I wish there was a way to subscribe to post comments on lemmy - I was looking for something like this myself.
this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2026
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Everything #OpenStreetMap related is welcome: software releases, showing of your work, questions about how to tag something, as long as it has to do with OpenStreetMap or OpenStreetMap-related software.
OpenStreetMap is a map of the world, created by people like you and free to use under an open license.
Join OpenStreetMap and start mapping: https://www.openstreetmap.org/.
There are many communication channels about OSM, many organized around a certain country or region. Discover them on https://openstreetmap.community/
https://mapcomplete.org/ is an easy-to-use website to view, edit and add points (such as shops, restaurants and others)
https://learnosm.org/en/ has a lot of information for beginners too.
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I can fake it by sending you a message if anything good comes up :)
not sure about lemmy but there is a bell icon in piefed that I think subscribes to posts. I mention because its easy to miss.
I am using the "favourite/save" function similar to this. I do not get noifications but I can go through my saves every now and then.
How big are the "downloaded maps"?
JOSM can do fairly complex queries with its search feature, maybe that satisfies your needs; but if you're dealing with very large areas, they might overwhelm JOSM and not load in it.
ETA: of course "downloaded maps", if you mean .osm files, are just XML files, so it's completely trivial to write simple scripts to search through them oneself
Thank you for the tips! I should have been more precise in my question. The downloaded maps are ~150MB, in PBF format (although I would have been happy to use any other standard format if needed). I went with osmium tags-filter in the end, and it seems to be working well.
I could't find anything with a quick search, but maybe you could run the API server in an application container (e.g. Docker)? 🤔
For more simple use cases, some apps on Flathub might be enough, for example Comaps
(Also, I haven't used JOSM in a while, but it might be worth checking that out as well to see if it can do want you want)
Thank you. Of those I think JOSM is the most appealing, if it can directly show the results on the map. I'll give it a go later just out of interest.
I also gave osmium tags-filter a go and it's meeting my needs for now.
Can osmium-tool do what you want?
For example if I go here and export an osm file as pittsburg.osm: https://www.openstreetmap.org/export#map=18%2F40.440748%2F-79.999822
Then I run osmium tags-filter pittsburg.osm n/amenity=library -o out.osm
I get an out.osm with a bunch of libraries in it:
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<osm version="0.6" generator="osmium/1.18.0">
<bounds minlat="40.438994" minlon="-80.003256" maxlat="40.442501" maxlon="-79.996389"/>
<node id="367964200" version="3" timestamp="2024-05-21T20:41:15Z" uid="3199858" user="Mateusz Konieczny - bot account" changeset="151646829" lat="40.4417942" lon="-79.9973275">
<tag k="addr:state" v="PA"/>
<tag k="amenity" v="library"/>
<tag k="ele" v="227"/>
<tag k="gnis:feature_id" v="2429945"/>
<tag k="name" v="Downtown and Business Branch Carnegie Free Library of Pittsburgh"/>
<tag k="source" v="USGS Geonames"/>
</node>
<node id="367964584" version="4" timestamp="2024-05-21T20:41:32Z" uid="3199858" user="Mateusz Konieczny - bot account" changeset="151646829" lat="40.4397308" lon="-80.0008734">
<tag k="addr:state" v="PA"/>
<tag k="amenity" v="library"/>
<tag k="ele" v="223"/>
<tag k="gnis:feature_id" v="2430651"/>
<tag k="name" v="Point Park University Library"/>
<tag k="source" v="USGS Geonames"/>
</node>
<node id="367964938" version="3" timestamp="2024-05-21T20:42:16Z" uid="3199858" user="Mateusz Konieczny - bot account" changeset="151646829" lat="40.4392024" lon="-79.9972654">
<tag k="addr:state" v="PA"/>
<tag k="amenity" v="library"/>
<tag k="ele" v="233"/>
<tag k="gnis:feature_id" v="2430211"/>
<tag k="name" v="Carnegie Library of Allegheny"/>
<tag k="source" v="USGS Geonames"/>
</node>
<node id="2127151495" version="3" timestamp="2024-05-21T20:45:12Z" uid="3199858" user="Mateusz Konieczny - bot account" changeset="151646829" lat="40.4407273" lon="-79.9997963">
<tag k="addr:state" v="PA"/>
<tag k="amenity" v="library"/>
<tag k="ele" v="224"/>
<tag k="gnis:feature_id" v="2430637"/>
<tag k="name" v="Pittsburgh Downtown Branch Library"/>
<tag k="source" v="USGS Geonames"/>
</node>
</osm>
Thank you, this is perfect! Lightweight and easy to set up.
@ambitiousslab Just follow one of the "server" guides at switch2osm.org, but don't bother with the rendering bit.
You can add extra database columns easily (if you want extra keys).
"on Linux" might cover anything from a greeting card to a supercomputer, but assuming you're on something resempling a PC and don't want to query the entire world, this should work.
Thanks for the tip! Your assumptions are correct.
Someone else suggested osmium tags-filter on the downloaded PBF files (which are ~150 MB), and that's working well at the moment. I'll keep this in mind as I'm presuming that importing into a database will be more efficient in case I ever increase the size of the map I'm working with.
@ambitiousslab Most #openstreetmap software is running on Linux. Almost certainly overkill but if you know about SQL it is possible to setup your own #Postgis based POI database. I have such a beast running as a backend for #opencampingmap see https://poi.openstreetmap.de/ for details.
I spent quite a while browsing your brewery map earlier, very cool!
It is probably overkill for me at the moment, but it's good to know if my needs ever scale up dramatically. Thank you!