How can I help?

With a Google or Apple account. Signing in is also what creates your account, so there is no separate step.

Yes. Sign in with Apple instead. Those are the two ways in.

A new account starts with nothing on it. Your map fills up when you save a place yourself, or when a friend adds you and shares theirs. Help walks through saving your first one.

Go to forklist.me and try from there. An old bookmark or a shortcut saved months ago can start you on a different address, and the sign-in has to begin and end on the same one.

If it still turns you away, write to me with the address you were on.

No. You have to be signed in and connected to someone to see any of their map. Explore, for anyone signed in, shows the places people save, and names a person only to someone who can already read their note. A guide someone publishes, or a crawl link they send you, opens without an account.

Use the form at the bottom of this page, or email socials@forklist.me. Neither needs you to be signed in.

Settings, then Account, then Sign out on all devices. That includes the device you are using. Your spots, notes and friends stay.

Type it into the search box at the top and pick it from the suggestions. On a phone, press the plus on the bar at the bottom and the box appears. If Google doesn't list it, double-click the map where it is, or tap it on a phone. Then say whether you have been or want to try it, choose who can see it, and press Add to the map. Help has every step, including checking it's the right branch.

Every pin starts as Just you until you choose another default in Settings, then Privacy. You can switch any pin to your friends or to one group, as often as you like. A note itself can never be made public: Forklist refuses it. With Forklist Plus you can copy a note's words into a guide you publish, and anyone with its link can read that copy. If Google Maps lists the place, Explore shows it to everyone signed in. It shows your name and note only to people who can already read the note.

Privacy lists what the database holds and who can read each part of it.

Yes. Open the spot, press the three dots, and choose Edit. You can change your note, your rating, its tags, the date you went and who can read it. You can't change the name or the address, so if you saved the wrong branch, delete it and save the right one.

A spot holds three cuisines and five tags for now. Pick the ones that describe it best, and say the rest in the note.

You can add up to three photos when you first save a place, or six with Forklist Plus. After that, add one on the place's own page, not on the card that opens over the map. Tap the row in your list, or the card's address line, and press Add a photo.

The stars are what your friends gave it, or a score out of 10 where a friend ranked it. The score marked Google Maps comes from strangers.

When you mark a place Been, Forklist may ask which of two places you liked more. Your answers put the places you have been in order. Press Too close to call when you can't choose, or Rank it later to skip a question. To answer the rest later, open Forks, then Been, choose the Ranked sort, and press Rank them. Once you've ranked five, a ranked place shows a score out of 10 where its stars were. Until then you see where it ranks. Anyone who can read your note there sees the score, never its place in your order, and before you've ranked five they see neither the score nor your stars. Privacy has the rule.

When you save a place as Been, the Went with box takes up to 12 friends. Each one is asked whether they were there, unless they were asked about that place in the last 30 days. Yes, I was there adds the place to their Been list, stamps its city on their passport, and tells you. Not me adds nothing, and you are not told. An ask nobody answers ends after 30 days.

Open the place, press the three dots, and choose Take off the table. It stays off until you put it back, from the same place or from Settings, then Account, then Off the table. Your friends' maps don't change. People planning with you see a small mark and a count, never your name, though when there are only two of you they can tell. If you ask, it also deletes your note and photos there.

Open Forks and press New list, or open a place and press Add to a list. Open a list and press See on the map to show only those places on Explore. Help has the rest.

Only you, until you open it, press Share with friends and pick friends. They see the places on it and only the notes they could already read, and only you can change it. Removing a friend ends the share. With Forklist Plus you can also publish a list as a guide, which anyone with its link can read.

Open Forks and press Create crawl, or open a list and press Create crawl. Pick three to five stops, choose when you set off, and press Put these in order to line the stops up around opening hours. Show on map draws the route, and Open in Google Maps hands the whole route to Google Maps.

Press Send on the crawl and pick friends, up to 12 people in all. Or copy the link, which works for seven days and only for your friends. Who can change it sets who can edit and who can only look.

