FamilySearch Apps Gallery

I prepared a list of apps and a little information on them to share in a class.

To my surprise, the number of free apps shown varied depending how you chose to view them.
Inputting FREE in the search form brings up an alphabetical list of 44 apps. But choosing the FREE filter instead produces an alphabetical list of 85 apps! What a difference!

These some that I personally found particularly interesting. I don't expect your interests to be the same as mine. And my opinions may not reflect official opinions seen elsewhere.

All the stories – I loved it. It is a single-purpose app that gathers all of the (text) Stories of your ancestors and their siblings for 9 generations. Unlike memories Gallery it includes stories by others.

Ancestors with Memories in Family Tree - Searches for ancestors who have memories in the Family Tree including photos, stories, documents and audio recordings. [I like it!]

FamilySearch Family Tree for Android and iOS is a handy way to take your genealogy with you when you are offline, including default portraits.

FamilySearch Memories for Android and iOS is an easy way to create audio files and upload them automatically.

Find-A-Record is useful for improving your FT records. [Useful but very picky!]

Grandma's Pie – shows a colorful pie chart of the countries where your ancestors were born. 

It allowed me to identify ancestors whose birth places were wrongly standardized as “Scotland, St Helena” instead of “Scotland”. [Unfortunately countries of christening are not shown.]

Hope Chest automates the process of finding ordinances that may be available (green temple icons) in your part of Family Tree. Opinions of whether this is a good thing are sharply divided.

Lexmark Capture Application Web - Any user can walk up to any Lexmark multi function device in a Family History center and automatically scan their family's birth certificates, death certificates, pictures, etc and route them to their own FamilyTree.

Ordinances Needed for Your Relatives This app shows opportunities for Requesting Ordinances in your Family Tree. When finished the results are displayed in a table which can be copied to an Excel spreadsheet. [Hope Chest does this more elegantly, but this one may give better control.]

Puzzilla Descendants Viewer helps researchers see descendants in FamilyTree using compact symbols that reveal patterns of incomplete research and other work in collateral-lines. Names and details appear as you move the pointer over the symbols. [free and paid versions]

RecordSeek – is a web app that does most of the work of Create a Source if the source is outside of FS. You find the source (on any website), click the RecordSeek link and attach the source to the person in FT. [If you don't know the person's ID, you can look them up in the app.]

Relativefinder.org can be fun and inspirational. It converted my wife to family history! Relative Finder reports how you are related to your friends, presidents, royalty, LDS church leaders, etc.RootsMapper is a free, open source web site that allows you to easily visualize the migration patterns of your ancestors. It utilizes the data that already exists in your FamilySearch Family Tree to plot your ancestors onto an interactive map. [A perennial favorite of its kind.]

Save Your Stuff - Discover how to protect, save and preserve treasured memorabilia, valuable collectibles, precious keepsakes and original family history items. FREE download of fun, easy, how-to preservation manual 210 page multimedia e-book ($27 list value) with over 35 videos embedded in the text. [You will need room to download a 40 MB file.]

TapGenes- Your family's health story Preserve your family's health story because your doctors don’t know you like your family does. [An award winner at RootsTech!]

The Family History Guide The Family History Guide helps you get started - and get farther - with your family history. There are links to over 1,000 videos and articles, all integrated into a step-by-step learning plan for learners of all levels. Projects include Family Tree, Memories, Descendants or Ordinances, Discover (research for over 35 countries), Indexing, Help, and Technology. Classroom materials are also available for instructors who want to teach using The Family History Guide. [This has become widely endorsed since the Members Guide was discontinued.]

TreeSeek.com – We have a wide variety of charts to view your genealogy. Whether you are looking for a fun chart, or a chart to display on your wall, or a working chart to do research, we have a chart for you! [They have rave reviews! The charts include a 9-generation pedigree.]

Virtual Pedigree – Navigating your family tree should be a dynamic experience. Many pedigree visualization tools show your tree as if it were a static sheet of paper. Virtual Pedigree uses elastic paper technology to allow you explore your tree without ever opening a new window. You can you can seamlessly navigate both the descendants and the ancestors of a person. This allows you to easily recognize errors in your tree and Virtual Pedigree will show you hints along the way. Virtual Pedigree will never limit the amount of generations you can view. [BYU-CS]

Ancestral Quest / RootsMagic / Legacy Family Tree are Windows software programs able to sync a personal genealogy database with Family Tree without uploading a gedcom to PRF. (From personal experience, this is much quicker and easier than the gedcom option.) Each has a free version plus an inexpensive version with more capabilities. All three have good support organizations of their own. [AQ and RM are also available for Mac.]

I found that some apps were no improvement over the Memories Gallery, and some seemed confusing and incomplete; and others did just one job, but did it well. (These apps are supported by their creators, so FamilySearch Support only supports the FamilySearch Family Tree App and the FamilySearch Memories App.)