How to Save Places from TikTok and Instagram Using Nifl
Stop losing places you find on TikTok and Instagram. Share any video directly to Nifl, review the extracted place, and save it to a collection. Step-by-step guide.
You Found a Place on TikTok. Now What?
You're scrolling TikTok. A video comes up — someone's reviewing a restaurant, showing a hidden café, walking through a market you've never heard of. It looks incredible. You think "I need to go there."
And then you keep scrolling.
Two weeks later, you're trying to remember what it was called. You go back through your TikTok likes. You can't find it. You never go.
This is one of the most common ways good intentions die — not through lack of interest, but through lack of a system to catch them in the moment.
Nifl's Quick Shares feature was built specifically for this. Share any TikTok or Instagram video directly to Nifl, and it extracts the place from the video for you to review and save to a collection. The moment of discovery becomes the moment of saving — with no searching required.
How Quick Shares Works
When you share a video to Nifl, Nifl reads the content and identifies the place being featured. It then queues that place in your Imports tab — a dedicated area inside Nifl where your pending saves wait for you.
You don't have to review them immediately. They sit there until you're ready — whether that's five minutes later or the next morning. When you do open the Imports tab, you'll see each pending place with a suggested real-world match. You confirm the match, add a note if you want, choose which collection it belongs in, and save it.
The place moves from pending to saved. It's now in your collection, on your map, and available to schedule or be surfaced by proximity when you're nearby.
Step-by-Step: How to Save a Place from TikTok
Step 1 — Find a Place on TikTok
You're watching a TikTok video that features a place you want to save. This could be:
- A restaurant or café review
- A travel video featuring a specific location
- A "best places in [city]" roundup
- A hidden gem someone is showing off
- A food tour walking through multiple spots
It doesn't need to be a dedicated place review — any video where a specific location is the subject will work.
Step 2 — Tap the Share Button on the Video
On TikTok, tap the share icon on the right side of the video — the same button you'd use to send the video to a friend or post it to your story.
The share sheet will appear, showing a list of apps you can share to.
Step 3 — Select Nifl from the Share Sheet
Scroll through the share sheet until you find Nifl and tap it. If Nifl doesn't appear immediately, you may need to scroll right through the app icons at the top of the share sheet, or tap "More" to find it and add it to your share sheet for quicker access in future.
The video is sent to Nifl. You'll see a brief confirmation that it's been received.
Step 4 — Open the Imports Tab in Nifl
Open Nifl and tap Imports in the bottom navigation bar. This is where all your shared videos queue up as pending pins — places that have been extracted from the content you shared and are waiting for your review.
You'll see a list of pending pins. Each one shows the place that Nifl identified from the video, ready for you to review.
Step 5 — Tap a Pin to Review It
Tap on any pending pin to open its review view. Here you'll see:
- The place that Nifl extracted from the video
- A suggested match — the real-world place that corresponds to what was in the video, with its address and details
The review step is your chance to confirm the place is correct before it gets added to your collection.
Step 6 — Confirm the Suggested Match
Look at the suggested match Nifl has found. Check that it's the right place — the correct name, the right city, the right location.
If the suggested match looks right, select it to confirm. If it's not quite right — maybe Nifl found a similarly named place in the wrong city — you can search for the correct location from within the review view and select the right one instead.
Step 7 — Add a Description (Optional)
Just like with other saving methods, you can add a personal note to capture context. This is the moment to write down what it was about the video that made you want to save this place:
- "The carbonara looked unreal — the one with the crispy guanciale"
- "That hidden rooftop — looks like it's behind the bookshop"
- "Went viral for the smash burger. Need to try on a weekend"
A note like this will feel invaluable six months from now when you're trying to remember why something made your list.
Step 8 — Choose a Collection
Select which collection to add this place to. Your existing collections will be shown — tap the one that fits.
If none of your current collections feel right for this place, you can create a new collection on the spot without leaving the review flow. Give the new collection a name and category, and the place will be saved directly into it.
This is particularly useful when a video introduces you to a whole new type of place or a city you haven't saved anything for yet — you can create a dedicated collection right there and then.
Step 9 — Save
Tap save. The pin moves from your pending imports list into the collection you chose. It's now a saved place in Nifl — visible on the map, schedulable in the Calendar, and eligible to surface a proximity notification when you're nearby.
