Google Maps has a list feature almost nobody uses, and it replaced three apps on my last trip

Published Aug 31, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT Mahnoor Faisal is a tech journalist covering AI and productivity tools with bylines at XDA, SlashGear, MakeUseOf, Laptop Mag, and Android Police. She's been writing professionally since she was sixteen, and has since penned hundreds of articles. This includes in-depth coverage of AI tools like NotebookLM to breaking news across the AI space. Her passion for technology started when she received her first iPod Touch (4th generation) on her 8th birthday, and she's been deep in the tech world ever since. Currently pursuing a degree in computer science, Mahnoor brings both a journalist's eye and a technical foundation to her coverage of how AI is reshaping the way we work and learn. Given I don't drive just yet, Google Maps has always been one of those apps I don't open all that often. I keep it installed for the obvious reasons, but outside of the occasional trip or trying to find my way somewhere unfamiliar, I typically don't have much reason to use it. Well, that is until I'm traveling. The second I land somewhere new, Google Maps goes from being an app I barely think about to one of the apps I use the most. I went on a two-week-long solo trip to a country I was completely unfamiliar with recently, which naturally meant I was relying on Google Maps more than ever. During my first few days there, I was constantly switching between different apps just to keep track of where I wanted to go, what I wanted to do, and how everything fit together. Eventually, I stumbled across Google Maps' Lists feature and realized I could do most of it without leaving Maps at all. I was jumping between three apps just to keep my trip organized My trip planning was all over the place To preface this article, I'm an extremely Type B person. If you're not familiar with what that means, I'm basically the exact opposite of someone who plans every little detail in advance. I like having a rough idea of what I'm doing, but beyond that, I'd much rather figure things out as I go. However, when you're in a completely foreign country with no one to fall back on, figuring everything out as you go isn't always the smartest approach. I still didn't want every hour of every day mapped out, but I did need some sort of system to keep track of the places I wanted to visit, things I wanted to do, and anything important I couldn't afford to forget. So, before I left for the trip, I spent hours researching and roughly mapping out what I'd want to do each day. The planning I was doing at home itself wasn't too much of a problem. I was listing down ideas in Google Keep, organizing everything into a rough itinerary in Google Sheets, and using Wanderlog to see how all those places fit together geographically. Lists replaced the two apps I used to plan everything Two apps down, one feature to go Until day three of my trip, my perception of Google Maps began and ended at navigation. I'd open it when I needed directions somewhere and close it once I'd arrived. If I was heading to a café, I would occasionally check user reviews on. But that was about it. I never really thought of it as an app I could use to actually plan a trip. This was until I was waiting for my food to be served at a random café, while scrolling through Google Maps to find the nearest department store. I randomly tapped the You tab at the bottom of the app and ended up stumbling across Lists. Lists is exactly what it sounds like: a way to group places you save on Google Maps into custom collections. Instead of dumping everything into Favorites or Want to go, you can create a separate list for a specific trip, give it a name and description, and start adding restaurants, attractions, stores, or pretty much any other place you find on Maps. Setting one up is ridiculously simple. All you need to do is head to the You tab in Google Maps, tap New list, give it a name and description, and choose an icon if you want one. From there, whenever you find a restaurant, attraction, store, or anything else you want to remember, tap Save on its Google Maps page and choose the list you created. Unfortunately, you can't currently make lists within lists, so there isn't a way to create one master trip list and then divide it into separate days. I worked around that by creating a different list for each day of the trip. It wasn't quite as neat as having proper sublists, but it gave me the same basic structure I would've created in a spreadsheet, while keeping every stop directly inside Maps. Google Maps lets you attach a note to individual places inside a list, which meant I didn't need a separate note full of restaurant names, things I wanted to order, reminders, or random details I'd picked up while researching. On iPhone and iPad, those notes can be up to 4,000 characters long, which is significantly more than I'd ever need for a single stop. This essentially means I no longer needed Google Keep! Then there was Google Sheets. One reason I'd created a spreadsheet in the first place was to give some sort of order to everything I'd saved. Google Maps Lists can do that too. Places in a custom list can be rearranged manually, so rather than looking at one massive collection of places, I could put them in roughly the order I wanted to visit them. Seeing everything pinned on the map changed everything Pins beat spreadsheets every time Planning everything by typing places into a spreadsheet or dumping them into a notes app only takes you so far. A cafe can look perfect on paper (and on an Instagram Reel), but if it was 40 minutes away from everything else I had planned that day, it suddenly made a lot less sense. This is where Google Maps Lists ended up replacing Wanderlog for me. Every place I saved was already pinned directly on the map, so I could immediately see which stops were clustered together, which ones were completely out of the way, and where I could squeeze something else in without making a massive detour. The emojis came in super handy here. I "emoji-coded" each list based on what it was for, which made the map much easier to scan at a glance. Restaurants had one emoji, train stations had another, shopping spots had their own, and so on. Instead of tapping through a bunch of identical saved pins, I could immediately tell what kind of place I was looking at before opening it. This one feature changed how I'll plan every trip For the way I travel, the Lists feature ended up being far more useful than the three separate apps I'd been juggling before. It kept everything I actually cared about in one place, without forcing me to plan every minute of every day. On my next trip, it's probably going to be one of the first things I set up!