Features
Everything it does with the network off
Navzeno is not a map app with an offline mode. There is no server behind the drawing, the search or the routing — a region file lands on the device once and every question after that is answered by the phone.
Map
Its own renderer, drawing its own file
The map is not tiles fetched as you pan. It is geometry read out of the region file and turned into triangles on the device, so one download covers every zoom instead of only the levels somebody thought to cache.
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A vector renderer per platform
Metal on iPhone, iPad and Mac; Vulkan on Android; wgpu on Linux. One shared engine decides what to draw, and the platform draws it. -
A province in one file
Geometry, labels, the searchable names and the routing graph in a single download. Nothing streams later and nothing expires. -
Lakes with their islands
Lakes, forests and parks are relations in OpenStreetMap, with holes in them. Navzeno assembles those rings and draws the holes, which is why cottage country looks right instead of looking like a sheet of green. -
Roads that read as roads
Motorway, trunk, primary, secondary and residential each get their own colour, width and the zoom at which they appear, with a casing under every road. An overview stays legible because the side streets are not drawn yet. -
Labels chosen, not dumped
Street and place names are placed by the core and drawn by the platform’s own text engine, with overlapping and repeated names thinned out so a city centre is readable. -
OpenStreetMap’s own colours
The palette comes from openstreetmap-carto, the style openstreetmap.org itself serves, so the map looks like the map people already know. -
A night palette Planned
One day palette today. A dark map for driving after sunset is planned. -
Terrain, hillshade and contours Planned
Elevation is not in the region file yet. Planned, and a large piece of work.
Search
Find it by name, with no connection
The names in a region are compiled into a compact index that ships inside the file, so the search box behaves the same in a parking garage as on Wi-Fi.
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Prefix matching as you type
Start typing and the results narrow with every letter. Matching is by prefix, so the first few letters of a Northern Ontario township are enough — typo tolerance is planned, not built. -
Places, roads, water and businesses
Towns, lakes, parks, streets, buildings and points of interest are all in the same index. -
Categories near you
“Campgrounds near here” is a different question from “find a place called X”, and it has its own answer: a bounded scan of the region around your position, on the device. -
By street address Planned
House-number search needs an address index and a Canadian address source. It is the next major piece of work on search, and it is not in the app today. -
French place names Planned
The interface and the name index are English first. French is planned.
Routing
A router that knows the rules of the road
A routing engine that is merely fast is worthless — a wrong answer arrives as a slightly longer route, never as an error. What is legal is written into the map when it is built, so the router cannot forget it.
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Driving, walking and cycling
Three profiles with different costs and different rules about what they may use. A footpath is not a shortcut for a car, and a motorway is not a walking route. -
Legal turns and one-ways
One-ways, turn restrictions and per-mode access tags are applied when the region is built. A confident voice asking for an illegal left is worse than no voice. -
Avoid tolls, ferries and unpaved
Three independent switches, each backed by a flag on the road itself. Ferries route as ferries, with a crossing time, when you do want them. -
Fast enough on a province
The region file carries a precomputed road hierarchy, so a route across a whole province comes back quickly rather than after a pause you would notice. -
Tap anywhere to route
A tap snaps to the nearest road your travel mode can actually leave, not merely the nearest line on the map. -
A route across two provinces Planned
A region is one province today and a route stays inside it.
Trips
Places you keep, and files you already have
Favourites and GPX live in the shared core rather than in each app, so the list is the same wherever you open it and the files are the same files.
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Favourites
Save a place, rename it, remove it. Stored on the device beside the regions, with no account and nothing to sync. -
GPX 1.1, in and out
The reader accepts waypoints, routes and tracks; the waypoints become saved places and the rest is left alone. Export your saved places back out as waypoints. -
Nearby categories
Fuel, EV charging, campgrounds and caravan sites, toilets, drinking water, picnic sites, shelters, trailheads, viewpoints, beaches, boat launches, sanitary dump stations, visitor centres and hospitals. -
Recording a track Planned
Reading and writing GPX works today. Recording a new track as you move does not. -
Sharing a place by link Planned
Needs a server, and there is not one. Export a GPX file instead.
Privacy and platforms
No account, no ads, no location data off the device
This is a design decision rather than a policy: there is no server to send anything to. The app has exactly one network feature, and it is the download.
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Nothing is collected
No sign-in, no profile, no analytics, no advertising SDK, no location history. Your position is used to draw where you are and is stored nowhere. -
One request, on purpose
Region files come from https://maps.navzeno.com. Fetching that list and downloading a region are the only times the app talks to anything. -
It keeps working unpaid
A region you have downloaded stays on your device and keeps working, with no check-in and no expiry.
Four apps, one core
- iPhone and iPad
- Metal renderer, voice guidance, follow camera, document picker for GPX.
- Mac
- The same app and core, with trackpad pan and pinch.
- Android In development
- Vulkan renderer, the same region files.
- Linux
- A desktop build that links the core directly.
Honesty
What is not here yet
Everything on this list is marked planned wherever it appears on the site. None of it is available today.
- Search by street address Planned
- Search is by name today — a town, a road, a lake, a business. House numbers need a second index and a Canadian address source.
- Terrain, contours and elevation Planned
- A new data source, a new section in the region file and a new render pass. The largest single item on the list.
- A route across two provinces Planned
- A region is one province, and a route stays inside it. A trans-Canada corridor region is the likely answer.
- CarPlay and Android Auto Planned
- CarPlay navigation needs an entitlement Apple grants by application to established navigation apps. Android Auto comes first.
- RV height, weight and low bridges Planned
- Gated on an audit of how completely Ontario’s bridge and weight restrictions are mapped. Unpaved, ferry and toll avoidance ships today; the rest does not.
- French interface Planned
- The app ships English first. French is planned, and the site is built for it.
- Recording a track as you walk Planned
- Reading and writing GPX works; recording a new track does not yet.
- Family and Professional plans Planned
- Two of the pricing tiers describe features that are not built. They are marked planned on the pricing page and cannot be bought.
And what will not be here By design
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