How to Save a Place from Instagram
The process for Instagram is identical to TikTok:
- Find a Reel or post featuring a place you want to save
- Tap the share icon (the paper plane icon below the post)
- Tap More or scroll to find Nifl in the share options
- Select Nifl — the video or post is sent to your Imports tab
- Open Nifl, go to Imports, and review the pending pin
- Follow steps 5–9 above to confirm, describe, and save
Instagram Reels work particularly well with this method — short videos that focus on a specific place give Nifl plenty of context to work with.
Tips for Getting the Most Out of Quick Shares
Don't wait to review — but don't stress if you do. The best habit is to share videos to Nifl as you discover them, then do a short review session every day or two — five minutes to go through your pending pins, confirm the matches, and assign them to collections. But if your imports pile up, that's fine too. They'll wait.
Share even when you're not sure. If a video shows somewhere that looks interesting but you're not 100% committed, share it anyway. It costs you nothing and the review step lets you decide properly before it becomes a permanent save. The pending state is a low-commitment holding area, not a forever list.
Use the description field properly. The context from the original video fades fast. When you're reviewing a pin — even if it's only an hour after you shared the video — write down what caught your attention. The video won't always be easy to find again.
Create new collections as you discover new cities. If you share a video about a restaurant in Lisbon and you've never saved anything in Lisbon before, create a "Lisbon" collection during the review step. Next time you find something else in Lisbon, it already has a home.
Add Nifl to your main share sheet row. On iOS, you can customise which apps appear in the top row of the share sheet. Adding Nifl to that row means you never have to scroll to find it — one tap and the video is sent. To do this: when sharing any content, scroll to the right in the app icon row, tap "More", find Nifl, and toggle it on. Then drag it to your preferred position.
Why This Method Matters
TikTok and Instagram have fundamentally changed how people discover places. Food recommendations, travel spots, hidden gems, neighbourhood guides — more and more of this discovery happens through short videos on social platforms.
But those platforms aren't built to help you act on what you find. A saved TikTok video gets buried. An Instagram bookmark goes unvisited. The discovery happens; the intention evaporates.
Quick Shares is Nifl's answer to exactly this problem. It treats the moment you share a video as the moment of intention — and immediately gives that intention a home. By the time you're ready to actually plan a visit, the place is already in your collection, with a note, on the map, waiting for you.
This is what Nifl means by turning intentions into plans. It doesn't require you to change how you discover things — you can keep finding places wherever you find them. Nifl just makes sure those discoveries don't disappear.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does it work with all TikTok and Instagram videos? It works best with videos that clearly feature a specific place — restaurant reviews, travel content, location-focused Reels. Videos that mention a place only briefly or in passing may produce less accurate results, which is why the review step exists — you always confirm before anything is permanently saved.
What if Nifl can't identify the place from the video? If Nifl can't find a match automatically, you can search for the correct place manually during the review step. Type the name or address of the place and select it from the results — the rest of the flow continues as normal.
Can I share videos from other apps too? Nifl's share extension works with any app that uses iOS's native share sheet. TikTok and Instagram are the most common sources, but you can share from other video or content apps that support iOS sharing.
How many pending pins can I have at once? There's no limit on how many videos you can share and queue up. Your Imports tab will hold all of them until you've reviewed them.
Can I delete a pending pin without saving it? Yes — if you open a pending pin in the review view and decide you don't actually want to save it, you can dismiss it without adding it to a collection.
Does sharing a video to Nifl post anything or notify anyone? No. Sharing to Nifl is a private action. Nothing is posted, nothing is shared with other users, and no notification is sent to the creator of the video. It's purely a personal save.
Will Nifl keep working if TikTok or Instagram changes? Nifl uses iOS's native share sheet, which is independent of TikTok and Instagram's own features. As long as those apps support iOS sharing — which is a standard iOS capability — the flow will continue to work.
Other Ways to Save Places in Nifl
Quick Shares is one of three saving methods in Nifl. Depending on how you found a place, a different method might suit you better:
- Quick add from the map — press and hold anywhere on the map to drop a pin instantly. Best for browsing an area.
- Search and add within a collection — search for a specific place by name and add it with full details. Best when you know exactly what you're looking for.
Stop losing places you find on TikTok. Download Nifl on the App Store.