Welcome to JOSM online help system

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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Beware: This help might get outdated from time to time! Please help improving it by fixing parts that are missing or outdated - this is a wiki!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
• JOSM Page on the OSM wiki: ​http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/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

• A list of available plugins can be found at the Plugin page.
• Information and Documentation about various JOSM plugins can be found here: ​http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/JOSM/Plugins

JOSM error messages

• Error while parsing outdated