Blocoware Open Street Map: the map source that also works offline

Blocoware Open Street Map is a map served by us, drawn from OpenStreetMap data: streets, tracks, paths, buildings, water, parks and place names, worldwide, in one consistent style.

Two things make it worth choosing over the other online sources:

• It is drawn at retina resolution, so labels and thin paths stay sharp instead of turning into a blurry enlargement.
• It is the source you can take offline. It is downloadable by design, which the volunteer OpenStreetMap tile service is not.

It shows detail down to zoom level 17 — building level in a town, and every marked path outside it — and it turns with the map, so a course-up map stays readable.

Choose it

Open the map, tap the layers button, and pick Blocoware Open Street Map from the list. The active source’s name is shown at the bottom of the map.

The row carries the cache it has built up — Cache: 0 bytes, tiles: 0 on a map you have never used. Tiles you look at online are kept, so a road you have already driven still draws when the signal drops. The ⓘ button beside the row opens its options; the map settings themselves are the same for every source.

Attribution and licence

The map carries © OpenMapTiles © OpenStreetMap contributors and a Legal link, in the corner of the map. That line is how OpenStreetMap’s licence is honoured — the data is contributed by people who ask only for the credit — so it stays visible, and it stays on screenshots and shared images too.

Take it offline

Where there is no signal — a valley, a border road, a foreign country without a data plan — the map has to be on the phone before you leave. This source is downloadable region by region.

Open the map layers list, then Offline, and add a map:

1. Name it for the place, not for the source — Trogir, Ridge trail.
2. Source: Blocoware Open Street Map.
3. Region: the rectangle to download.
4. Zoom levels: how deep the detail goes. Every extra level roughly quadruples the tiles, so a whole region at level 17 is much larger than the same region at 15.
5. Start download. The screen shows the tile count and the expected size against the free space you have, and counts the tiles as they arrive.

Some honest limits, so a download does not surprise you:

• 8,000 tiles per download. A bigger area is not refused halfway — the screen tells you before it starts, and you make the region smaller or the maximum zoom lower. Several downloads can cover a large area between them.
• A daily tile allowance applies across downloads. If you reach it, the app says when it resets and the partial map is kept; resume it afterwards.
• Downloads pause and resume. An interruption — the network, the server, the daily limit — keeps everything already saved. Nothing has to start again from zero.
• Offline maps are part of the paid version.

Why not plain OpenStreetMap?

The Open Street Map source in the list draws from OpenStreetMap’s own volunteer tile service, which does not permit bulk downloads — it is a service donated for browsing, not for filling phones. So offline downloads use Blocoware Open Street Map instead, and an older partial download made from the volunteer service cannot be resumed: cancel it and start a new one from this source.

If something goes wrong

• “The map server could not authenticate this download” — check that the device’s date and time are correct, then resume. A clock that is far off makes every request look invalid.
• “The server temporarily paused this offline download” — resume it later; the partial map is preserved.
• “No usable tiles for this area” — the region may be over open sea, or the service may be briefly unavailable. Nothing is saved for an empty map.