With Forklist Plus, press Share a link on the crawl. Anyone with the link sees the crawl's name, its stops in order and when it sets off, never a line, a note or who's going. Stop sharing turns the link off. Plus also saves a crawl as a PDF.

Share card on Forks makes a picture of your list to share. With Forklist Plus you can choose its colours, leave the Forklist mark off, and publish the list as a guide anyone with its link can open. To take a guide down, open it under Forks, Your guides, and delete it from the three dots.

Open Social and press Add a friend, or use the Friends tab. Type their email address, or the 8-character friend code they give you, and press Send. They get a request and decide for themselves. Neither of you sees the other's pins until they press Accept.

It is in the Friends tab under Social, with Copy and New code. Whoever types it learns nothing about you until you say yes, and your email address stays private. Press New code and the old one stops working at once.

A request waits until they accept. If you used an email address and they haven't signed up yet, it waits until they do. Signing up never makes anyone your friend on its own. Anyone can choose not to take requests, and Forklist never tells the sender, so a request can go unanswered without a reason.

A code that matches nobody may have a typo, or its owner may have swapped it for a new one, so ask them for a fresh one. After six misses in ten minutes you wait before you can try again. You can cancel a request you sent under Waiting on them.

Settings, then Circle, then Who can send you a friend request, and choose Nobody for now. That turns away email requests and your friend code, and any invitation somebody left on your address before you signed up.

Somebody already inside adds them, and groups are built from friends you already have. A group has a six-character code, and the code on its own lets nobody in.

To let in someone you are not friends with, the owner sets a password under Manage. That turns on the join link. They open the link and enter the password, or go to Social, then Groups, then Join or start a group, and enter the code and the password. Send the password separately from the link. Help has the detail.

Open Social, then Groups, then Join or start a group, and press Start a group. Pick friends, name it, and they're in right away. Everyone in a group can see everyone else in it by name, and anyone in it can rename it.

Yes. Press Leave next to the group under Social, then Groups. If other people are in it, you pick who takes over, or delete the group for everyone, and the spots shared with it go back to being just their owners'. If you are the last one out, the group is deleted. Leaving stops you seeing the spots shared with it, and what you shared stays.

Chat is a fixed set of phrases, so there is no text box to type into. Pick a phrase, attach a place or a crawl, or react to a message with any emoji.

You each come off the other's map. Nothing either of you wrote is deleted, and the pins you saved yourself stay where they are. A list one of you shared with the other stops being shared, and you each come off the other's crawls and meet-up plans. To remove a friend, open their profile and choose Remove from friends in the three-dot menu.

Under the bell, the Friends tab shows what your friends added or wrote. React gives three answers. Want to go puts the place on your Want to try and tells your friend it was you. Agree is your upvote, so they learn someone agreed, never who. Tell me more sends them "What's it like?" in your chat. Reply sends a friend one of four short phrases, and Fork it adds their place to your map and tells them you did.

A friend's profile shows how alike your saved places are as a percentage: the kinds of food, dishes, price, stars and tags, and any places you share. It shows once you have saved a place and your friend has saved one you can see. It stays hidden if either of you has turned off Using your saved places in Settings, then Privacy.

Kindred is for friends whose taste matches yours at 89% or more. One friend earns Bronze, three Silver, five Gold, ten Platinum and 25 Diamond.

Open a place and press Meet halfway, or open Social and press Ask where everyone is. Either way you ask people or a group where they are, everyone taps once, and locations are gone after two hours. To type in the starting points yourself, choose Or set the starting points yourself. Privacy lists which screens use your position.

A place, a day, a time and a few seats, opened under Social, then Tables. Tables are for people 18 and over. Help has the rules, and what to do if you can't see Tables.

Open Social and press the trophy at the top. Most months there is one challenge for everyone: join it, then save the number of new spots it asks for. You can also start one with up to 12 friends. Pick what to try, how many new spots, and a week, three weeks or a month. You can have three open at a time. Finishing a challenge for everyone earns the Challenger badge. A challenge with friends is for fun and earns nothing. People in a challenge with you see how many places you've counted and the day you finished, never which places.

