How to use Ancestry’s revamped mobile app

Nick Peers reveals some of the major changes and improvements made to the Ancestry app

You’re in for a surprise if you’ve not used Ancestry’s app for iOS and Android recently: it just got a major facelift to go with the slew of improvements made over the past year. Not only has it received a complete redesign, but the app has taken on the functionality of the previously separate AncestryDNA app while adding a ‘Discover’ tab to provide an at-a-glance view of updates to your tree.

In this month’s article, we’ll walk you through the major new features you can access now. One of them – Ancestry Stories – is something we’ll be covering separately in detail in a few issues’ time, when we hope two new features (the ability to incorporate records and events from your tree into your Stories) will have been implemented.

Another new feature that we’ll be discussing in more depth in a future issue is one that’s only just starting to roll out. Photo Editor allows you to both colourise and automatically enhance the photos you upload to your family tree using artificial intelligence. At the time of writing it’s still in Beta, and is only available to select users – check the Top Tip to see where you’ll be able to access it once it’s live.

1

New Homepage After logging into the app, you’ll start at the ‘Discover’ tab, which is split into two sections: ‘For you’ is your personal homepage, while ‘All hints’ allows you to review all of the latest hints attached to your tree. Your personal homepage is packed with suggestions, anniversaries and links to more useful content and resources.

2

Never Forget A Date Upcoming birthdays and other anniversaries can be shared with other people and apps – tap the “…” button next to one to share it. You can also add anniversaries as a widget if you’re on iOS. To set it up, navigate to the Widgets view from your phone’s homescreen (keep swiping left), then scroll down, tap ‘Edit’ and finally tap ‘+’ to select Ancestry.

3

Create Stories At the top of the ‘Discovery’ tab, you’ll be invited to create your first slideshow for Ancestry Stories. Tap ‘Add story’ to get started – you’ll be prompted to select an ancestor, then create a slideshow mixing various content: title slide, short biography, photographs, freeform text, and more to follow. Once done, publish it to your tree to share with others.

4

Revamped Tree View Switch to the ‘Tree’ tab where you can now expand your tree to show more than six generations at once – tap the ‘^’ button above an ancestor to expand their tree above yours. Also, a new ‘Tree Gallery’ button in the top-righthand corner lets you view – and edit – all of the photographs in your tree from a single browsable list. Tap this to bring the list into view.

5

Tag Faces In Your Tree The Tree Gallery now supports face tagging: tap a photograph followed by the ‘i’ button. Even if it’s marked as tagged, tap ‘Edit’ followed by ‘Tag photo’. You should see a box around your relation’s head: tap this, then either select their name if it’s listed or use the search tool to add their name manually. Tap ‘Done’ to apply the tag.

6

Identify Tagged Photos Going forward, when you browse through your family history gallery, look for a tiny head icon next to a photograph that indicates it’s been tagged to one or more people in your tree. When the new Photo Editor goes live (see the Top Tip), you’ll also see a wand icon appear next to photos that you’ve colourised or enhanced.

7

Scan Photos Add photographs using the ‘+’ button at the bottom of the gallery – choose ‘Scan photos (beta)’ to access a new tool to scan multiple photos at once. It’s simple to use – you can even tap the mic icon to take the photo using your voice so you can keep your camera steady. Once done, each photo is cropped, straightened and uploaded separately.

8

Share Your Tree Another recent improvement is the ability to configure tree sharing directly from the app. Tap the share icon in the Tree view to invite a new user – select their desired role (guest, contributor or editor) and send the invitation. To edit existing shareduser permissions, you can navigate to your tree settings via the icon in the top-lefthand corner.

9

DNA Features The AncestryDNA app is no more – its features are now incorporated into the main Ancestry app via the ‘DNA Story’ and ‘Matches’ tabs. You’ll need to purchase and then activate an AncestryDNA kit before you can use the tabs to trace your lineage on a map and find matches who’ve shared their DNA with the company.