Recently, we added some functionality to the app including a Pedigree View and Photo Hints.

Pedigree View

There are two ways to view your tree on the iOS app.  The Pedigree view shows direct ancestors.  The Family view shows all relationships including siblings, spouses, and children. Toggle between these views with the buttons at the top of your screen.

Photo Hints

For the past year or so, the iOS app has provided you with hints to records about your ancestors.  With the new Photo Hints you can now find pictures of your ancestors, too. Plus you can easily share your discoveries with friends and family on Facebook, Twitter, or email.

Download or Update Your Ancestry App Today

Haven’t tried the Ancestry app out yet? iPhone or iPad users can download it here:  iTunes. Android users will find the app at Google Play or Amazon Appstore. (The Android app doesn’t have photo hints yet, but stay tuned.)  If you have already downloaded the Ancestry app, check your updates to be sure you have the latest version.  

A recent update to the Ancestry app for Android introduced hints so members can make new family discoveries from the convenience of their phone or tablet. The app automatically syncs with members’ trees on Ancestry.com so they can view or update their tree anywhere.

It’s an honor to be one of Google’s top picks, but we’re not finished yet. We still have a lot of plans to improve the mobile experience and a list of feature requests from our members to work through.

A big thanks to the product and development teams who played a part in the apps making.

Let’s take a closer look at what’s new…

Record Hints

“Shaky leaves” on people in your tree indicate that we may have found a record for this person. You can view the records right from the app anywhere you are with an internet connection. Tap on the person to view their profile, and then tap on “Hints”.

If the record is a good match, you can easily save the information from the record to your tree. Many records contain information about other family members—you can just as easily save the record to them as well.

Filters

The “3 bar” icon in the top left of the screen opens a list of all the people in your family tree. If you begin typing in the search bar, the list below automatically updates based on what you’re typing. This is very helpful if you are looking for someone specific in a large tree.

In addition, by tapping “All people in tree,” you have access to a variety of useful filters. For example, Direct Ancestors will update the list of people to show only people directly related to the tree’s home person, and the End of Line filter helps you find areas of your tree that need more research. The bottom two options will show a list of people in your tree that have hints or only those that have received new hints in the last 7 days.

We hope you like this update. Don’t hesitate to let us know what you think or what other features you would like to see.

Download the Ancestry app for Android. Don’t have an Android device? Download our iOS app.

From anywhere on the site you can click on the leaf in the menu bar to see a list of your new hints and review them right then or come back to them later. Clicking on an individual hint will take you to the Person Hint List to review hints for that person, and clicking on “See all recent hints” takes you to the All Hints Page to review all hints in your tree, which are listed by the most recent.

If you have several trees, but are only active on some of them, you can also set your preferences so you’re only notified about hints in the trees you’re actively working on. Hint Preferences are located on the Site Preferences page – just click on Site Preferences from the dropdown menu under your username.

Additionally, we’ve heard from some members that they are less interested in hints to other member trees than other hints, such as record hints.  We want to make sure that this new feature, as well as Ancestry Hints in general, is useful to everyone.  Now in Hint Preferences (found in Site Preferences) you can choose whether to display your Member Tree hints or not. This setting can remove Member Tree hints from the tree viewer, hint notifications, hint lists, hint counts, etc. Member Tree hints are still accessible, however they’ll only be found in the Member Tree view on the All Hints page (it will say “OFF”, but you can still click to see any Member Tree hints you may have). If you turn Member Tree hints back on they’ll reappear throughout the site.

We hope that these new features will help you to get the most from the hints in your family tree and make more meaningful discoveries. Let us know what you think. As you use this new feature, please take this survey to share your thoughts with us.

So how does Ancestry determine who’s living and who’s not in your family tree? This happens a couple of ways: First, when you add or edit a person on Ancestry.com you set whether the person is deceased or living—and we respect that setting. Secondly, if you add someone through a GEDCOM upload or link a tree from your Family Tree Maker software (where there’s not a living/deceased setting), then we calculate the living status based on the following rules:

1. First we look for death information, anyone with death information (date, place, etc.) is dead—that one’s easy.
2. If there’s not death information entered we look for a birth date, anyone younger than 100 is considered living.
3. The tricky part is if we don’t have birth or death information. In this case we look at the birth dates of close relatives to estimate a birthdate; if the birthdate is less than 100 years ago, they are considered to be living.
4. If all else fails and we can’t make a safe estimate, we assume the person is living to err on the safe side.

There may be times when you’ll want to let others see living people in your family tree. You can share your tree with others and give them permission to view living people, or take it away, at any time (go to your tree, under Tree Pages select Tree Setting, and click on the Sharing tab). We encourage you to be thoughtful about what you share on Ancestry.com, please only post living information you have permission to, especially when sharing with others.

Privacy of living information should be taken seriously—it’s a priority for us. For additional information about how we keep living information safe or to learn about other privacy topics, read our privacy philosophy.

Was this article helpful? Let us know.