Welcome to JOSM online help system

You can improve this help by clicking on "Open in Browser" below.

If you have reached this page from pressing F1 in JOSM, then you can get more specific help on a particular window, dialog, or tool, if you have the mouse cursor over that item prior to pressing F1.

Beware: This help might get outdated from time to time! Please help improving it by fixing parts that are missing or outdated - this is a wiki!

Table of Contents

Getting Started

• Introduction to JOSM
• How Tos about JOSM
• Working with Relations
• Audio mapping: playing voice notes and synchronizing them with your GPS tracks in JOSM
• ​FAQ about OSM in general
• Keyboard shortcuts

JOSM interface

• Main Menu (note: depending on which plugins you have installed you may have more options on this menu)
  • File
  • Edit
  • View
  • Tools
  • Audio
  • Presets
  • WMS (shown when wmsplugin plugin is installed)
  • Help

• Main Toolbar (the toolbar above the main JOSM window). This toolbar is highly customisable, with the ability to add and remove menus items from the preferences dialog.
  • Open
  • Save
  • GPX
  • Download from OSM
  • Upload to OSM
  • Undo
  • Redo
  • Preferences

• Edit Toolbar (the toolbar down the left hand side of the main JOSM window)
  • Zoom
  • Select Move Rotate
  • Draw Nodes
  • Delete
  • Create Areas By Extrusion
  buttons below the delete tool affect the display of dialog windows described under 'views' below

• Views
  • Map View
  • Layer List Dialog
  • Properties/Memberships Dialog
  • History Dialog
  • Current Selection Dialog
  • Authors Dialog
  • Conflict Dialog
  • Command Stack Dialog
  • Relations List Dialog
  • (... other buttons depending on the Plugins loaded)

JOSM Plugins

Information and Documentation about various JOSM plugins can be found here: ​http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/JOSM/Plugins

JOSM Preferences

You can set your preferences for display and other options.

JOSM error messages

• Error while parsing