A short guide

There is no password to remember. Type your email, and we send you a link. Tap the link and you are in. If the email doesn’t arrive in a minute, check the spam folder - and the link works best on the same phone or computer where you asked for it.

Tap Record a story. Nothing is required first - not even a title. Do any of these, in any order, now or later:

• Press record and just talk.
• Add a photograph (or several).
• Type the story out, if you’d rather write.
• Give it a title, a year and a place, so it lands on the timeline.

The year can be a guess - “about 1975” is perfectly fine. When you’re done, save. It will still be there tomorrow, and in fifty years. A story saved without a title is called “Story 001”, “Story 002” and so on until someone names it.

If a relative records a story but leaves the title or the year for later, the archive’s owner can open it, press Edit this story and tidy those up - the title, the date, the place, the tags, and who appears in it. The words themselves stay the teller’s own: only they can change them.

Not sure where to start? The timeline also offers a row of memorable moments - being born, a first job, meeting a partner, and so on. Tap one and it leads with that question instead of a blank page.

Add one photo or many. Each can have its own caption. The first photo is the “cover” that shows on the timeline; open Manage photos on a story to reorder them, choose a different cover, fix a caption, or add more later.

If it comes out on its side - a scan fed in the wrong way round, or a picture the phone did not record the right way up - tap Turn or trim beside it before you save. Turn left, turn right, and, if you want it, a box you drag to cut off whatever is round the edges. Do it then rather than later: once a photograph is saved we never alter the file again, which is what keeps the original safe.

iPhone photos are handled for you - the format iPhones use is converted automatically, keeping the location if the photo carries one. Tap a photo to zoom right in on a single face. And you can tag who is in each photograph, so their page later gathers every picture they appear in.

A recording is the heart of this. Press record and speak; the file is safe on your phone before anything uploads. Afterwards it is written up automatically, and when you play it back the words highlight line by line - tap any line to jump straight to that moment.

The machine will mishear a name now and then. Tap to correct the written copy; the original recording is never changed, and your corrections sit on top. Once you have corrected it, the words that follow along are your words - the corrected ones, still highlighting in time with the voice - so a surname you put right is put right everywhere you can see it. You can add a recording to a story you wrote earlier, too.

Already have the recording? Choose a file instead of pressing record - a voice memo off a phone, or a tape someone digitised years ago. MP3, M4A, WAV, OGG and FLAC all work, up to 25 MB, and an uploaded recording is written up the same way as one made here.

Not sure the microphone is working? Test your microphone first shows a live level bar before you record a word - it records nothing itself, so there’s nothing to undo.

Didn’t come out right? You don’t have to start again. Open the story, choose Edit, and under the player you’ll find Trim - two sliders that set where the recording starts and where it stops, so the throat clearing at the front and the “was that alright?” at the end simply aren’t played. Nothing is cut: the whole recording is still kept, and clearing the trim brings it all back, this year or in thirty. Press play, pause where you want the new start, and tap Use playhead.

If you would rather do it again, Remove this recording (also under Edit) sends it to the recycle bin, and Add a recordingis right there to make another. It isn’t gone - an owner can put it back, or delete it for good.

Tap Start a video session and, on a computer, you get a live preview with a camera and microphone picker before you record. On a phone it opens your own camera instead - better quality, and the clip is saved to your camera roll first. You can also choose a video you already have. It may take a minute to be ready to play - that happens on its own, no need to wait on the page.

Most home videos start with ten seconds of “is it recording?”. You can hide that without cutting the file: open Trim, drag the start and end handles (or use “Use playhead” to set them to where the video is paused), and save. The original is never altered - the trim just tells the player where to begin and end.

Some people find it easier to answer a question than to face a blank page. Turn on weekly questions from Email alerts, and once a week you’ll get one warm question by email with a button that opens straight into a pre-filled story - one tap to start answering.

Miss a week and nothing piles up; the next email just asks a new question. Answer early, or add any story of your own, and you won’t be asked about the same thing twice. An archive owner can also write their own questions or reorder the list from Weekly questions in Archive settings.

Under any story or photograph, anyone in the family can add a memory - typed, or spoken aloud (which gets written up like any recording). One photograph then gathers everyone’s recollections in one place, instead of scattering into copies. If you remember it differently, say so: both versions are kept, and nothing decides who is right.

Give each relative their own page under People - names, dates (approximate is fine), places, and a note. Their page gathers every story and photograph they’re in, and any voice notes recorded about them.

