New Search window: Search for Address, Location and Favourite ist missing

[pebogufi]

Since some time the new search is active, called by magnifier glass (new) and with main menu (old). In this search I am missing search for Address, Location and Favourite. See screenshot with old search 2.4.0#18556 and new search 2.5.0#19192 Regards Peter

[klic]

I tried it according to the search help, and I also don't have an address tab when searching for POIs. I realized I can search for City, then road and street number, but this only works for large cities. I can't find locations I was able to find with the old search method

[vshcherb]

• address search is available when you just type city name or street name
• location search if you just type one number (advanced search is available)
• favorites are searched by name as well, though we have a bug in 2.5 that favorites are deprioritized, will be fixed in 2.5.3

[klic]

Did some tests. If I'm persistent enough and hit "continue search" (I'm using German language, so I don't know if this really is the right term) enough times, I do indeed find the small towns outside my country, which I was searching for. So, yes, the search indeed seems to work, but I find it counter intuitive as I don't know whether I can find the location, i.e. how often I have to continue the search. I think it would be better if I could limit the search for a country (map? as before..) and thus get faster results. IMHO.

[vshcherb]

Please provide examples so we will continue improving it. The old search concept could be instant & provide more functionality because it was limited to 1 specific search purpose, but it was confusing for people cause you need to search the same in 3-4 places. 1 place to search easier to understand and learn but we have more challenges to provide instant & complete results.

Favorites are searchable on My Places screen

[sonora]

I guess there are in fact use cases for a hierarchical address search, because it is more "explorable" than just a free text search (and also a lot faster, and results can sometmes be found by tapping fewer characters, which is why many car navs still offer it.) Maybe we should consider adding this back as a 3rd tab on our search screen, not sure ...

[vshcherb]

there are ideas to add 3rd tab for favorites & gpx but this will be a duplicate of our My Places screen.

[sonora]

Maybe be a good idea, but not quite sure. We have MyFavorites and MyTracks, and it would probably be ok to move these tabs onto the "Search" screen (maybe call it "Places & Search" then or something), and eliminate the current "MyPlaces" screen.

But I think we also have the OSM Edits tab there, are there possibly still other tabs?

Moving too many tabs onto one screen which are not logically connected to looking up places or starting a navigation towards something may end up being "unconventional" ...

[klic]

if you search for "Le Guilvinec Rue de Men Meur", it takes two times clicking continue search (it's in Brittany, France) and takes a minute on my FP2 (qcom quad core, 2.265GHz). I'm based in Munich, and I have maps cards downloaded (in fact, quite some maps more)

[jfburke3]

The problem with the current search is that it doesn't do an address search. Yes, you can search for a street, city, or other named feature, but you can't search for an address.

For example, if I try to search for "1323 Blackwell Road Northeast, Marietta, Georgia" I get no results. I've also tried with out the state name, without the city name, and even with the map centered at the address. It does give me a button for "advanced coordinate search" presumably because it assumes any entry starting with numbers are lat/long coordinates. Unfortunately that makes it useless for directions to someone's home.

[Suncatcher]

Your new search concept is totally unusable. For those who want to utilize free text search, you can leave this functionality as is, but the traditional search should be in the app.
Frequently there is a need to search not exact address but nearby one (because map is outdated or incomplete) and I have no idea how many buildings on the street and which one is nearest to target one. No idea and no chance to find out without traditional search.
And I can give plenty of use-cases when traditional search is invaluable.

[martenjj]

+1 for retaining the hierarchial address search and having it available from the dashboard. Just try searching for "Station Road" in the UK (its most popular street name, there are >2000 of them and hundreds in London alone) and scrolling through the list to find the town wanted.

Given that this omnisearch seems to be contentious, would it be possible to have a switch on the "Configure dashboard" options to show or hide either the previous POI/Address/History search panel, or the new search box, or even both? All of the searches, including the hierarchical address, are still available from "History - Show all" anyway as pointed out above, so it is not as if all of the code for them has been removed from the app.

[hvdwolf]

When using this new search I never use such a blunt approach like only typing "Station Road". I type "Manchester, Station Road" (or any other example like "Kerkstraat", but "Nederweert, Kerkstraat" (kerkstraat = church street)). To me that is very, very obvious!

However, I do support the request for the "old" search screen as it can be handy. But not because people use wrong search terms. If you get 10.000 results in google you also make your search criterion more specific.

