In addition to the flood of new features introduced in iOS 18, you also have an improved set of tools for saving places in Apple Maps. That includes a dedicated space for your lists of locations, plus the option to add custom notes to places.
This can be useful in a variety of scenarios. Maybe you’re planning a road trip, or a coffee shop tour, or just want to remember where you buried a treasure. While it was previously possible to save places as favorites in Apple Maps, the new features are much more comprehensive and useful.
We’re going to focus on iOS 18 here, but the same features have also been rolled out with Apple Maps for iPadOS 18 and macOS 15 Sequoia, so you can reach all your saved locations no matter what device you’re using.
How to start saving places in Apple Maps
If you have something marked on Apple Maps, you can save it for later use. Even if somewhere isn’t marked (maybe it’s a hill in the middle of nowhere), you can press and hold to drop a pin on the map and bring up a place card for it.
On these cards, which show details like reviews, photos, and contact information, you can save places to your library: Tap the + (plus) button in the top right corner of the map to add the location to your library (and tap it again to remove it).
That’s all you need to do to start saving places, but there are more options if you dig a little deeper. Tap the More on a place card and not only are there options to add or remove the place from your saved library, there is also a Pin option. Pinned items will appear more prominently in various places in Apple Maps and on the CarPlay interface.
On the same More menu, there is the option to Add to guides—here you can start compiling specific lists of places, whether they’re landmarks in a particular city or the best coffee shops you’ve ever been to. Tap the button and you can create a new guide or add it to one of your existing ones.
New to placing cards in iOS 18 is a Add a note option, which should appear just below the place title and keyboard shortcuts. You can enter anything you want here, maybe comments about the menu, or how to get there, or whatever. No one else can see your notes, and they reappear every time you open the place card.
Organize saved places in Apple Maps
To find all the places you’ve saved, tap an empty area of the map and then tap your Apple account profile photo (to the right of the search box at the bottom). To elect Library to access everything you’ve saved: this includes pinned locations, locations saved in your library, and places saved in guides.
Just below these shortcuts you’ll see some recently added places, so you can quickly get back to a place you recently bookmarked. Tap any of these links and you will be taken to the location on the map, with the place map visible.
To elect Places of the Library menu, and using the three dot icons on the right side of the screen you can add places to a guide, edit the note you added to a place, share the place with others, and pin the place. If you don’t want to keep a shortcut anymore, choose Remove from library.
The icons at the top allow you to add new places or change the sorting. For example, you can view them based on the date they were added or how far they are from your current location.
To elect Guides of the Library menu, and you can edit the custom guides you’ve built, view the locations in each guide, and create new guides where you can save places: Tap the + (plus) button, bottom right, to do this. A cover photo can be attached to each guide and can be sorted in any order.
