Every food Reel ends the same way. You watch someone cut into a burrata the size of a softball, you tap the bookmark, and the restaurant disappears into a folder you will never open again. No name, no address, no idea what city it was in.
Spotguide exists so that tap means something. Send us the post, and the actual restaurant shows up as a pin on your own map. Here are the four ways to do it, from laziest to most thorough.
1. DM the Reel to @spotguideapp
This is the one most people use. Tap the paper-plane icon on any Reel, post, or story and send it to @spotguideapp, exactly like you'd send it to a friend. A few seconds later you get a reply: "Got it! Finding the restaurant…" and then "Saved" with the restaurant's name.
You never leave Instagram. The spot is waiting on your map the next time you open Spotguide.
If the video is a roundup ("5 best taco spots in SF"), you get all five. If it's a swipe-through gallery with a different restaurant in every photo, Spotguide reads each one and saves every spot it finds.
2. Use the share sheet
On iPhone, "Save to Spotguide" sits in the share sheet next to Messages and Mail. It works on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and on Google Maps or Apple Maps links. A small card slides up, tells you what it's doing ("Finding the spot… Watching the reel…"), and shows "Saved to your map" with the restaurant's photo, name, and city. Tap Done and keep scrolling.
3. Paste a link, or just type the name
The Add tab in the app is one box that takes anything. Paste a link from Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook. Or type a restaurant's name and pick it from the live matches. Either way the save runs in the background, so you can keep browsing while it lands.
4. Bring over your Google Maps list
Years of starred places don't have to stay in Google Maps. Ask Google for a copy of your saved places, hand Spotguide the zip, and it walks you through every list it finds, showing you each match before anything is saved. Nothing lands on your map without you seeing it first.
What happens to the ones it isn't sure about
Sometimes a video names a place but not a city, or there are three restaurants with the same name. Those go to your Review queue, where you pick the right one with a single tap. Spotguide would rather ask than pin the wrong place.
The part that makes it worth doing
Saving is only half of it. Spotguide keeps why you saved each place: the dish someone called out, the line from the video, the vibe. Later you can ask Guide, the assistant inside the app, "where was that place with the pasta flight?" and get the answer. And when you walk past a spot you saved three months ago, Spotguide taps you on the shoulder.
That's the whole point. Not a longer list of bookmarks. A map you actually use.
Spotguide is free on the App Store and Google Play.