Meet Murena Maps
When did you last stop to ask a stranger for your way? Quite some time ago, right?
Today, thanks to different map applications, we’re used to easily finding addresses without relying on physical maps, street signs, or passengers that hopefully come by when we need them.
These applications should not only be precise, but also find optional routes quickly, instead of keeping us turning in roundabouts until we feel dizzy, like devices from 2010.
Some map applications might perform well, but do not respect your privacy.
Today it doesn’t even surprise us anymore that we can zoom into other people’s gardens, or that Google teams are such fans of us that they analyze our average driving speed to add this information to our consumer profile*.
On the other hand, it is difficult to find a transparent, open-source, open-data map that doesn’t require downloading many GBs of maps before you can use it, which limits our ability to improvise, find points of interest and costs us time.
Our team and community members wished to have a combination of both: a map application that’s easy to use, reliable, works out of the box immediately without the need for downloads, and still doesn’t make millions by selling our habits and other private data. By default, our company does not track or profile you.
At the moment, our developers are working on Murena Maps, a user-friendly, intuitive map application that respects your privacy.
Murena Maps, soon available for devices running /e/OS, will help you to…
- Search destinations
- Plan your trips
- Navigate once on the way
- Synchronize locations and routes from your PC to your phone
Murena Maps works online, maps-downloads are not required.
Listen to Romain, our engineering manager, presenting Murena Maps at FOSDEM.
*Shoshana Zuboff in “Surveillance Capitalsm”: https://youtu.be/hIXhnWUmMvw
34 Comments
Looking forward to it!
Although we have a lot of European options, seems that none is able to work for multiple scenarios.
We need it to be usable for walking, cycling and public transport, too. Not just cars!
If you need help testing it, you can use the BuyFromEU community.
Thank you for your input!
Would totally support walking, cycling and public transport routing and data, including live departure times and routes.
What is the underlying engine? If OSMAnd, i say no way. I loce using OSM data, but that app is terrible to search an address. None of the top tier opensiurce map apps have goid sesrch (have not tried CoMaps). I know MagicEarth is not 100% opensource but at least its search function is good.
Murena Maps is based on OpenStreetMap, MapLibre, WhosOnFirst, Transitous and several other open source projects and open data sources. It also relies on some hostable services. To know more about them, do not hesitate to watch 2min40 in the video: https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/WRU7C9-cardinal-maps-application/
If for any reason you might prefer to use MagicEarth in the future, you can always install it on your Murena phone.
Will traffic data be integrated?
Hello Milliw,
Yes, this is something we are working on.
wish I could get a person to person tracker for my epileptic partner. I can’t find anything that isn’t full of evil trackers and permissions. just want something that let’s me know where she is and keeps her safe.
Hello Carl, Perhaps members of the e foundation community could help you with this matter: https://community.e.foundation/
If you find a suitable solution, we would be happy if you could share it here with us.
Look into Zood location which is end to end encrypted.
Thanks for the idea!
Can’t wait!!!
Let us know how we can contribute (Beta testing)! I don’t mind sharing my location data (as long as it’s anonymous and used for community purposes (mainly traffic reporting))…
Hello Jonathan, Thanks for the encouragement! We will let you know as soon as we’ll start beta-testing in our community forum: https://community.e.foundation/
Looking forward to using this app when it’s all finished. I would like to be able to download the maps to save mobile data usage. 🙂
Thank you for your feedback! We shared your idea with our team.
Would love to see a good POI integration. I’m desperately looking for a Google Maps alternative. POI, ratings, comments, pictures are stopping me from switching.
Would love to see an alternative including the same possibilities. Sure, data would be missing in the beginning, but I would love contributing.
POI is in my opinion crucial for a real alternative.
Murena Maps relies (among others) on WhosOnFirst, which is a collection of points of interest. We would love to give you the possibility to see ratings, comments and pictures and will share this idea with our team.
The most important feature for any modern navigation app:
Does it include traffic information and rerouting based on traffic congestion?
