A degoogled maps & navigation client for Android - what NewPipe is to YouTube, for Google Maps. The map itself is open data: open vector tiles for the basemap, and Vela data for the places on it - Overture Maps and AllThePlaces, positioned with OpenStreetMap, baked into tiles in this repo and streamed from its releases - so browsing around never asks Google anything. Tap a place or ask for a route and the device itself scrapes Google's public web endpoints (per-user, no backend) for the things only Google does well: hours, reviews and photos, routing, and traffic-aware ETAs. Built to run on GrapheneOS and other no-GMS ROMs.

What reaches Google, by default

It is not a Google Maps wrapper. The map is a native Android app drawing open vector tiles (Jetpack Compose and MapLibre) - no Google SDK, no Play Services, no API key, nothing to sign in to. It looks like Google Maps because that is the point; underneath, almost none of it is.

What you do	What reaches Google
Pan, zoom, browse the map	Nothing. Tiles from OpenFreeMap, streets and labels from OpenStreetMap
The places drawn on the map	Nothing, by default. Open data baked in this repo: Overture Maps and AllThePlaces, positioned with OpenStreetMap
Look up an address, read a departure board	Nothing. OpenStreetMap addresses, Transitous boards
Ask for directions	The traffic, and only the traffic. The route itself is computed by open OSRM, or on the phone from an OsmAnd-format region file; Google is asked anonymously for the live ETA on top of it, which is switchable off
Tap a place, type a search	An anonymous request, when you ask for it - no account, no app key, like a logged-out browser. Hours, reviews and photos are the things only Google does well
Everything you save	Nothing, ever. No account, no Vela backend, no telemetry; saved places, history and settings stay on the phone

Download a region and the answer becomes nothing at all: the map, search, routing and turn-by-turn navigation work with no network. Reviews and photos are the one place Vela loads a Google page, in an offscreen WebView, anonymously, only when you open a place.

The full comparison against the Google Maps app and Google Maps web is below, and the per-request detail is in PRIVACY.md.

Screenshots

Navigation	Map & search	Place details	Directions	Search results

Public transit	Departure board	Stops on the line	Light theme - map	Light theme - place

Turn-by-turn with lane guidance, route shields and the speedometer; the keyless OpenFreeMap basemap wearing Google's own sampled colors and Roboto labels, with rated POI icons and the tiered dots; live place data; the directions panel with alternates, traffic in plain words and the avoid toggles; live departure boards with a tap-through stop list for every route; and the in-app light/dark themes (decoupled from the OS).

Install

  

Obtainium auto-tracks the weekly stable release. Turn on "include prereleases" and you get the nightly channel instead.

The F-Droid badge is Vela's own repository, not the f-droid.org catalog - add https://pimpinpumpkin.github.io/Vela/repo to any F-Droid client and it serves the same signed APKs, weekly stable by default (fingerprint and nightly-channel setup in FDROID.md). Or grab an APK straight from Releases.

Check you got the real thing

Every Vela APK, from any channel, is signed with the same key. Its certificate fingerprint is:

SHA-256  29:93:8B:48:58:06:3E:42:E6:77:FF:95:C9:01:CD:48:24:8A:7F:03:2A:3A:E8:5F:9B:9E:56:17:56:8B:0D:36

Check a downloaded file against it before installing:

apksigner verify --print-certs vela-maps-*.apk

On the phone, App Verifier checks the same thing. It wants the package name on the first line and the fingerprint on the second, so paste this block, not the line above:

app.vela
29:93:8B:48:58:06:3E:42:E6:77:FF:95:C9:01:CD:48:24:8A:7F:03:2A:3A:E8:5F:9B:9E:56:17:56:8B:0D:36

Android enforces this for you after the first install: an update signed with a different key is refused, so a build that installs over your existing Vela came from the same place this one did.

This is the certificate the app is signed with, and it stays the same across releases. It is not a checksum of a particular APK, and it is not the same as the F-Droid repo fingerprint in FDROID.md, which signs the repo index rather than the app.

There's also a one-page tour at pimpinpumpkin.github.io/Vela.

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What you get

• Live traffic, straight from Google. Vela reads the same real-time traffic Google Maps shows, so ETAs are traffic-aware, the fastest route leads the list, and every option says light, moderate or heavy traffic in plain words next to its green/amber/red time. Turn-by-turn navigation rides on it: lane diagrams, exit shields, a speedometer with the posted limit, and automatic reroutes when a jam builds ahead.

• The places on the map are open data; Google fills in the details. Every pin, dot and label you pan past is Vela data - Overture Maps and AllThePlaces, positioned with OpenStreetMap, baked into map tiles in this repo and streamed from its releases, and carried offline with a downloaded region. Browsing sends Google nothing. Tapping a place is what asks Google, and it answers with what open data has no equivalent of: hours with holidays included, reviews you can search, photo galleries, busy times, phone and website, with a warning if a place would be closed when you arrive. Settings → Places → "Places come from" switches the map between Vela data (the default), Both, or Google, and a separate toggle stops even a tapped place from being looked up. The FAQ has the per-feature breakdown of what uses what.

