Main Help

Welcome to the JOSM Help! The Introduction will guide you to your first successful edit. The How Tos deal with some use cases.

Interface

The Main menu offers under File, Edit, View, Mode, Tools, Selection, Presets, Imagery, Windows, Audio and Help all actions possible in JOSM. A search finds every menu item.

On the Mapview all mouse clicks depend on the Working mode previously switched to. New objects are created in Draw mode. In other modes objects are selected and edited.

• The Main toolbar has buttons for actions and presets
• The panels in the Sidebar inform about the loaded data and the Selection
• The Status Bar shows the drawing position
• The Working mode is indicated in the Edit toolbar. Therefore the buttons in its upper part are important screen elements.

Main menu	Mapview	Main toolbar
Edit toolbar	Statusbar	Sidebar

All screen elements have their own help context in JOSM. Other dialogs exist for setting Preferences, for managing Changesets, for resolving Conflicts, for editing Relations and for browsing the History of an object.

Changing the User Interface Scale

You can change the scaling factor of the user interface to better suit your screen or needs:

1. Go to Edit -> Preferences (or hit F12)
2. Scroll down to the category 'Advanced Preferences'
3. In the search box above the list of various configuration entries, enter gui to filter the list. This way you will be able to get quickly to the relevant entries.
4. Adjust elements to your needs by changing entries starting with gui.scale or ending with .font. For example, to increase everything by 50%, change all of them from '1.0' to '1.5'.
5. In addition, you can also change only certain Icon sets. As in step 4, filter the list by iconsize and change according to your needs. For example, increase the default icon size by changing 'iconsize.default' to '36'.
6. Restart JOSM for the changes to take effect.

See also

The power of JOSM lies in its flexibility, allowing every user to download, create and publish:

• Presets to create a rich map with common object types,
• Rules to tag according to guidelines,
• Styles to paint maps to taste,
• Plugins to extend JOSM's functionality and
• Keyboard shortcuts of their choosing.

As a companion for ​OpenStreetMap since 2005, ​JOSM's growth rate has been fast. You are invited to help keep the wiki up to date, to translate it and to improve the whole JOSM.

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Here is Main help