How to Export a Google Maps List Someone Else Shared With You

Got a shared Google Maps list from a friend and want to export it as GPX, KML, or CSV? Here's what actually works — and why Google Takeout can't help directly.

May 25, 2026

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8 min read

A friend sends you a maps.app.goo.gl/... link — their curated restaurant list, a city guide they put together, or a trip itinerary with 40 pinned places. You open it in Google Maps, you can see all the places, and naturally you want to export it: maybe to GPX for an offline navigation app, or to CSV so you can add notes in a spreadsheet.

Then you hit a wall. Google Takeout doesn't seem to pick it up. There's no "Export" button on the list. And searching for answers turns up guides that assume you're exporting your own saved places, not someone else's. This guide is specifically for that situation — and it's honest about what does and doesn't work.

Why Google Takeout Doesn't Work Here

Google Takeout exports data from your Google account. When you request a Takeout of your "Saved" data, it exports the lists that live under your account — the ones that appear when you tap "Saved" in Google Maps and are tied to your Google profile.

A list someone else shared with you is still owned by their account. Even if you can view it, follow it, or see it update when they add places, it doesn't become your data in the Takeout sense. Takeout is scoped strictly to your account — there is no way to point it at another user's list.

This is by design. The shared list is a read-only view into another person's data. Google's privacy model means only the list owner can export via Takeout.

Option 1: Save Each Place to Your Own Account First

This is the most reliable path for small-to-medium lists.

How it works:

Open the shared list link in Google Maps
Browse through the list and tap each place you want to keep
On each place's detail card, tap Save and add it to one of your own lists (create a new one if you want to keep them together)
Once you've saved all the places, run a Google Takeout export selecting only "Saved"
Upload the resulting CSV to Takeout Tools to add coordinates and convert to GPX, KML, GeoJSON, or CSV

When to use this: Lists with roughly 20 or fewer places. It's tedious but it works, and you end up with the places properly in your account with full coordinates after processing.

Limitations: This doesn't scale. A list with 80 places means 80 manual save actions. The Takeout CSV also won't include the original owner's notes — only the place name and URL.

One thing worth knowing: when you save a place from someone else's shared list, you're saving a snapshot reference to that place. If the original owner removes a place from their list later, your saved copy in your own list is unaffected.

Option 2: Open in Google My Maps and Export KML

This path works if the shared content is actually a Google My Maps map rather than a standard Google Maps list. These are two distinct things, and it's easy to confuse them.

How to tell the difference:

A standard Google Maps list is shared via a maps.app.goo.gl/... link and appears under "Saved" in the Google Maps app
A Google My Maps map is created at mymaps.google.com and has a different URL structure; it shows up under "Your places → Maps" in Google Maps

If what you received is a My Maps link, there are two cases:

If you own the map (you created it or it was shared with edit access):

Open the map at mymaps.google.com
Click the three-dot menu (⋮) next to the map title
Select Export to KML/KMZ
Choose whether to export all layers or a specific one
Download the KML file

If you don't own the map (view-only shared link):

Open the shared My Maps link and click the star icon to save it to your account
Go to mymaps.google.com and look under "Not owned by me" / "Shared with me"
Open the map, click the three-dot menu (⋮) next to the title
Select Download KML
Download the file

You can then use the KML to GPX converter to convert it for navigation apps.

If the shared link is a standard Google Maps list (the more common case), this path isn't directly available. However, there's a workaround some people use: save the places to your own list (Option 1), then create a new My Maps map and import your list data into it as a layer. That's an extra round-trip but it works.

Limitations: My Maps export works cleanly when the original was created in My Maps. For standard shared lists, you can't open them directly in My Maps — you'd need to go through the save-then-export process first.

Option 3: Manual Copy for Small Lists

If the list has 10–15 places or fewer, the most practical approach is sometimes the most manual one.

Open the shared list in Google Maps and, for each place:

Tap the place to open its detail card
Note the name and, if you want coordinates, tap "Share" to get a maps link you can decode, or search the place name on Google Maps and look at the URL for lat/lon parameters

For very small lists — say, a "5 best coffee shops in Lisbon" list — this takes 10 minutes and gives you a spreadsheet you can import anywhere. For anything larger, it's not realistic.

What If You Own the List?

If the shared list is yours — you created it and you're logged into that Google account — then Google Takeout works exactly as expected. Export your "Saved" data, download the ZIP, and upload the CSV to Takeout Tools to add coordinates and convert to your preferred format.