Open your profile from the menu under your name, or from Settings, then Account, then Open your profile, and press Edit profile. You can change your name, your line, where you're from, your go-to, your picture, the colour behind your initial, your banner and how your passport looks.

Yes. Settings, then Privacy, then The city on your profile. Hide it and it comes off your profile, whether you typed it or it was worked out from your pins. Tables still use it.

A page on your profile with a stamp for every city you have been to. A city counts a place when you mark it Been or write a note on it, not when you only want to try it. Its stamp moves up at 1 place (Been), 3 (Regular), 8 (Local), 20 (Resident) and 50 (Legend). Only you see your passport.

Each badge on a profile says what it takes. Kindred needs friends with a close taste match, and Challenger needs a finished challenge for everyone.

On your profile and on Home from December 1, and it stays through January. Share makes a picture of it.

Reload the page first. If the rest of the app works and only the map is grey, the map service is the part that failed. Tell me roughly when it happened and I will go and look.

Allow location when the browser asks, then press Explore in the bar at the bottom of a phone, or at the top on a computer. That asks again and moves the map to you.

If you refused it once, the browser will not ask a second time. Turn it back on in your browser's site settings for forklist.me, then press Explore.

The same answer: allow location, then press Explore again.

Explore is one of the six screens that send your location, so Forklist can find places you have not saved yet. It keeps nothing: the location is used for that one request. Privacy lists all six and what each does with them.

Older pins sometimes stored a state instead of a city. Open your profile and Forklist repairs your own places as the passport loads. If a name is still wrong after that, send me the address and I will look at it.

It shows a fixed list of big cities. All cities on Home lists every one, by continent and country. A pin in a town that is not on the list still sits on your map and still turns up everywhere else.

Settings, then Appearance. Miles and kilometres are a switch, and it follows your account to every device you sign in on.

Fork me picks from spots you can see within 25 miles: yours and your friends'. It needs your location. A mood like Cafés or Bar can leave nothing, so try Anything. With no spots yet, add one or ask a friend to share theirs. If every spot nearby is closed, it says nothing is open.

Settings, then Appearance, then Your Home. Hold a card to drag it into a new order, and press Reset to put them back.

Settings, then Appearance, then Text size. Accessibility says what zooms where.

Forklist asks your phone once, the first time you sign in on it. If you said no, or turned them off later, turn Forklist back on in your phone's own notification settings. That is also where you turn them off.

They only reach phones with the app. On a laptop, you see them inside Forklist.

Yes. Settings, then Notifications, then What your circle is doing, and choose Don't. Nothing is written down while it is off, so turning it back on does not deliver a week of what you missed.

Settings, then Notifications. Messages, The weekly note and Pins you never finished each have their own switch. Crawls and tables still reach you when Messages is off.

Mark somewhere as Want to try, switch the nudge on under Notifications, and Forklist tells you when you are within about 150 metres of it, at most once a month per place.

Your device does the check, and your location is never sent to us. Forklist keeps which place it was and when, for 30 days, so it does not tell you twice. The privacy page says what a phone keeps with the app closed.

When a few friends save things at once, Forklist sends one notification naming the newest and counting the rest. Open Friends, next to For you under the bell, to see them all.

Notifications about a plan leave once it is over: a Meet halfway request when it ends, a table three hours after its time, a poll when it closes, and a crawl invite the day after the crawl. A note that you are near a place you saved leaves at the end of that day. A note asking whether you went somewhere with a friend leaves after 30 days.

Yes, I was there adds the place to your Been list with your friend's day and stamps its city on your passport. Your friend is told, and people who can read their note there see you went together and on which day. Only the ones who are your friends too see your name. Everyone else sees "a friend". You can add your own note after. Not me adds nothing, and your friend is not told.

Yes. Forklist on Google Play for Android. For iPhone and iPad, search for Forklist on the App Store. If it is not there, that store may not have approved it yet, or may not offer it where you live.

You can also add the website to your home screen from your browser. On iPhone it is Share, then Add to Home Screen. On Android it is the browser menu, then Install.

