Travel Guides
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Travel Guides (Android): enjoy offline guides for basically any destination.
Travel guides help you in your trips, you can see interesting places on the map and read info about it.
Travel Guides data
The guides are based on Wikivoyage, a community project similar to Wikipedia, where volunteer writers create articles with real and up-to-date information. Such information includes the main facts about a place, transport, landmarks, shopping spots, etc. Going to London, Shanghai or planning a visit to the Grand Canyon? Your guide is there to help you.
Wikivoyage data has GPX format in OsmAnd and keep in Menu → My Places → Tracks → Travel after downloading it. Travel guides: GPX-tracks with waypoints only.
GPX-files (Travel guides) have info about points number of Travel guide file.
About actions of this GPX-files (Travel guides) read here.
Orange color - visible on the map. Or Visible folder.
How to use
To start using the feature, please go to:
Menu → Travel guidesMake sure [to download the travel guide file](/docs/user/plan-route/travel-guides#download) to be able to use the feature. Now all your guides are saved on device and you can look up any information, even if you're abroad or out of a mobile network area.As soon as the file is downloaded, you can start using the guides. Just go to Travel guides list: Menu → Travel guides, and enter the name of the city into the search field.
Note:
As soon as you open the article, you'll see the information conveniently arranged by topic. The information often includes topics like 'Understand' with the details about local culture and habits, 'Talk', 'Get in', 'Get Around', 'See' that covers main places of interest, 'Buy' with the recommended shopping spots, 'Sleep', 'Drink', and 'Go next' suggesting the locations you may be interested in after visiting the current one. You can also press 'Bookmark' to have a quick access to this article later. All such articles will be saved in your 'Bookmarked articles' list.
The articles are sharable. Just press Share button in the upper-right corner and send it to your friend. That person will be able to open your link in OsmAnd directly if they have the app on their device.
Download
Menu → Download maps → Travel guides
Note: Wikivoyage is divided by regions - Africa, Asia, Australia and Oceania, Central America, Europe, North America, Russia, South America.
Search field and travel guides list
In Menu → Travel guides there are two general part: the search field and travel guides list (Popular destinations).
In the top of Travel guides menu there is the search field. You fill it by needed city name:
In Result field:
- Travel guides with info about article languages.
Clicking to chosen Travel guide name opens Travel guide article menu.
Note: for deleting search history you need to use Options button
Below the seacrh field there is Travel guides list - Popular destinations. It shows the first 30 nearest travel guides article on the area of your screen device (not location) or Bookmarked articles. For open Bookmarked articles or Popular destinations you need to use Explore and Bookmarked articles buttons below.
Article buttons:
- Read - opens Travel guide article.
- Bookmark - moves chosen article to Bookmarked articles.
- Bookmark - removes chosen article from Bookmarked articles.
Options
You can also choose if you'd like to download the images or not, clear image cache or delete the search history. To do that, please press the Options button in the upper-right corner of the screen.
- Download images - article images can be downloaded for offline use.
- Image cache - allows to clear image cache.
- Delete search history - allows to clear search history.
Travel guide article
Clicking to Read button in travel guides list or Read full button in Description menu opens Travel guide article.
The articles are available in different languages. By default, the language you're using in OsmAnd will be also picked for Travel guides. But if you'd like, you can view your article in a different one. To do that, press the translation button next to the name of the article, you can choose available languages for this article:
Each article in Wikivoyage has the same structure of content, where there are introduction part (images and description of turist object) and next chapters:
- "Understand" - full description.
- "Get in" - how to get in to this area, place and etc and how much to cost this route.
- "See" - list of seesight places (museums, historical places...) with full description: how much to cost tickets, when to open, links to website, phones.
- "Do" - descrption any places for pastime.
- "Buy" - descrption any places for shoping.
- "Eat" - descrption any places for eating (divided by budget: budget, mid-range, splurge).
- "Drink" - descrption any bars and cafes.
- "Sleep" - descrption any hotels (divided by budget: budget, mid-range, splurge).
- "Go next" - proposal the next nearest places from Wikivoyage.
For opening a chapter you need to use "∨" button.
