OsmAnd

OsmAnd is a well-established offline maps and navigation app with millions of installs. Its Trip Recording plugin includes an online tracking feature that sends the current position to a web address at an interval you choose.

The address is fully templated, so it works with Geoblip directly — no bridge and no separate account.

Setup

1. Enable the Trip Recording plugin. Menu → Plugins → Trip Recording → Enable. Online tracking lives inside this plugin, not in the main settings.

2. Get your device API key from Geoblip and copy it.

3. Open online tracking settings. Menu → Configure profile → Trip Recording → Online tracking, and switch it on.

4. Set the web address:

https://app.geoblip.com/api/ingest/coordinates?api_key=YOUR_KEY&lat={0}&lng={1}

Replace YOUR_KEY with your device key.

5. Set the tracking interval. Available from 0 seconds up to 5 minutes.

6. Allow background location. On Android, set OsmAnd to unrestricted battery usage. On iOS, grant Always location permission — While Using stops reporting the moment the screen locks.

The placeholder syntax is numbered

This is the part that catches people out. OsmAnd does not use named placeholders like GPSLogger. It uses numbered ones in curly braces, and the numbers are positional:

Placeholder	Value
{0}	Latitude
{1}	Longitude
{2}	Timestamp (Unix)
{3}	HDOP — see HDOP
{4}	Altitude
{5}	Speed
{6}	Bearing
{7}	Estimated time of arrival (Unix)
{8}	Estimated time to first intermediate point (Unix)
{9}	Estimated distance to arrival (metres)
{10}	Estimated distance to first intermediate point (metres)
{11}	Device battery level (percentage)

Getting {0} and {1} the wrong way round puts every position in the wrong place, and the mistake is silent — the app reports success and the map shows somewhere else entirely. If your positions land in the wrong country, check this first. The coordinate converter explains why latitude and longitude get swapped so often.

Geoblip needs only {0} and {1}. Adding others does no harm; they are ignored.

Interval and battery

OsmAnd keeps the online tracking interval separate from the local recording interval, which is genuinely useful: you can log a detailed track to the device every few seconds while sending an online position every couple of minutes.

For geofencing, the online interval is the one that sets your alert latency — see reporting interval. One to two minutes is a reasonable default for all-day use.

There is also a time buffer setting that stores positions while offline and sends them when the connection returns. Useful in patchy coverage, though buffered positions arrive late by definition, so a geofence crossing recorded during a dead zone will alert when signal comes back rather than when it happened.

Known issues

Some users have reported that HTTPS addresses fail silently in certain versions — no positions arrive and the app shows no error. If nothing reaches Geoblip and the URL looks correct, this is worth ruling out by checking the app’s own logs before assuming the key is wrong.

We have not reproduced this against Geoblip, and it may be resolved in current builds. Flagged because when it happens the failure gives you nothing to work with.

OsmAnd versus GPSLogger

Both work with Geoblip. Which suits you depends on what else you want.

OsmAnd is a full maps and navigation app with offline routing that happens to include tracking. Choose it if you want the maps anyway, or if you need iOS — GPSLogger is Android-only.

GPSLogger does one thing. It is smaller, lighter on battery, fully open source, and has named placeholders that are harder to get wrong. Choose it if tracking is all you want.

For hardware rather than a phone, see the devices overview, and GPS accuracy for what to expect from phone positioning.