Ancestry’s ‘Historical Insights’ are totally irrelevant

Ancestry has recently introduced a ‘Historical Insights’ feature on its iPad app which I understand will roll out to the PC version in the near future.

This feature clutters up an individual’s timeline with general historical facts and events that are not necessarily relevant to the person.

Most of the insights are geared to their American users – for instance my own timeline details my birth and marriage but also the fact that the first Polaroid camera was sold five years before I was born for $ 89 – annoying and irrelevant.

While the introduction of this feature might at first seem like a useful tool to some people, I was amazed to see that there is no option to turn it off – once you update to

Ian Cole is no fan of the new ‘Historical Insights’s feature on Ancestry the latest version of the app it is there for good. Bearing in mind that Ancestry does provide an option to turn off its shaking leaf ‘Hints’ feature (which is at least directly relevant to a tree) not to do so for the Insights is surely a serious error of judgement on the part of its development team. Ian Cole, Stourbridge, West Midlands

Editor replies: I have got in touch with Ancestry and their spokesperson said: “While the historical information on the app’s timeline can help some people contextualise their ancestors’ lives, we appreciate others may not require this feature. We will be discontinuing the ‘Quick Historical Facts’ feature at the beginning of 2015, and are working towards allowing users to hide the ‘Historical Insights’ (facts related more specifically to an ancestor) in further updates.”