@Suncatcher : Also "Frequently there is a need to search not exact address but nearby one " That is exactly what "Manchester, Station Road" does. It let you "tap" "Station Road" and search further. So exactly what you want

[Suncatcher]

It is very-very obvious but very-very inconvenient. Formerly I was able to type couple of city first letters, couple of street first letters and pick up the needed one, and now I have to type full-featured search request which is cumbersome, After searching this request I get hit list with bunch of other "Station roads" where I should pick up mine and then should dig deeper to building numbers. Time efforts are incomparable. Second point: how street intersections can be searched in this brand-new search?

[hvdwolf]

I am not against the old hierarchical search. I like it back as well as an extra search screen. And indeed: for street intersections is is necessary. However, the old search required you to specify a country, or region in case of big countries. That was very inconvenient. If the old search got adapted for also searching through an entire country (as that is possible with the new search), it would be even better.

[martenjj]

@hvdwolf: thanks for the hint for searching within a town. But the order is unintuitive (in English-speaking countries at least): we tend to think of and write down addresses as "road, town, [optional country]" whereas this search needs the opposite order "town, road". It's also not intuitive how to search for a house number (neither "croydon, 12 station road" nor "croydon, station road 12" nor "croydon, station road, 12" return the address requested), whereas with the hierarchial address search it is obvious.

It gets even worse for international searches - try "burgdorf, hauptstrasse". Which country do the returned results refer to? - there are at least 2 possibilities in Germany and one in Switzerland. Trying to localise it with "germany,burgdorf,hauptstrasse" returns nothing useful.

The hierarchial address search also presents completion lists (in turn for country/region, town, street and even house number) so reducing the number of taps needed (as pointed out by @Suncatcher above).

Compare this with a Google search. Some people like the way that everything - web searches, images, YouTube videos and all the rest - are listed. Others don't and wish that they could just get the web results that they asked for and nothing else.

[pebogufi]

For me the old search was easier. I could open the different registers and could learn what I can search for. For example I can search for coordinates by entereing the two numbers in different formats.

---

If I search for a city and a street name, but I don't know exactly the street name, only that it is something with "boucher", maybe "Rue de Bouchers" or "Place de Boucher" or something like that. "Masevaux" ->city "~Boucher~" -> street

I enter Masevaux boucher and get dozends of results... POIs with Masevaux camp sites with Masevaux streetnames with Masevaux bus stops with Masevaux motorway crossings with Masevaux and a lot of more, which is not wanted and only confuses because it is much too much garbage in this case. The old search was much more straight. If I search for a city, then I search for a city and not for a bus stop (or anything else).

[hvdwolf]

Maybe I was a bit too bluntly in my first answer, sorry for that. But I do not understand your argument for unintuitive (town, road) although I known how addresses are commonly written. The "old" hierarchical search is exactly like that: Country, town, street. If you want that back you should also mention that that is not intuitive either.

When I search for "Croydon station road 12" I don't get the direct address either but I do get Station Road as 4th option. When I click that I can select number 12, ór I can add 12 again in that screen which gives me 12 and 12a.

"Station road 12 Croydon" gives me "Station Road" as first "hit" and tapping that I get a list of numbers, or I can again expand the station road with number 12.

But neither gives me the direct hit.

The search is designed from "search in bigger circles from my current map location" it seems. I searched from the Netherlands. If I set my position somewhere around Oxford the search is faster and more precise. The closer you get to Croydon, the faster and more precise it gets.

Of course I rated this search based on the Dutch circumstances. All addresses (99+ %) in the Netherlands are in OSM and registered as node. If I type "city street number" I find every address I want: fast and on the address.

The "Croydon station road 12" address is not a node but part of the building, so a "way"(in OSM terms). It seems that OsmAnd searches differently on nodes vs. ways/relations, or maybe it sees/treats this as some kind of POI.

Edit: and yes. I also like the old search as an extra tab in the search options.

[Suncatcher]

If I set my position somewhere around Oxford the search is faster and more precise. The closer you get to Croydon, the faster and more precise it gets.

And often circumstances are so that you are required to search map for places that are thousands kilometers from your current location. In this case this feature is an obstacle to proper search, not an advantage.

[hvdwolf]

It is an obstacle if you want to know where something is somewhere on the world. For normal navigation it is not of course.

[scaidermern]

The hierarchical search is still available via the route button. Yet it is quite confusing to have two different search activities that aren't connected with each other. In my opinion there should be only one search activity containing the current free text search / category search and the hierarchical search. These different modes could be separated via tabs.

[sonora]

Yes, that's what I meant in my comment https://github.com/osmandapp/Osmand/issues/3261#issuecomment-260121918 above. I guess we could simply add the hierarchical address search as another tab on our new search screen.

