my genealogy life

Family stories are my buried treasure

Tracing ancestors in Canada, England, Scotland & Ireland

Sharing my love of digging through old documents, uncovering family stories, and sharing the real papers that bring our ancestors back to life.

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Don’t Miss Out on an Event in Your Family Tree by Using This Neat Trick

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by

Patricia Greber
in ,

Do you want to know if today was the day your grandparents were married or a cousin’s birthday?

If you have an iPhone and one of the genealogy apps you can do a few quick things to see what was happening on this day in your family tree. (I am guessing this can also be done on an android phone).

The first thing you will need to do is download the Ancestry app or whatever genealogy program you are using to your phone. You can find it by doing a search in the app store.

 

(These are the apps I use but I am guessing Legacy and others may also have this option)

Once you have downloaded the app you can allow notifications from the app but there is also another thing you can do.

On the iPhone from your home screen, you have the ability to swipe all the way right to left and you will reach a shortcut screen. Here you can select various items like weather, news and your genealogy app.

How you do this is at the very bottom you will see an edit button, selecting that takes you to the Widget page. This page allows you to add or take-away what is being shown on your shortcuts.

 

IMG_1417
My Widget page
The red – means to take away a widget and if you scroll further down you will see a green +. Select what you want to see on your shortcut screen and voila, your notifications will look like this. Because of this I rarely miss an event from my Family Tree.

 

IMG_1416
Today marks the marriage of my great Aunt Mabel
I check this feature every day and will often use the event as a blog post.

 

 

 

Comments

8 responses to “Don’t Miss Out on an Event in Your Family Tree by Using This Neat Trick”

  1. Dianne Avatar
    Dianne

    Wow! Thanks. I haven’t been using that screen on my iPad. Now added my ancestry widget and works great.
    My phone on the other hand is Android. Our swipe to the left is a screen for news, travel, business etc and I don’t use that either… Pooooh! In android you add widgets to your Home screen by tap/hold any blank space on the Home screen. But even tho I have the Ancestry app, it doesn’t give me a widget.
    If anyone else has android and knows how to get the widget, I’d appreciate the heads up. It’s such a good idea!

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    1. Patricia Greber Avatar
      Patricia Greber

      It is super handy. I hope you get some insight on how to do it with an Android.

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  2. Dianne Avatar
    Dianne

    I just wrote to Ancestry help and waiting for a reply….

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  3. Patricia Greber Avatar
    Patricia Greber

    Great idea, keep me posted on what you find out.

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  4. schmidtbarbara Avatar
    schmidtbarbara

    thanks, that is a great find!

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    1. Patricia Greber Avatar
      Patricia Greber

      Glad you will be able to use this Barbara.

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  5. Dianne Avatar
    Dianne

    So… update from Ancestry. The “support” person I was chatting with didn’t really know what I was talking about. Asked for a screenshot, which I sent from my iPad.
    Reply: Oh you can get notifications by going into settings and allowing notifications.
    Me: I have notifications. That’s not what I want. I want the widget to work on my android like it does on iOS. Sent another screenshot as this one showed I would have family events in three days.
    Reply: Let me check with APP guy. *wait* APP guy says no widget for android, developers are looking into it, but no idea when.
    Luck for me I have both!

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    1. Patricia Greber Avatar
      Patricia Greber

      Thanks for the update. Hopefully it will be available soon on android devices!

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