Make a meaningful impact from your phone, one swipe at a time.
MapSwipe is part of the Missing Maps project. It is a free, open-source app that lets anyone contribute to humanitarian and development projects in just minutes a day. No mapping experience needed: review satellite imagery, identify features like buildings, roads, and waterways, and help validate map data used by organizations around the world.
The data you generate supports humanitarian organizations, researchers, and local communities, making OpenStreetMap data more accessible for disaster response, public health, climate resilience, and sustainable development.
How you can contribute:
* Find Features: Swipe through satellite imagery to spot buildings, roadways, waterways, and more
* Compare Dates: Review before-and-after imagery to detect environmental changes and assess damage
* Validate Footprints: Check building footprints and flag areas that need remapping
* Check Completeness: Compare mapped data against aerial imagery to find gaps
* Assess Images: Review photographs to confirm features and improve machine learning tools
* Locate Objects: Mark rooftops, solar panels, trees, and other features to help train machine learning models
Your swipes have real impact. MapSwipe is managed by a volunteer-led team with support from the American Red Cross, British Red Cross, Canadian Red Cross, HeiGIT, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, Médecins Sans Frontières, and Togglecorp.
Download MapSwipe and join a global community putting the world's most vulnerable places on the map.
honestly I rarely do reviews but this app is great if you want to do something quick but slowly make an impact. Some of the guidance tutorials can’t be really applied to what some projects are asking for, but definitely wish more people knew about this app. it’s one of the easiest ways I can volunteer online through quarantine and I really hope that this app will blow up and get even more people on the project <3
Good Goal, Way Too Buggy
aguazales
I love being able to use my phone for something that helps other people instead of just social media, BUT using this app is an exercise in frustration due to bugs.By far the most frustrating is that when you’re in the middle of a mapping task, the app will randomly white out the screen and then flash the MapSwipe logo at you while saying “loading groups” and a button that says something like “if this takes too long, tap here to go back to the home screen.”I’ve waited several minutes, and it never finishes “loading the groups.” And the only way to leave that screen is to go back to home or to close the app. Either way, you lose your entire mapping task progress. I tried joining a random group to see if it would stop trying to “load groups,” but it still happened.It’s incredibly discouraging, and I have to restrain myself from rushing through a task because I’m afraid that the groups thing is going to appear and make all the time I spent be wasted. I find myself avoiding the projects that make you do large numbers of swipes in one task because I know that increases the likelihood of encountering the issue before I can finish them.Less prevalent but no less annoying is that when you try to sign in with OpenStreetMap instead of creating a dedicated MapSwipe account from scratch, this app just hangs. It’ll open OSM in the browser, OSM will ask if you’r like to authorize MapSwipe, you click “authorize”, and then it opens MapSwipe and just… flashes the logo at you, over and over.I like the color-coded tapping system and the project system. When the app works, it feels incredibly rewarding and also even relaxing, but it currently doesn’t work consistently at all.
Great Idea and Execution
ThePapercutNinja
This is a really cool app, it’s good to use when you’ve got some time to sit or are just hanging out. It doesn’t need a very strong connection or a powerful phone to work, and looking for buildings on it gets kind of addicting! It’s an awesome idea to crowdsource this kind of stuff, and the app functions perfectly. It’s simple and easy and has a good tutorial, so you should at least give it a try.
iPad Functionality is missing
ハジモト
Love the app and the cause, the app is simple and quick to pickup.Would like to see more optimization for the iPad or a potential standalone app with greater tools and functionality.
- Fixed tutorial rendering.
- Fixed private project listing by filtering projects based on team membership.
- Improved the Projects page to display the project topic, region, number, and organization (where available).
- Fixed an issue that prevented users from opening projects with progress below 100%.
Version 3.0.3
The developer, British Red Cross, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Linked to You
The following data may be collected and linked to your identity:
Identifiers
Data Not Linked to You
The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
Contact Info
Usage Data
Diagnostics
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
Seller
British Red Cross Society
Size
68.7 MB
Category
Utilities
Compatibility
Requires iOS 16.4 or later.
iPhone Requires iOS 16.4 or later.
iPad Requires iPadOS 16.4 or later.
Mac Requires macOS 12.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.
