GNOME Maps 3.20 looks like it's going to be a great release and developers have added quite a few new features.

When GNOME Maps was upgraded from 3.16 to 3.18, the jump wasn't all that obvious. Just a couple of new major features were added. On the other hand, the developers are now preparing for GNOME 3.20, and there's a lot more interesting stuff going on.

It might seem like an odd application that doesn't really fit in the GNOME stack, but each new release improves upon the later, and it's becoming more obvious that we're going to find GNOME Maps increasingly more useful.

We recently reviewed GNOME 3.18.2 and the conclusion was that it was interesting, but with little practical application. Now, with the new additions that are being made, it suddenly is much more useful and it makes sense to have it implemented by default.

GNOME Maps is more important

Until now, GNOME Maps has been more of a novelty, but things are definitely changing with this new iteration. The ability to edit OpenStreetMap straight from the application alone is going to impress everyone.

"We now have an edit symbol on our map bubbles. If you press it, you will be prompted for your OpenStreetMap credentials. Or a link to where you can set up an account. After that, you get an editor view where you can update the object on OpenStreetMap. It is also possible to add a new node to OpenStreetmap by using the map context menu and choosing Add to OpenStreetMap," a GNOME developer explained.

Also, the information bubble has been expanded, printing routes with complete information is now possible, support has been added for KML and GPX layers, as well as an UI to handle them in Maps, a scale ruler has been implemented, exporting the current view is now possible, and a fresh help overlay has been added.

The stable version of GNOME 3.20 is expected to land on March 23.