# Lists

Sort the boats you follow into lists, keep a note on each, share a list so other members can subscribe to it, and subscribe to lists other members share. Includes when to use a list and when to use a fleet.

A list is a set of boats you keep together, the way a playlist keeps songs: your favourite boats, the wooden ones in your bay, the superyachts you photograph. Adding another boat to **Favorites** or a custom list follows her. The automatic **Boats you photographed** list and lists you subscribe to work differently, as explained below. Your own linked boat can be on a custom list without using a follow slot. If what you want is a group whose boats all see one another and share a chat, that is a fleet rather than a list: [Lists or a fleet?](#lists-or-a-fleet)

Open **Lists** in the map's controls and the panel shows your lists, each with a switch that draws its boats on the map. **All on** and **All off** at the top set every one of them. Switch a list off and its boats leave the map, the ones in view included: they show as ordinary traffic until you switch a list holding them back on. You still follow them, and a boat's page still says so. Tap a list for its boats, grouped by what they are doing, with a line each on where she is and when she was heard.

## Favorites, and the boats you photographed

Two lists are yours from the start and never count against your plan's list number.

- **Favorites** is the list the **Follow** button fills. Every boat you followed before lists existed is on it. It notifies you about its boats from the start, and it cannot be renamed or deleted.
- **Boats you photographed** builds itself from your uploads: a vessel joins when you send a photo of her and leaves when you delete your last one from the **Photos** tab. It starts switched off and quiet, cannot be edited by hand, and cannot be shared. It appears once it holds a boat, and it keeps your switch while it holds none, so a photo you send later never puts the boats you photographed on the map uninvited. **The boats on it are not follows**: they cost you nothing, tell their owners nothing, and show you what AIS shows.

## Make a list

Choose **New list** at the bottom of the Lists panel. A name is all it needs; a description is optional, and so is a note on any boat ("steam engine from 1930"), which everyone who can see the list can read.

Three ways to put a boat on a list:

- **From the map.** Tap any vessel and choose **Add to list** on her panel: tick the lists she belongs on, or make a new one with her already on it. **Follow** on the same row puts her on Favorites.
- **From the list.** Open the list and choose **Add boats**, which searches by name, MMSI, call sign or IMO number; tapping a result adds her and brings you back.
- **Paste MMSIs.** Under the list's settings, paste nine-digit MMSIs separated any way you like and add them all at once. The result says how many were added, were already there, were beyond your plan, or are waiting for AIS data: a boat nobody has heard yet joins by herself once a receiver hears her.

A boat counts once toward your plan however many of your lists she is on. Taking a boat off her last list stops following her, and the panel says so, naming the lists she is leaving, before it does.

**Adding a boat to your list can notify a linked AIS Fleet member or Saillogger owner**, naming the list. Most vessels have no linked account to notify. The owner's notification settings determine how the notice reaches them.

Boats are listed in the order you added them, and **Move to top** on the settings page puts one first. That order matters once you share the list: a subscriber on a smaller plan sees the first boats first.

Each list has its own notice rows, behind the row at the top of the list's roster and on its settings page: the departure and arrival notices, in the app and by e-mail, and, once your boat is linked and heard on AIS, a second row that tells you when one of its boats comes within a distance you choose of your boat. Favorites is on from the start, at 3 nautical miles for the second row; every other list is quiet until you turn it on. A boat notifies you when any list she is on says so, and her own switch under [Notification settings](https://aisfleet.com/docs/departures-and-arrivals.md#choosing-what-reaches-you) can only quieten her. [When a boat comes near yours](https://aisfleet.com/docs/departures-and-arrivals.md#near-your-boat)

## Share a list

Turn **Public** on under the list's settings and a link appears. Anyone signed in to AIS Fleet with that link sees the list, your notes, and your name (your boat's name when one is linked), and can subscribe to it.

Sharing a list tells nobody: the boats' owners heard when you added them, and nothing else changes for them. Turn Public off and the link stops working; subscribers are told the list is no longer shared. Delete the list and they are told it ended. A list's link is never given to another list.

**There is no directory of public lists.** A list reaches people by its link, so it is worth putting somewhere people will find it: a forum post, a club page, a caption. The photographed list cannot be shared at all.

## Subscribe to a list

Open a link somebody shared and the list appears in your Lists panel with **Subscribe** at the top, so you can look before you commit. It also tells you how many of its boats your plan will keep, before you decide.

Subscribing puts its boats on your map and, once you turn the notices on, tells you when they depart or arrive; every change its creator makes reaches you as it happens. The creator's other public lists are offered under the same list.

**Subscribing does not make you a follower of each boat.** Her owner is not told, you are not on her followers page, it opens no messages, and you see of each boat what AIS shows. A notice that reaches you through a subscribed list names the list it came from and carries no message action. **Follow** a boat you want to keep whatever happens to the list, and she is yours on Favorites.

Subscribed lists have a switch for the map and their own notice rows, off until you turn them on, the nearby row included. **Unsubscribe** is behind the **Notifications and unsubscribing** row at the top of the list.

## What your plan counts

Your plan sets how many lists you keep, made and subscribed to counted together, besides Favorites and the boats you photographed. See [Plans and billing](https://aisfleet.com/docs/plans-and-billing.md).