• Zero Google on your phone, and almost zero in your life. No Play Services, no account, no app key, no ads, no GCM/FCM, no Play Integrity. Google never sees your map browsing, your saved places, or who you are; your GPS trail stays on the phone, with only anonymous re-route and traffic checks carrying a position while you navigate. The full breakdown is in the Privacy section below.

• Flock cameras, on the map. Mapped ALPR surveillance cameras (the community DeFlock project's OpenStreetMap data) draw out of the box, and the optional Settings → Navigation → Avoid surveillance cameras counts the cameras on each route (only the ones pointed along your road) and quietly picks a lower-camera option when the detour is small. Two more opt-ins in the same place give you a heads-up card or a spoken "License plate camera ahead" as you approach one while navigating. The dataset lives on your phone and refreshes itself weekly.

• Vela Voice. Spoken turn-by-turn from a neural voice that runs entirely on your phone, and a mic that transcribes your search on-device too. Nothing you say ever touches a cloud speech service.

  🔊 Hear it - the actual in-app voice at the default pace:

  https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/17f246e4-51c8-4d01-998b-dcd7f29dc15f

• Parking memory. Tap P when you park, tap the pin later for walking directions back, long-press for your parking history.

• Material You theming, if you want it. An optional toggle tints Vela's chrome with your wallpaper colors (Android 12+); off by default, and the map itself stays clean either way.

• Offline maps and routing. Download a state or country once and its maps, turn-by-turn routing, and every place in it stay searchable with no signal - typed street addresses included.

• Live gas prices. Search for gas and every station's current price is right on its map marker, in the result list, and on the place page.

• Live public transit. Departure boards and station-by-station stop timelines come from open GTFS feeds (the schedules and realtime updates transit agencies publish, served by the community Transitous project), supplemented with Google for traffic-aware transit directions. Tap a stop for live times, tap a route for every stop it makes.

• Satellite imagery map: See the world from a birds-eye view, powered by Esri.

• Street View: real panoramas in-app, keyless - open on a place, look around, walk the street with arrows, and go back in time through older captures; half-screen over the live map or full screen.

• Lists: the bookmark button next to the category chips opens Your lists. Create one there, or add any place from its page (⋮ → Save to list), with a note per place. Lists back up to a file from Settings.

• Import a Google Maps list: paste a maps.app.goo.gl share link into the search bar. The list's places show up as results with the owner's notes; tap Save list to keep a local copy.

• Fixes itself when Google moves things. The scraping recipes live in a signed config the app checks at launch - when Google shifts a field or an endpoint, a repair ships to every install in minutes, no update needed. The same channel can push a heads-up notice ("search is down, fix coming") straight onto the map. See SPEC.md sections 3 and 11 for details.

• Say it or type it. "Take me home", "get me to work", "navigate to the station", "Davis to San Francisco", "nearest pharmacy", "what's my ETA": the search box understands those as actions, spoken through the mic or typed, in every language the app speaks, with English understood everywhere too, and a slip in the command words ("navigat to the station") still lands. Dictation is a small on-device speech model; the understanding is plain rules on the phone. Nothing leaves it.

• The rest. Android Auto, 15 languages, in-app light/dark, full D-pad operation for keypad phones, place lists, and a built-in updater with weekly-stable or nightly channels.

The complete running feature list lives in FEATURES.md.

Common questions

Where the places on the map come from, what each feature uses, and how to run Vela with no Google contact at all: docs/FAQ.md. The short version is that the map and its businesses are open data by default, and Google answers searches, place pages and live traffic.

Why a degoogled app uses Google

A phone without Google Play Services cannot run Google Maps, and the open map datasets fall well short on search, reviews, hours, and live traffic. So Vela is a thin client over Google's public web endpoints. It asks them the same way a logged-out browser does, once per user, with no account, no shared API key, and no server in the middle. NewPipe does the same for YouTube. There are no ads, and your searches, saved places, and history stay on the phone. If you run GrapheneOS or another no-GMS ROM, this gets you working maps back.

The map itself, the streets, the labels, and the house numbers all come from OpenStreetMap. Google is only used for places, search, routing, and traffic. So street names and house numbers can differ from what Google Maps shows, and how much detail you see offline depends on how well OpenStreetMap covers your area. I'm thinking of ways to improve OSM and fill the gaps in the data. Stay tuned.

Privacy

There is no Vela backend, no account, and no telemetry. Vela fetches from Google directly from your phone like a logged-out browser - Google sees your IP, query, and map area, but not a Google account or any app key, much like using google.com/maps in an incognito window. Your saved places, history, and settings never leave the device. Read the full breakdown of exactly what each service receives → PRIVACY.md.

The short version: Google shrinks from knowing who you are and everywhere you go to occasionally answering an anonymous question. Your map browsing never reaches Google at all, and your GPS trace is never uploaded anywhere. While you're actively navigating, Vela does ask Google for fresh traffic from your current position every couple of minutes - that's what powers the faster-route offers and the live arrival time - and that re-check can be turned off in Settings → Navigation ("Live traffic re-checks"); off-course re-routes remain, since turn-by-turn can't work without them.