[njohnston]

Another problem with the new search: online Nominatim search is no longer available (or I can't find it). Nominatim search is very useful--please either somehow add this (for example a "Online search" button appears when you start typing) or make the old search accessible (perhaps called "Advanced search" or "Custom search").

Should I log a separate issue for this?

[pebogufi]

When format for coordinates was changed (example to DDD:MM:SS.SSSSS), this fomat was used in display of positions of pois and other use of coordinated until the format was changed again. This was very useful when I have to work with other documents which use that formats. Please give us back this behavior. Peter

[vshcherb]

@pebogufi When format for coordinates was changed (example to DDD:MM:SS.SSSSS), this fomat was used in display of positions of pois and other use of coordinated until the format was changed again. The format is still controlled by user, you can type any format you like in search. In Amenities by clicking format is changing

[vshcherb]

I'm not sure that's hierarchy search could help cause many people don't use it and of course we need to work on search to understand exactly what the user meant by typing a word. Actually if you type "" "" search will be exactly hierarchical as it used to be, though you need to type city first. It is not obvious but it provides same functionality.

[sonora]

The advantage of a hierachy search is it is more like multiple choice: Type a few characters, until you see the right suggestion (from all possible ones only), then hit OK and simply repeat at the next hieratchy level.

That's why it is used in built-in car navs where you use e.g. a turn knob for input, not a keyboard.

[hvdwolf]

I see a place for both: The new search and the old hierarchical search. For me in the Netherlands the new search works fine due to the way the addresses are set up. It is in the same in Denmark. In countries with a different address setup or hardly any addresses it works less convincing. The hierarchical search can be useful as well granted that when you search in Germany (for example) that it also searches in all available Germany maps.

[scaidermern]

I'm not sure that's hierarchy search could help cause many people don't use it

I use it very often. I use it every time I know the exact address because then I just have to type in this address and pick the first result. Done. This is pretty simple and also very fast.

Without a hierarchical search I have to know the format the app expects the address. This differs between apps and it differs between languages. This will likely be a try & error approach until finally finding the address I'm searching for. Having a free text search is a really great feature but I prefer a hierarchical search for certain situations.

[Suncatcher]

I'm not sure that's hierarchy search could help cause many people don't use it

Wrong. It's the main thing I use on everyday basis. On what basis this assumption was made? Did you conduct stat researches? Prior to making such fundamental changes in functionality it worth to ask the users, especially paid ones.

[Suncatcher]

For me in the Netherlands the new search works fine due to the way the addresses are set up. It is in the same in Denmark. In countries with a different address setup or hardly any addresses it works less convincing.

In Cuba typical address format looks like Garmendia #10 entre Antonio Guiteras y Volcan, so street intersections are essential for finding proper buildings. All use-cases should be covered, not only trivial.

[hvdwolf]

@Suncatcher You are not so constructive in your comments.

I'm not sure that's hierarchy search could help cause many people don't use it

Wrong. It's the main thing I use on everyday basis.

You mention "I use ..". That is not a very strong argument. You could be the only one and you didn't do a poll either. Do not blame others for doing the exact same things you do. As such the idea for a poll is a very good one (I mean it). Please raise it in the mail group itself. Then we can see how many people react.

And:

For me in the Netherlands the new search works fine due to the way the addresses are set up. It is in the same in Denmark.

In countries with a different address setup or hardly any addresses it works less convincing. In Cuba typical address .... All use-cases should be covered, not only trivial.

If I mention the Netherlands and Denmark and you mention (only) Cuba: Isn't that the same "trivial" use case instead of examples of all use-cases?

It is also different for Russia and Japan and in some cases for Poland. That's exactly why I plea for reimplementing the hierarchical search with full country search.

[Suncatcher]

You mention "I use ..". That is not a very strong argument.

There are already nine unique posters in this thread, not only me. Let's wait for 109, maybe this would be a stronger argument. The only obstacle for this is that a few usual (i.e. not advanced) users use Github for giving their feedback.

As such the idea for a poll is a very good one (I mean it).

It makes sense to do the poll before reimplementing basic feature, not after.

If I mention the Netherlands and Denmark and you mention (only) Cuba: Isn't that the same "trivial" use case instead of examples of all use-cases?

It is also different for Russia and Japan and in some cases for Poland. That's exactly why I plea for reimplementing the hierarchical search with full country search.

Such same-type countries as DK and NL shouldn't be treated as distinct and more representative case than Cuba. I can give plenty of use cases, but to not turning the thread into my solo performance, let's wait what use-cases will be suggested by other users.