Thank you for your idea! We are considering it.
Hoping it will be based on OpenStreetMap data so it can take advantage of open source mapping data. Hopefully also an option to add things back to OSM via an OSM login too.
Also, both online maps (like Google or Apple Maps) is welcomed, but also the ability to download maps for offline use would also be great (like CoMaps, Organic Maps, OSM+).
Would good if you could share development resources with some of these other European based open source map app projects too to save reinventing the wheel and contribute to better open source mapping for all.
Lastly an ability to save and sync your favourite locations between devices, including to Murena Workspace or via WebDAV to other locations of the users choice.
Hello Ben,
Thank you for your ideas! We shared them with the team. The sync between devices and Murena Workspace is indeed the priority number 1 for our team at the moment.
You can find the Murena Maps source code here: https://gitlab.e.foundation/e/os/maps
does this map work in the United States?
Yes, but not yet, as it is still in development.
How will this be different from?
https://www.comaps.app/
and/or
https://organicmaps.app/
Hello Ano,
The main difference to these projects (that we find great) will be that you will be able to use Murena Maps online without downloading routes, which makes it easier to improvise without planning trips ahead.
Looks quite good!
One problem that is currently not solved well is the lack of good OSM-type open data sources for:
• a streetview-type feature (360 equirectangular panoramas in case of Apple and Google, Gaussian Splats in Scaniverse)
• photos of locations such as sights, restaurants, scenic spots, menus etc.
• reviews
While OSM has largely solved the map data problem, and projects like Magic Earth, OsmAnd, OrganicMaps/CoMaps and now Murena have worked on solving the app aspect, the street view, media and review part remains a unique strong point of Google.
The difficulty is that this would require a significant amount of server storage and likely expensive content moderation. Taking 360 degree photos or Gaussian Splats and uploading them on the other hand could be achieved by volunteers with nothing but a somewhat recent smartphone.
This is very exciting! I know that the Maps app (aka MagicEarth) is the only non-FOSS app in /e/OS, so seeing an open source choice become available is great, and to know that Murena is behind it is very promising!
I really appreciate the brief talk video; it was cool to see a breakdown of all the pieces that have to work together. To me a maps app seems like a massive undertaking, but Murena seems like they’ve got it down!
As someone else has said, having the ability to download apps for offline is a crucial feature, I think.
Just a heads up, the links to the APKs in the last two releases (v0.22.0 and v0.21.0) result in 404s; it means that the link to download it through Obtanium doesn’t work either.
Hello Jade,
Thank you for your positive feedback!
Indeed, many people asked us about the ability to download and our teams will work on it.
As we have changed the name of the app into Murena Maps, there’s a new link: https://gitlab.e.foundation/e/os/maps
Feel free to have a look!
{“message”:”404 Not found”}
I’d tried downloading apk directly, and via obtainium.
> “Indeed, many people asked us about the ability to download and our teams will work on it.”
I’m pleased to hear that as I wouldn’t want to rely on an app that requires the phone to be online at all times. This is both because I have rather limited data access in my current plan (and I’m not very keen on opting for a more expensive plan just to be able to use maps) and because internet isn’t available in all the places where I need to use a map.
Je pense qu’il faudrait mettre un système de signalisation d’embouteillage par la communauté et il faudrait rendre ce gps accessible au gens n’ayant pas murena comme moi pour cause de non compatibilité avec mon téléphone ce qui permettrait de faire profiter a tous de ce produit open source et de le rendre plus précis pour une potentielle détection de bouchon
Bonjour Sim,
Merci pour vos idées ! Nous espérons pouvoir rendre disponible Murena Maps sur différents appareils.
Takk fyrir að láta vita af nýju korti, (thanks for inform about new map)
vonadi betra en goodle kortið (hope it is better than google map)
google kort hefur ekki reyns vel á Islandi (google map has not be
good in Iceland)
kv
You’re welcome! We hope that you will try it, when it will be available and then you can give us feedback.