In the phone apps, your map, your profile and your settings open with no signal, and you can add a place to send later. On the website, Forklist shows what it has already loaded, and saving a place needs a connection. Adding a friend, sending a message and anything else that reaches someone else needs a connection, and Forklist tells you when it has lost one.

The website updates itself: Forklist loads the current version each time you open it. The Android and iPhone apps load most of what you see the same way, and new phone features arrive as an update from Google Play or the App Store.

In the app, from Settings, then Forklist Plus: the Android app through Google Play, or the iPhone and iPad app through the App Store once Apple has approved it. The website doesn't sell it. It renews every year until you cancel. Terms has the price, the renewal and what Plus adds.

Plus is extras on top of the free app: more photos on a place, pin colours and themes, share cards without the Forklist mark, and guides and crawl links anyone can open. Settings, then Forklist Plus shows each one, and Terms lists them all. Everything you need to keep your places and share them with your friends is free.

In the app, open Settings, then Forklist Plus, then Manage, and press Restore purchases. Plus belongs to the Forklist account that bought it, so sign in with that one. If it still isn't there, write to me with the store and the date you bought it.

Settings, then Forklist Plus, then Manage, then Manage or cancel, which opens where you bought Plus. You can also cancel in the store yourself: on an iPhone in Settings, your name, Subscriptions, or on Android in Google Play's Subscriptions. Plus stays on until the end of the year you paid for, and to be sure it doesn't renew, cancel at least 24 hours before the year ends. Refunds are Apple's or Google's to decide, under their rules and the law where you live, so ask them first. If Google Play sends you to me, or Plus didn't work for you, write to me.

No. Apple or Google keeps charging until you cancel, so cancel first, in the app or in your store's subscriptions.

What you made stays. Terms lists what each perk does when Plus ends.

Settings, then Account, then Download my data. It is a file you can open, with everything held about you except four things: reports other people filed about you, the team's log of what it took down, Google's details about a place, and what other people keep private about you, such as whether a friend you named has answered yet or a nickname a friend gave you. You do not have to give a reason.

Yes. Settings, then Account, then Bring a Forklist file back in. Pick a file from Download my data, choose who sees the notes it brings, and press Import. It adds only what your map doesn't have, so the same file twice adds nothing.

Settings, then Account, at the bottom: Delete my account and pins. You type DELETE to confirm. If you lead a group with other people in it, you pick who takes over first. The deletion page explains what goes and what stays, and you can start from there too. Take a copy first: nothing can be downloaded afterwards. Deleting your account doesn't cancel Forklist Plus, so cancel it first, in the app or in your store's subscriptions.

Your account, your notes, your marks and your lists go. Places other people also saved stay on their maps, without your name on them. A few things stay, such as reports other people filed about you, and the deletion page lists each one.

No. Forklist runs no analytics of any kind, and keeps no record of which spots you opened or searched for. Privacy says what is stored, and Cookies names every cookie and what stays on your device.

Use the report flag on the note itself, next to Upvote. Nothing is hidden until someone has read the report and decided.

Press the small flag on the photo. A person reads every report, and nothing is hidden until they decide.

Open their profile, press Report with their first name, then Something they did or said. If you met at a table, Report is on the table too. They aren't told.

Open their profile and press Block with their first name, or use Report on a table. A block ends the friendship and hides your spots and tables from each other, and they aren't told. Shared groups still show you both, and unblocking doesn't put the friendship back. To unblock, go to Settings, then Circle, then People you have blocked.

Tell me and it goes ahead of new features. Accessibility lists what is missing today and what has been fixed. If you use a screen reader, voice control, a switch or a magnifier, say which one.

Write to me the way Writing to me describes. To report something illegal, say what it is and where it is in Forklist, why you think it is illegal, and your name and email. Add a line saying you believe, in good faith, that what you have written is accurate and complete.

Email me and say so in the first line. Anything that looks like a way around the privacy rules, a screen showing a private note, or a cookie that is not on the cookies page, goes to the top of the list.