QT OSM No longer working

Help and support
1

I am using QT 5.12 with the OSM maps plug in for the QT Location / Positioning Module.

My plug in parameters are
PluginParameter{name: “osm.mapping.custom.host”; value: “``https://tile.openstreetmap.org``”}

This was working for 2+ years but suddenly stopped working a couple days ago. I believe in the backend its making HTTP requests to the OSM tile server. I’m not seeing any errors on the QT front end. Is there something that was EOLed or recently changed to remove support?

2

I’d suggest re-reading https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/tiles/ to make sure that you are abiding by every part of that.

At the risk of stating the obvious, something must be:

  • Getting content you do not expect
  • Getting an error
  • Timing out

which is it?

3

The problem was QT was obscuring the errors but a quick tcpdump got me there.

Looks like the problem is that QT 5.12 uses HTTP for its requests for tiles and those are getting 301. I’m assuming that HTTP requests were EOLed somewhat recently. Is there a post about that being EOLed?

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4

they were EOL for quite long time, see Tile Usage Policy

You must:

  • Use the correct URL: https://tile.openstreetmap.org/{z}/{x}/{y}.png.

not sure which specific part broke in your case (maybe http connection are now refused?), but http was EOLed and not supported for some time already, even if it worked/works.

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5

We redirect HTTP to HTTPS. Libraries should automatically be following these, but our only published URL for the tiles has been https://tile.openstreetmap.org/{zoom}/{x}/{y}.png for some time.

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6

To clarify that, see what happens with a manual tile download:

$ wget http://tile.openstreetmap.org/13/4060/2668.png
--2025-10-16 00:07:36--  http://tile.openstreetmap.org/13/4060/2668.png
Resolving tile.openstreetmap.org (tile.openstreetmap.org)... 2a04:4e42:82::347, 151.101.189.91      
Connecting to tile.openstreetmap.org (tile.openstreetmap.org)|2a04:4e42:82::347|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
Location: https://tile.openstreetmap.org/13/4060/2668.png [following]
--2025-10-16 00:07:36--  https://tile.openstreetmap.org/13/4060/2668.png
Connecting to tile.openstreetmap.org (tile.openstreetmap.org)|2a04:4e42:82::347|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 7412 (7.2K) [image/png]
Saving to: ‘2668.png’

but if whatever you are using doesn’t follow redirects

$ wget --max-redirect=0 http://tile.openstreetmap.org/13/4060/2668.png
--2025-10-16 00:08:45--  http://tile.openstreetmap.org/13/4060/2668.png
Resolving tile.openstreetmap.org (tile.openstreetmap.org)... 2a04:4e42:82::347, 199.232.57.91
Connecting to tile.openstreetmap.org (tile.openstreetmap.org)|2a04:4e42:82::347|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
Location: https://tile.openstreetmap.org/13/4060/2668.png [following]
0 redirections exceeded.

when osm.org made the change to redirect everything to https some years ago, a surprising number of parts of the ecosystem were found not to follow redirects, but these should have been long fixed by now.

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