4w ago

How can I view OSM extracts?

I'm sure this has been asked thousands of times, but how do I view the map extracts offline? (.osm and .pbf) Is there a (native) app I can use? Can't find any clear information.

11 comments

@Irelephant at least .osm files can be loaded in #JOSM, but if your extract is big enough (say, a city or bigger), it might clog it, since it will try to render everything. It's mostly aimed at loading changesets, not whole areas.
After that, it seems like you can convert the pbf into a SQLite/Spatialite DB and load it in #QGis, but you're already transforming the data.
EDIT: yay! Federation works! (Answered from Mastodon :)
- Yeah, the fediverse is amazing. I've had cases where I answered a lemmy thread without even realizing it was on lemmy ;)
  
  @pietervdvn @mdione If you're replying to a reply it sometimes helps to add @openstreetmap to the toot to make sure it gets propagated properly by lemmy.
  (although probably not this time as I'm replying to a lemmy.ml account)

What are you trying to do with it?
.pbf is a compression format (a bit like a .zip-file) which contains the .osm-file. The .osm-file is nothing more then an XML-file with a specific format and a .osm-extension.
Those are not meant for day-to-day users but more for developers.There are some programs able to open those files, such as JOSM or Osmosis.
- To view it offline. There is probably a far better way I am missing.
  
  Did you see https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Using_OpenStreetMap_offline already?

I asked ChatGPT and there seems to be two options to view OSM extracts:
QGIS can open .osm and .pbf
JOSM can open .osm
I did not verify or test this by myself. Maybe some people have more experience?
- @redd @Irelephant Correct, both tools will work!
- @redd @Irelephant And I guess the iD editor in osm.org can also open .OSM files but never tried.
  
  An end user cannot open provided XML files with it

11 comments