And the project has its own identity, CoMaps, with its own app identifiers, its own package names and its own governance.

That last point has a practical consequence. The Android package is app.comaps.google and the F-Droid package is app.comaps.fdroid, and the iOS App Store listing is under comaps with its own id. Those are not the Organic Maps identifiers, which is what allows both apps to sit on the same phone without sharing a data directory or fighting over the same account.

The project also says the mirror arrangement is deliberate rather than accidental, and the navigation bar in the README points at Codeberg for the project intro, the governance documents, the FAQ, the contribute page, the donate page and the keep-connected page. Bugs and feature requests go to the Codeberg issue tracker, and there is a dedicated Zulip chat for active contributors.

For a user deciding where to install from, that is the single most important thing to know: the GitHub copy is not where releases appear.

The feature set is outdoor oriented and includes editing

The highlights list describes the app as offline-first, privacy-respecting with no tracking, ads or data collection, lightweight in battery and space use, simple, cross-platform for Android, iOS, macOS and Linux, community-built, and transparent with open finances and governance.

The main features list is where the fork's identity shows. There are downloadable detailed maps with places that are not available with Google Maps. There is an outdoor mode with highlighted hiking trails, campsites, water sources, peaks and contour lines. Walking paths and cycleways, points of interest such as restaurants, gas stations, hotels, shops and sightseeing, and search by name, by address or by point of interest category.

Navigation has voice announcements for walking, cycling or driving. There is a subway transit layer with directions, track recording, and export and import of bookmarks and tracks in KML, KMZ and GPX formats. Bookmarks are a single tap, offline Wikipedia articles are available, and there is a dark mode for night use.

Two features stand out for anyone thinking about this as more than a navigation app. There is a basic built-in editor to improve map data for everyone, so an app that is meant for everyone to use is also a way to contribute back to the underlying OpenStreetMap data. And Android Auto and CarPlay support is listed, which places it in the category of apps you use while driving rather than apps you use while walking.

Distribution across six channels, including F-Droid and Obtainium

The distribution badges in the README are the most concrete part of the documentation, and there are seven of them.

There is the Apple App Store listing, the Google Play listing, F-Droid, Flathub for the Linux desktop build, Obtainium, and the Codeberg releases page. The Obtainium badge points at a redirect that adds the Codeberg repository to Obtainium, and there is a separate IzzyOnDroid badge.

The split between the Google Play listing and the F-Droid listing is worth checking before you install, because the two are separate packages with separate identifiers, and the project documentation does not spell out what differs between them. The Android app has been reviewed by Exodus Privacy, and the project links to that report, which is the kind of third party check that is worth reading before you trust a navigation app with your location history.

The signing section gives you the means to check what you installed.

SHA-256: 4894e8e6963627ef660031d8593fe77297f835acb4e23810003e926135023b4c
SHA-1: 8b7b5739f917e9f7c681671ced0c9c8562123ade
MD5: 9cce0ffea281dc2f0e0a154d6d2e281e

And for the AppVerifier route, the certificate fingerprint is given as app.comaps followed by the colon-separated digest. The presence of AppVerifier and apksigner references is the detail that matters: they are the tools for confirming that the binary on your phone is the one the project built.

A C++ and Qt codebase with a large tree

The repository is a substantial application rather than a small library, and the top level tells you how.

The primary language is C++, and the tree carries the expected parts of a cross platform native app: android/ for the Android build, iphone/ for iOS, qt/ for the shared Qt user interface, xcode/ for the macOS project, packaging/ for the distribution packages, and a 3party/ directory for third party code. There is a CMakeLists.txt at the root, a configure.sh, cmake/ for build configuration, a generator/ directory, libs/ for the shared libraries, tools/, and a dev_sandbox/ directory.

The code style is enforced by configuration rather than convention. There is a .clang-format file and a .clang-format-ignore, and a .prettierrc.yaml for the non C++ files, plus a .git-blame-ignore-revs file, which is the standard trick for keeping a reformatting commit out of every blame view.

The data/ directory is worth noting separately, because it holds the map data and the copyright file that the licence section points to. The licence is Apache License 2.0, with LICENSE, NOTICE and data/copyright.html all referenced, which is the correct arrangement for an app that ships third party map data with its own attribution requirements.

There is also a SECURITY.md and a .forgejo/ directory, which is the forgejo equivalent of a GitHub pull request template directory and is further evidence that Codeberg is where the real collaboration happens.

The fork relationship is the open question

Anyone evaluating CoMaps has to weigh one thing that the documentation does not resolve.

The project is a fork of Organic Maps, and forks of a large application are expensive to keep in step with upstream. Every upstream release that fixes a bug, updates a map style, or adds a platform feature has to be pulled into the fork by hand, and the fork has to decide whether to take it. A fork that diverges on purpose, for governance reasons, is a coherent choice. A fork that diverges by accident, because nobody merged six months of upstream work, is a liability.

The documentation here does not describe the upstream merge policy, and the governance documents live on Codeberg rather than in the repository, so the answer is not in the repository you are reading. That is worth reading before you depend on the app for a long trip.

The other thing to weigh is the division of responsibility. Organic Maps continues as its own project with its own release cycle, and CoMaps has its own. If you are a user, you pick one. If you are a developer who wants to work on Organic Maps code, the fork is a different target with a different governance and a different issue tracker.

None of this makes CoMaps a bad choice. It makes it a choice with a political dimension, and the honest thing is to say so rather than to describe it as simply a better Organic Maps.

Money, governance and how the project says it works

The funding section is unusually direct. CoMaps is free, and to fund development the project relies on voluntary support, with donation through OpenCollective and Liberapay. The project states that its financial information is completely open and transparent at its Open Collective.

The badges in the header make the same point structurally: there is an Open Collective donors badge and a Liberapay patrons badge, both linking to the project accounts.

The governance is documented in a separate Codeberg repository, comaps/Governance, with a governance document and a FAQ, and the project intro lives there too. A Code of Conduct-adjacent document, a SECURITY.md in the repository, a CONTRIBUTING.md at the root, a CONTRIBUTORS file, and a funding.json complete the picture.

For the contributor workflow, the README points at docs/INSTALL.md for build instructions and docs/CONTRIBUTING.md for the contribution guide, and mentions a dedicated Zulip chat for active contributors. You can help by donating, contributing code, translating, or by telling others about it, and it says explicitly that there is a need for software development, design, product, community development and other areas.

The last push was on 2026-10-22, and the repository is not archived. Releases are published on Codeberg, and the project metadata lists no GitHub releases, which is consistent with the mirror arrangement rather than a sign of an abandoned project.

Editorial conclusion

CoMaps fits a user who wants offline maps with no tracking or ads, wants map edits to go somewhere community governed rather than to a company, and is willing to install from F-Droid, Obtainium, Flathub or an app store. It does not fit a team that wants a single unambiguous upstream for Organic Maps code, since this is explicitly a mirror of a Codeberg repository and a fork with its own governance and its own release channel. Before adopting it, read the governance documents and the FAQ on Codeberg, check the app identifiers differ from the upstream build so you do not have two apps with the same data directory, and confirm the map data editor and transit layer behave the way your trip planning needs.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. comaps/comaps on GitHub
2. Issues
3. License: Apache-2.0
4. Project website
5. README