Navit is a car navigation system with its own routing engine. It is designed to work without depending on a permanently available network connection, using locally stored vector maps for map display, searching and route calculation.
Its modular architecture separates map handling, position input, routing and user-interface components. Navit can obtain a position directly from a GPS receiver, through gpsd or from supported platform location services. GTK and SDL interfaces are available and are designed to be usable on touchscreens as well as conventional computers.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Uses locally stored vector maps for navigation and route calculation.
- Supports OpenStreetMap data for map display and routing.
- Can display several map sources together within the same navigation setup.
- Receives location data directly from a file or device, from a local or remote gpsd instance, or from supported mobile location services.
- Includes its own routing engine for calculating routes to a destination.
- Uses a Lifelong Planning A* based routing approach to calculate estimated travel costs through the road network.
- Experimental traffic support can recalculate affected portions of a route when traffic conditions change.
- Generates turn-by-turn directions and can provide spoken navigation instructions.
- Supports a large number of interface and spoken-navigation languages.
- Displays points of interest and provides destination searching using supported map data.
- GTK and SDL graphical interfaces support touchscreen installations such as in-car computers.
- Can obtain experimental position information from a UDP source for applications such as friend tracking.
- Cross-platform support – runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Website: github.com/navit-gps/navit
Support:
Developer: Navit contributors
License: GNU General Public License v2.0

Navit is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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