More and more OSM applications use the OSM user preferences API to store user specific settings.
Docs: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/API_v0.6#Preferences_of_the_logged-in_user:_GET|PUT|DELETE_/api/0.6/user/preferences

This API allows to store key-value pairs that can be accessed by all editors that are allowed to read the preferences.

The problem is, that the character limits for this preferences values is the same as for OSM tags (255 characters).

This makes storing preferences harder than it needs to be, because apps need to split the values into multiple "tags" and then come up with a good key-naming schema to later merge those keys again.

Apps that – to my knowledge – struggle with the current setup are…

• MapComplete @pietervdvn
• Overpass turbo @tyrasd
• GoMap is currently using iCloud to store settings to AFAIK avoid this issue
• And iD in the near future

Given that the user preferences API is not directly related to the map data key-value system, I propose to increase the limit for this API and allow a lot more characters.

IMO this can be done without a version increase given that we can expect apps to only load their own keys and they will know what they put into them.

Why would this help? — I am looking into sharing more settings between editors (like custom presets, maybe custom background layers) and this conversation will be easier if this API where easier to work with.

Just to be clear, this issue is only about the user/preferences endpoint, not a general increase in the limit, which is discussed in #2025