P.S. I don't know how to make polls in these dummy google groups, but multiple threads from confused users (1, 2, 3) say it all.

[pebogufi]

Why not using the magnifier glass for the new search and the menu for the complete old search ? I would only use the old search, for me it was better.... Peter

[scaidermern]

Why not using the magnifier glass for the new search and the menu for the complete old search ?

No, don't use separate search windows. This is just too confusing and people won't know that there is "this other search window". Just use a single search window and provide multiple search modes.

[Natureshadow]

I can't find a street 300m from me with that new crappy thing. OSMand is now completely useless for me.

[martenjj]

Please try to keep the discussion here polite and constructive. Clearly this is a contentious issue, but I'm sure the developers are trying to produce a workable solution.

From my point of view I would strongly argue for the retention of the old hierarchial address search, either as an alternative to or alongside the new free text search. Simply for the reason of precision and being able to search for exactly what is needed - free text search in Google Maps, for example, does indeed produce the expected results most of the time, but that search has the power of Google's entire computing infrastructure and massive databases behind it. That's not to say that Osmand's address search could not be improved - for example, being able to search an entire country even when the map files are split up into regions - but on a small mobile device it may give the best results.

[Natureshadow]

OK, sorry.

It's just that I am travelling abroad in a few days and need offline address search there. The feature is, however, completely gone.

Searching for any nearby street gives me a ton of results miles away with none of them even containing parts of the search term.

It's not about a bad UI, it's about a removed feature.

[pebogufi]

What about returning to the old search with all existing registers and a new one with the new full open search feature ? Peter

[Natureshadow]

I'd be fine with the new thing returning actual results.

[scaidermern]

The feature is, however, completely gone.

No, the hierarchical search is still available from the routing menu.

[tarator]

+1 for bringing the hierarchical address search back! It was one of the most useful and reliable features! With the new search it's really hard to find addresses in other countries!

Even if the search is still available from the routing menu, it's much more "work" to simply flag it, or show the place on the map!

[lmrblk]

+1 for bringing the hierarchical address search back! If I have installed several countries (9) search is very slow (minutes). If I use hierarchical search from routing menu, I did not find way, how to only display position of current search.

[wribln]

+1 in favor to bring back the old search. My arguments would replicate those above (convenient, quick, use often, fast, ...), hence I can only add PLEASE!

[tarator]

There is another problem with the new search: At least in Austria, there are not all house numbers available in the search. When using the hierarchical approach I simply could pick an available number nearby. The new search simply doesn't give a result and I have to guess multiple times, for a number which might eventually be available. And searching is terribly slow compared to the hierarchical search.

Please!! I beg you, bring it back! Why removing perfectly working features?

[stefanofraccaro]

IMHO the search bar is a useful concept but the software should parse better the requests and give (more) valuable results. For example, in Italy, we search for "city,street,house number" and after the last update we have results for 1. city 2. city+street 3. city+street+house number 4. other results . In this search we have three items and the most valuable result is obviously the result that match exactly all search items. So I think that the result should be 3 + 2 + 1+ 4 .

[Suncatcher]

There is another problem with the new search: At least in Austria, there are not all house numbers available in the search. When using the hierarchical approach I simply could pick an available number nearby.

This is exactly what I told here. It's not only Austrian problem, but rather common problem of incomplete maps.

[hvdwolf]

Another Nav app uses the following search screen It defaults to the "new Search" like OsmAnd uses but gives all the other options as well. For me it is the ideal solution. You can simply type your "city street number" or "the POI I'm looking for", just like Osmand. The address search is identical to OsmAnds previous address search (as almost all nav apps use).

[njohnston]

Just in case people aren't aware, OsmAnd+ 2.5.4 was uploaded to Google Play yesterday, and it contains the old search.

If you enable the OsmAnd development plugin, open its settings and select "Show legacy search", the old search appears in the main menu as "Legacy search".

[pebogufi]

On 25. November 2016 18:40:53 MEZ, njohnston notifications@github.com wrote:

Just in case people aren't aware, OsmAnd+ 2.5.4 was uploaded to Google Play yesterday, and it contains the old search.

If you enable the OsmAnd development plugin, open its settings and select "Show legacy search", the old search appears in the main menu as "Legacy search".

... and this change is as well in the current nightly 2.5.0#19354. Thanks a lot, I LOVE IT !!!!! Peter

[wribln]

THANK YOU for your quick and efficient response by bringing back the previous version.