Why export your Google Maps favourites?
Google Maps stores your places in lists (Favourites, Want to go, Starred, plus your own custom lists) but gives no real way to see them all on one map, filter by category or plan a route. Exporting hands control back to you: backup, switching tools, and sharing a clean map with friends.
It's also the only way to safeguard years of research. Lose access to an account, or accidentally delete a list, and hundreds of saved spots vanish with it. A CSV export is your insurance.
Where to export: phone or computer?
You can start the export from any device, but a computer is easier: Google Takeout works best in a desktop browser, and the resulting ZIP is simpler to unzip and inspect there. The quick « share a list » method (below) is the one that's handiest on your phone.
Method 1 — Google Takeout (all your saved places)
This is the complete method — it exports every saved place in one go, with no 200-item limit.
1. Go to takeout.google.com and sign in.
2. Click « Deselect all ».
3. Scroll down and tick « Saved » (your saved lists) and « Maps (your places) » (starred and labelled places).
4. Click Next step, choose a one-off export as a .zip, and create the export.
5. Google emails you a download link, usually within a few minutes.
Inside the archive, your saved lists arrive as CSV files (one per list) and your starred places as GeoJSON — both open formats that other maps can read.
Exporting more than 200 saved places
A common frustration: the Google Maps web interface struggles to display hundreds of saved places, and older export tricks stopped at around 200. Takeout has no such cap — it exports your entire history at once, whether you have 50 places or 5,000. If you're a heavy saver, Takeout is the only reliable route.
Fixing a CSV with no coordinates
Here's the catch most guides skip: the « Saved » CSV files often contain only the place name and a Google Maps link — not latitude/longitude. Open them in a spreadsheet and you'll see a URL column rather than coordinates. That's normal.
To turn those links back into real map pins you need a tool that resolves each URL to its location. MyFavsMap does this automatically on import, so you don't have to geocode anything by hand.
Method 2 — Share a list (quick)
For a single list, open it in the Google Maps app, tap « Share » and copy the link. It's instant and handy when you only need one specific list (e.g. « Lisbon restaurants »).
That link can then be pasted into a tool that reads it and recreates the list elsewhere — no file, no unzipping.
Import your favourites onto a custom map
With MyFavsMap, import the Takeout file or paste the list link: all your places land on one interactive map, sorted automatically by category and area, ready for day-by-day itineraries — for free, on your phone, with nothing to install.
Your favourites finally become usable again: filters, search, offline access and one-tap sharing.
Takeout into Google My Maps vs a dedicated map
You can import your Takeout file into Google My Maps, but you'll rebuild everything by hand on a desktop — placing and colouring layers one by one, capped at 10 layers. A dedicated tool categorises your places for you. See our full MyFavsMap vs Google Maps comparison and our guide to importing a list of places onto a custom map.