What Google gets	Google Maps app	Google Maps web	Vela
Tied to your Google account	Yes, always signed in	Yes unless incognito	Never - there is no login
A persistent device identifier	Yes (device + ad IDs via Play Services)	Browser cookies	No account, no app key; just an IP like any website visitor
Your precise GPS position	Continuously while open, plus Location History if enabled	While the tab is open	Never while browsing - position stays on the phone; searches send the map area you are looking at. While navigating, anonymous re-routes and the optional live-traffic re-check send your current position (toggleable in Settings → Navigation)
Every pan and zoom of the map	Yes - their servers render the map	Yes	No - map tiles come from OpenFreeMap, so Google never sees you browse
Your searches	Yes, saved to your account history	Yes	The query text reaches Google anonymously, only when you search
Place pages you open	Yes	Yes	The place lookup reaches Google anonymously
Turn-by-turn routes	Yes, full trip telemetry	Yes	Routing runs on open OSRM, or OsmAnd-format region files on the phone; Google answers anonymous traffic checks - at planning, and during the drive for re-routes and the optional faster-route scanning
Saved places, home, work	Stored on their servers	Stored on their servers	Stored only on your phone
Ad profile building	Feeds your ads profile	Feeds your ads profile	Nothing to attach it to
Works with no Google contact at all	No	No	Yes - downloaded regions show the map, search, route, and navigate fully offline

Full per-request detail is in PRIVACY.md.

How it works

Every capability, the method behind it, and the file to read first is laid out in SPEC.md, the authoritative technical specification: the basemap, the places bake, the Google extractor, open routing, navigation, the offline stack and the signed remote-repair channel.

File	What's in it
README.md	This - what Vela is, why, and the privacy comparison
SPEC.md	Every technical rule, contract, constant and constraint
docs/BUILDING.md	Building from source, module architecture, and the release pipeline
docs/LANGUAGES.md	The 15 supported languages, layer by layer (UI, spoken nav, neural voice, dictation), and how to add one
docs/TRANSLATING.md	Translating Vela - edit one file, open a PR
FEATURES.md	The full, categorized list of every shipped capability (the encyclopedia)
ROADMAP.md	What is still open + the big bets (self-hosted tiles, OSM contributions, a Play listing, opt-in telemetry, a Vela-own traffic layer); shipped and dead-end entries live in docs/ROADMAP-HISTORY.md
PRIVACY.md	Exactly what each Google endpoint receives, per request
CLAUDE.md	Build rules, module layout, and the hard-won gotchas - for contributors (human or AI)
docs/dpad.md	D-pad / no-touchscreen operation - design, findings, per-surface audit, and the merge-with-upstream policy
docs/book/	Subsystem explainers: how places rank, when data is rebaked, what the camera rules are
docs/FAQ.md	The ten questions people ask first

Degoogled / GrapheneOS notes

• Location: AOSP LocationManager, never FusedLocationProviderClient. On GrapheneOS, enabling PSDS (Settings → Location) drops the cold GPS fix from ~30s to a few seconds - Vela shows a one-time tip when it notices a slow fix.

Roadmap

Everything shipped so far is in FEATURES.md (the complete list) and the release notes of each build. Still open (details in ROADMAP.md):

• Move to Weblate translations (the three-month age bar is cleared; the application is the next step)
• F-Droid submission + reproducible build
• A Google Play listing, so Android Auto works on factory head units: a separate build with the Google half compiled out (map, offline routing, places from OpenStreetMap and Overture), honestly described, while the full app stays on GitHub, Obtainium and F-Droid. Play forbids an app that downloads its missing half later, so the two stay two. A big job (a developer account, review, a flavor split); on the radar, not started.
• An iOS build. The engine module is plain Kotlin and would move to Kotlin Multiplatform; the map (MapLibre), the neural voice (sherpa-onnx) and the hidden-page scrapes all have iOS counterparts. The whole interface would be rewritten. On the radar, not started.

Not going to happen - anything that needs you to sign in to Google or hand data to a backend: contributing reviews/photos/edits, live location sharing and share-ETA, a location timeline, and the login-gated data Google strips from anonymous requests (live busyness). Vela's whole point is that no account and no server ever sees you.

A note on the name

Vela Maps (app.vela) - the navigator's constellation "the Sails", and "sail" in several languages.

Contributing

Read CONTRIBUTING.md first - it covers the hard rules (no backend, no static Google keys, degoogled runtime, the :core/:app module boundary, docs-in-the-same-commit, and translations for all 15 languages) and how to send a change. There is no separate code-of-conduct document by design: keep it about the code. Security issues go through SECURITY.md (GitHub private vulnerability reporting), not a public issue.

Map data

The map itself is OpenStreetMap data, © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License, served as vector tiles by OpenFreeMap. Offline routing regions, place packs, house-number and building overlays are built from OpenStreetMap, OpenAddresses and Microsoft Building Footprints extracts and carry their licenses in the release notes of the hosting release. Satellite imagery is Esri World Imagery, with Google imagery where Esri has none at close zoom.

License

Vela is Free Software: you can use, study, share, and improve it at your will. You may use, modify, and redistribute this project only if your modifications remain open-source under the same license.