The boats across your lists count toward the same follow limit as the boats you follow directly, and a boat on two lists counts once.

Subscribe to a list bigger than the room you have left and its first boats fill it; the rest wait under **Beyond your plan**, listed but not drawn and not announced. That is a plan limit rather than a fault, and the group says so. A boat you follow is always covered first, so following one is how you choose which boats fill your room. Make room, or move up a plan, and the rest come through.

Move down a plan and the lists beyond it pause. The Lists panel groups them under **Not on your plan**, with the plan screen as their one action; a paused list of yours is frozen (nothing added, nothing drawn, no notices) until you make room or move up again, while anyone subscribed to it keeps seeing it as it was. A list that its creator stopped sharing, or deleted, is grouped under **No longer available** until you remove it.

The same goes for the boats you follow: past your follow limit, the boats you followed first stay live and the rest wait under **Beyond your plan**, still yours and still listed, until you unfollow one or move up.

## Lists or a fleet? {#lists-or-a-fleet}

Both put a group of boats on your map. What they do beyond that is not the same thing at all.

**A list is something you do; a fleet is something a group does together.** Putting a boat on a list is one way: she joins nothing, and neither she nor her owner sees the list unless you make it public. No agreement is needed and none is asked for. A well-known expedition boat can be on thousands of strangers' lists without being in a group with any of them.

A fleet runs the other way. Everyone in it sees the same roster, reads the same chat including what was said before they arrived, and can write to any of the others one to one. [What everyone in a fleet shares](https://aisfleet.com/docs/fleets.md#what-everyone-shares)

| What differs | A list | A fleet |
|---|---|---|
| Who adds a boat | You, to a list of your own | Its organizer, to a shared roster |
| Which way it runs | One way. You watch her | Both ways. Everyone sees everyone |
| What her owner sees of it | Nothing, unless you publish it | The whole roster, from the day she joins |
| A chat | None | One, including what came before her |
| Who else can see it | Nobody, unless you publish it | Its boats. A fleet started on Saillogger can also have a public map |
| What it costs you | A follow per boat, and one of your lists | Being in one uses one of your active fleets. Running one is a separate allowance on a paid plan |

**A list add is quiet, not invisible.** Adding a boat to Favorites or a custom list follows her, and whoever is linked to her here is told: an AIS Fleet member who has [claimed her](https://aisfleet.com/docs/claim-your-boat.md), that is, proved she is theirs, or the Saillogger owner behind her MMSI. A custom list is named in that notice; Favorites arrives as a new follower. From then on you are on her followers page, either of you can write to the other, and her owner can remove you as a follower, which also takes her off every list of yours she was on.

**A fleet add reaches further, and only some boats can answer it.** An organizer can put any MMSI on a roster, but only a boat with an account behind her, claimed on AIS Fleet or logging with Saillogger, has anybody in the roster and the chat; the rest are markers on the fleet's map. A boat claimed here is always told when she is added, whatever her owner's notification settings say, and can leave in one tap. A boat nobody has claimed can be put on a roster with nobody to tell. What a membership carries is also bounded by your own plan: past the fleets it keeps active, one is listed and carries nothing.

A boat can be on your lists and in your fleets at once. On the chart she is drawn as a boat you follow, which is why switching her fleet off does not take her away.

### Which one you want

- **You are watching one or two particular ships**, a cruise ship somebody is aboard, a ferry, a training ship. Neither. Follow each one and she arrives on **Favorites**, which is a list you already have. Lists start to matter once Favorites holds more boats than you want to read at once.
- **Your friends are boaters and you are not.** You want to see where they get to and hear when they set off. Follow each of their boats, so they are on Favorites together. They are told you followed, and nothing else is asked of them.
- **You want the classic wooden hulls in your bay in one place, and the tugs in another.** Lists, one per theme. Those boats have no connection to one another, or to you, and none is needed.
- **You are building a reference other people should be able to use**, say every nineteenth-century hull still afloat. A list with **Public** turned on. Anyone signed in who has the link can subscribe, as far as their own plan's list number allows, and what you add later reaches them as you add it. [Share a list](#share-a-list)
- **You own a boat from a small builder and the other owners already have a group.** A fleet puts their boats on one map with a chat. Add the boats whose owners have agreed to be on it: each claimed boat's owner is told when you add her, they see one another on the roster, and any of them can leave. [Run a fleet](https://aisfleet.com/docs/fleets.md#run-a-fleet)
- **Your club's boats should see one another and have somewhere to talk.** A fleet, built from the MMSIs of the members who have agreed to be on it, on a paid plan. You do not need a boat of your own to run one, so a club secretary can do it from the desk. One fleet holds up to 100 boats. If what you want instead is a map of the club's boats that you can hand to anyone, that is a public list.
- **Most of your club has never signed in here.** A list, for now. A boat with no account behind her gets a marker on a fleet's map and nothing else: nobody to read the roster, and nobody to answer in the chat. Start the fleet once enough of their owners are here.

A list cannot be turned into a fleet, or a fleet into a list. The two are built separately, a fleet's roster boat by boat.

> [!NEXT]
> The other way boats are grouped here, and the one that runs both ways: [Fleets](https://aisfleet.com/docs/fleets.md).