When I moved to New York City about 10 months ago, I immediately started keeping two lists in my phone: Places to go, and places I had gone to and enjoyed.

Some of those places were outdoor spots like the Highline (saw it!) or cultural spaces (still haven’t been to the Brooklyn Museum…), but most of them are places to eat and drink.

As the list of places I’ve enjoyed has grown, I’ve started to share it with friends who need a good spot to eat, or refer back to it when I was stumped for weekend plans. The list lived inside the Notes app on my phone (complete with short descriptions of each place and the neighbourhood it’s in), but I soon needed a better way to organise and share it.

In February, Google rolled out an update to both iOS and Android devices that lets people build and share curated lists of recommended places within Google Maps — a.k.a. the exact tool I needed. Users can now follow their friends’ lists, as well as view and edit them on the desktop version of Maps. Lists are also available to view and edit offline.

I decided to build my own recommendations list in Maps, eliminating what now seems like my very archaic Notes version. Here’s how it worked for me — and why everyone should do it, too.

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