On a person’s page you can record parents, partners and children; brothers, cousins and grandparents work themselves out from those. From there, open the family tree and walk four generations - every name links back to that person’s stories and a recording of their voice. If the same person was added twice, an editor can merge the duplicate in from their page (nothing is lost - the other record goes to the recycle bin).

Being in the tree grants no access on its own. Who can see and do what is set only by the archive’s owner, by role.

The person whose voice you most want is often the one least at home with an app. When you invite them, you can say who they are in the tree and tick Start them on the simpler screen. The first thing they see after signing in is their own name - “Are you Nana Ann?” - and one tap links their account to their place in the family.

After that their screen has two big buttons and nothing else: Tell a story and Add a photograph. Telling a story is press the red button, talk, press stop, then a name and a year if they want one - both can be left empty and tidied later. A photograph works the same way: choose the picture, then talk about it.

It is the same archive - what they record appears on the timeline like anything else, and you can give it a title, a year and a place afterwards without touching their words. You can switch the simpler screen on for an existing member from the members page too. They can always switch it off themselves under Your account.

Tap the magnifying glass at the top of any screen and a search box opens. Type a name, a place, or any word you remember - it looks through every story, every photograph caption, everything that was said out loud in a recording, and everyone in the family tree, all at once.

A recording that matches comes with a Listen link that takes you to the exact moment the word was said, not just to the story. That is the one to try when you half-remember somebody mentioning something and have no idea which story it was in.

You only ever find things you are allowed to see. A story somebody kept private, or shared with a few people you are not among, does not appear - not even as a title.

Two other ways round: the year labels down the side of the timeline (and the decade list on a computer) jump you through the decades, and tapping a tag on a story shows everything else with that tag.

As an archive fills up, the timeline starts showing busy years a little more tightly: the first story or two, then a row saying “23 more from 1968” with small pictures of what is in there. Tap it and they all open. A quiet decade goes the other way - the whole ten years arrive as one card you can open. Nothing is ever hidden or thrown away, and the decade list beside the timeline shows you where your archive is thickest.

The archive is private - walled off from every other family’s at the deepest level, no public feed, no advertising. When you want to show someone outside the family a story or the timeline, the owner can create a read-only share link (under Members → Share links). Living relatives are kept private by default, private stories are never included, and the link can be turned off at any moment.

At the top of the timeline there is Show these on the television, and on anybody’s page the same thing for just their stories. It plays the archive as a slideshow - each story’s photographs in turn, and where somebody recorded themselves telling it, their voice plays over their pictures. Press Start and leave it; it keeps the screen from going to sleep on its own. Tap or click anywhere for Pause, Back, Next and a way to turn the sound off, and the buttons get out of the way again by themselves. On a keyboard, the space bar pauses and the arrow keys move.

Private stories, and ones shared with only a few people, are left out of it. A television is a room rather than a screen - whoever is sitting there will see whatever comes up - so the slideshow only plays what the whole family can see.

There’s no separate TV app, but there doesn’t need to be - the archive is just a web page, so any way you already show a web page on a TV works. On an iPhone or Mac, use AirPlay; on Android or a laptop with Chrome, use Cast(sometimes called “Chromecast”). Both mirror the browser tab straight to the television - open the timeline or a story first, then cast the tab.

For Nana in the nursing home or an uncle on the other side of the world, the simplest thing is often a share link (see Sharing, above) opened once on whatever screen they already use - a tablet, a smart TV browser, a nursing home computer - and left there. No login, nothing to set up twice, and the owner can turn the link off later if it’s no longer needed.

Deleting is safe. A deleted story, photo, recording or person goes to a recycle bin the owner can restore from - it isn’t gone for good until the owner says so. In the bin they can tick one item and Delete ticked for good, leaving everything else where it is, or Empty the bin and clear the lot. Either way it asks first, and either way the files go too. If a photo or video ever fails to process, a Try again appears; one tap re-runs it.

And the whole archive is yours to walk away with. From Download & share a copy in Archive settings, the owner can request a complete copy - every story, photograph, recording, video and the family tree - as plain web pages plus the original files, and a family-tree file any genealogy program reads. It opens with no login and no company required, and comes with a link the owner can send to the rest of the family so anyone can download it too, no account needed.

The same copy includes book.pdf - every story laid out as pages, photographs and all, ready to print at home or take to a photo-book service if you’d like a physical copy on a shelf.

Want a book about just one or two people instead of the whole archive? Make a book, also in Archive settings, skips the wait - tick who it’s about (or leave everyone unticked for the whole archive) and a download link is usually ready in under a minute, no note to leave and nothing to wait on.