How to Share a Private Map with a Group Without Making It Public

There are two different sharing problems, and most map apps only solve the first one.

The first is one place, one person: you found a good spot and you want to send it to a friend. A link does that well, and we covered it in how to share one map location.

The second is harder. You want a map with multiple pins that the same few people keep coming back to — a fishing crew, a family that hikes together, two people planning a trip. Not a one-off link. Not a public page. A map that stays private, except for the parts you deliberately open up.

This is about the second problem.

What a shared map actually needs to do

Strip away the features and a group map has to answer four questions:

• Who can see it? Named people, not "anyone with the link".
• What exactly is shared? Specific places, not your whole map.
• Who can change it? Some people add, some only look.
• What happens to everything else? It stays yours.

Most tools fail on the second and fourth. They share a list, and a list is all-or-nothing.

Why the usual methods fall short

A link shares a moment, not a map

Send a link and you have shared one thing, once. Next week you find another spot and you send another link. After a season, the shared knowledge is scattered across a chat history nobody scrolls back through. There is no map — just messages that happen to contain coordinates.

A public list shares everything

Some apps let you publish a list of saved places. That works until you realise the list is the unit of sharing. Add a spot to the list and everyone sees it. Keep a spot out and it lives somewhere else entirely. You end up maintaining two collections and making mistakes across them.

A group chat loses the pins

Coordinates pasted into a chat are searchable for about a week. They are not a map, they cannot be filtered by category, and nobody can navigate back to them without copying numbers into another app.

What "private by default" has to mean

The phrase gets used loosely, so here is the version worth insisting on: a place you save is visible to nobody until you take a deliberate action on that specific place.

Not "private until you join a group". Not "private unless the list is shared". Private per place, with sharing as something you do to one spot at a time.

That distinction is what makes a group map safe to use for real. You can be in a fishing group and still keep the one spot you are not ready to give up.

How group sharing works in Pean

Pean is a private place-saving app for iPhone, Android and Apple Watch. Every spot you save is private, and groups are the way to open specific ones to specific people.

Step 1: Save your places first

Save the spot the way you normally would — one tap captures the GPS position, and you add a photo, a note and a category afterwards. Categories matter more than people expect on a shared map: fish, mushrooms, berries, hunting, herbs, landmarks and other. When a group map grows past twenty pins, category filtering is what keeps it usable.

Saving works offline. If you are somewhere with no signal, the spot is queued locally and syncs when you reconnect — which is the normal case for the places worth sharing with a group.

Step 2: Create the group

Give it a name that describes the purpose rather than the people: "Autumn mushroom routes" ages better than "Chat 2". You are the owner of any group you create.

Step 3: Invite people by nickname

Members are added by their Pean nickname, so you do not have to hand around phone numbers or email addresses to get a map going. An invitation waits until the person accepts or declines it — nobody is silently added to anything.

Step 4: Share only the spots that belong there

This is the part that makes the difference. You share an individual place to a group. Your other saved places are not affected, not listed, and not visible to members.

A spot can be shared to a group you are in without becoming public, and the rest of your map stays exactly as private as it was before you joined.

Step 5: Decide who can do what

Groups have three roles:

• Owner — created the group, can delete it.
• Admin — manages members.
• Member — sees the shared spots.

For a family map, everyone can be a member. For a larger crew, promoting one or two people to admin means you are not the only one who can add someone new.

What each plan allows

Group size is where the plans differ most:

| | Groups | Members per group | Saved places | | --- | ---: | ---: | ---: | | Free | 5 | 5 | 50 | | Pro | 20 | 50 | 500 | | Max | 100 | 250 | 3 000 |

A free account is enough for a family or a small crew. The paid tiers exist for people running several groups at once — a club, a guiding business, a set of separate hunting parties that should not see each other's spots.

Using it on iPhone, Android and Apple Watch

The same map and the same groups work across every place you use Pean:

• iPhone — full editing: create groups, manage members, share spots, add photos and notes.
• Android — the same app and the same groups. Pean for Android is in closed testing on Google Play right now, so installing it needs a tester invite. The Android button at the bottom of this page asks for one; it wants the email of your Google account, because that is what Play tester lists are keyed on.
• Apple Watch — one tap saves a location while your hands are busy. It syncs to your phone, and you decide afterwards whether it goes to a group.
• Web map at pean.me — browse everything in a browser, which is the easiest way to review a group map before a trip.

When a link is still the better tool

Groups are for sharing that repeats. If you just want to send one place to one person who does not use Pean, a share link is faster and does not require them to have an account. The two work together: use links for one-off sends, groups for the map you keep.

Common questions

Can I share a map with a group without making my other places visible?

Yes. Sharing happens per place, not per map. You share an individual spot to a group, and every other place you have saved stays private and invisible to the members.

How do I invite someone to a group map?

You add them by their Pean nickname, and they receive an invitation to accept or decline. No phone numbers or email addresses are exchanged to build the group.

Can several people add pins to the same map?

Members see the spots shared to the group, and anyone in the group can share their own saved places to it. Each person keeps ownership of the places they saved.

What happens if I leave a group or the group is deleted?

The places you saved remain yours. Sharing a spot to a group gives the group visibility of it, not ownership, so removing the group removes the shared view rather than the place.

Is a shared map in Pean public?

No. There is no public feed and no discoverable directory of group maps. A group is only visible to the people who were invited to it and accepted.

Does a group map work without signal?

Yes. Places are saved locally when you are offline and sync automatically once you reconnect, on iPhone, on Android and on Apple Watch. This matters most in exactly the places a group map is useful — forests, water, and back country.

How many people can be in one group?

Five on the free plan, 50 on Pro and 250 on Max, with 5, 20 and 100 groups respectively.