In Wikivoyage articles there are info about prices, contacts info, web links and etc. Almost each part has next buttons: button "Wikipedia" allows to open Wikipedia POI (online or offline), button "Open on map" allows to show the Point of the object on the map.
Below the screen next buttons:
- "Contents" - allows to opens Contents menu of an Wikivoyage article. Clicking to a name content moves to chosen an article part.
- "Points" - allows to add on the map article Points and to open Track Context menu of chosen article.
Points
Articles often contain points grouped by topic. They are available in the 'Points' menu at the bottom of the article. You'll see food locations, airports, railway stations, places to shop, main historical attractions, accommodation options, etc.
Wikivoyage guide file is GPX-file with waypoints. Waypoints are Points (places) from Wikivoyage article on the map.
When you click to "Points" button on the Travel guide article or you show your GPX-file of Wikivoyage on the map.
When you open Track Context menu of GPX-file (Travel guide article), you find next general info of Travel guide article:
- In "Overview", you can read short description or open Travel guide article by clicking "Read full" button. Button "Edit"allows you to correct article.
In "Track" there is not any info (Travel guides: GPX-tracks with waypoints only).
In "Points", you see folders with points by named Contents (Buy, Do, Drink...). Each category of Contents has own color and icon.
Here you find short description of points (places), number of points on each folder.
You can make any actions with points.
Clicking to chosen point opens this point on the map with and Map Context menu.
- In "Options", you can make any actions with your Travel guide file (GPX-track).
Other guides
Besides the city guides, you can read about regions or countries, and even scroll through special guides like the list of UNESCO Global Geoparks Network or even a phrasebook of a country you're visiting. To see more exciting articles, please see the 'Explore' tab of the travel guides menu.
Building Travel book
Custom Travel - creating your one-of-a-kind travel guide
Custom Travel tool helps you create your own travel guide and use it via OsmAnd Travel feature. Basically, you can use the text from any source (from Wikipedia to your friend's blog) and pair it with a GPX track.
Prepare the files
To start, please prepare your files. Save your track with '.GPX' extension and the text file as '.html'. In order to create your custom database successfully, the names of the GPX file and the html have to be identical. For example, 'Milan.gpx' and 'Milan.html'.
The GPX tracks can be downloaded from the internet or you can create one (using OsmAnd or any online GPX creation tool).
For example, you can use Brouter, or a simialr one.
Add the points you'd like to visit into your route and then save that route as a GPX track. .
Preparing your GPX track in OsmAnd is also possible, you can read about it here: Plan a route.
Choosing the source for your guide's text is completely up to you. It can be an article in a travel blog, a Wikipedia page, etc. Simply copy the text, then paste it into a text editor and save it with an 'HTML' extension. Make sure to make the name of the GPX track and the HTML file identical.
Launch the tool
Download OsmAnd MapCreator Linux.
Download MapCreator and extract the files from the archive. Start your console and open the MapCreator folder.
Example: cd /home/user/OsmAndMapCreator-main/
Run ./utilites.sh travel-guide-creator When asked to provide the path, please paste the path to the folder where you have your files prepared.
Example: cd /home/user/MyCustomGuides/
We do not recommend locating your files in the 'TravelGuideCreator' folder itself. Kindly see the 'Read me' file for step-by-step commands.
Windows. Open utilities.bat file.
Import files
Your file should be created in seconds. By default, it will be named 'travel_guide.sqlite', but you can rename it as you want making sure to save it with 'sqlite' file extension. For example, 'Milan_weekend_tour.sqlite'. After that, please transfer it to your device. Specifically, to the folder where OsmAnd travel guides are stored. You can check the path to that folder in 'OsmAnd > Settings > General > Data storage folder > Manually specified. Please copy the file there using any mobile file manager or by connecting your phone to computer. Restart the app.
Use your guide
After you start the app, please go to 'Travel' menu. Press Options > 'Travel book' to select your database as a source. After that, you'll be able to use search normally in order to view the articles. You'll find all the points from your GPX track in 'Points' menu. Please use 'Show on map' button to view your points on the map. You can bookmark any article to have a quicker access to it.