OpenStreetMap

Those that follow the Vespucci twitter account @vespucci_editor will already know, on Sunday the main had TLS 1. and 1.1 support OSM API turned off. This is of a bit wider relevance as older Android devices do not support TLS 1.2 out of the box or at all, and obviously this may effect other apps as well and even such simple things as retrieving map tiles may no longer work when tile caches are updated.

What is older in this context? Well there is no support in any form for devices older than 4.1, introduced in 2012 and no out of the box support, before 4.4.something (likely 4.4.3). 4.4 was released just 6 years ago, so is not that old. Vespucci will enable TLS 1.2 on devices in the range 4.1 - 4.4.? and will work just fine with the OSM API, with two caveats:

  • it is possible that there is no support for TLS 1.2 even though there should be, sorry nothing we can do about that.
  • while everything for which the network connections are directly initiated by the app should work, components that open their own connections may fail.

Off the top of my head there are only two situations in which the later applies, one not so important is opening issues on github, the other more relevant is authorizing the app via OAuth to use the OSM API. If that happens on your device you should follow the instructions on the Vespucci documentation site and switch to using login and password. Yes, the irony of this is not lost on me.

The deployment of upgraded operating system versions without TLS 1.0 and 1.1 can be followed on Dropping TLSv1 and TLSv1.1 support. If you have any questions or issues not covered above please don’t hesitate to ask.

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