Making fun personal and family discoveries at FamilySearch.org will be easier than ever in 2020. FamilySearch.org, the popular, free genealogy website, has announced some of its plans to enhance user experiences in 2020 through select updates and improvements to records and Family Tree search capabilities. As a global leader in free family history discovery experiences, FamilySearch serves more than 13 million users worldwide.

In 2020, FamilySearch will add over 500 million new viewable digital images and searchable records online, ensuring more exciting discovery opportunities. The following list gives an idea of more fun innovation to anticipate.

Sitewide Support for Additional Languages

FamilySearch has a growing international user base and will translate core user experiences into additional languages in 2020.

Family Tree

The FamilySearch Family Tree is the world’s largest shared tree. In 2020, users will enjoy an improved merge experience. They will be able to learn more and more easily collaborate by combining duplicate profiles for common ancestors.

The Latest Changes feature for ancestor profiles (FamilySearch person pages) will be enhanced, allowing users to see more details of all past edits and changes through the family tree view.

The FamilySearch mobile app will release a cool new My Contributions feature available in both iOS and Android formats, with access on the website to follow. My Contributions will help users organize their family history work in three tabs:

Stats. These stats summarize your contributions to the shared Family Tree. They will include sources and memories attached and persons added.

These stats summarize your contributions to the shared Family Tree. They will include sources and memories attached and persons added. Changes. This item is a list of all your activity in the shared Family Tree. Changes are organized by person, with the most recent on top.

This item is a list of all your activity in the shared Family Tree. Changes are organized by person, with the most recent on top. Private Persons. This tab shows you a list of the living and confidential people you have added to the Family Tree, allowing you to better manage them within your private space. Only you are able to see and modify these profiles.

Memories

A simple but powerful update in Memories will allow users to add topic tags to photos and documents uploaded to FamilySearch.org. This change will improve the ability to categorize memories that users add to their ancestors’ profiles and enable them to search for specific memories among those that have been uploaded.

Users will also be able to "like" whole albums in FamilySearch Memories. Currently, they can only "like" individual photos and other memories so they show up in the My Likes section of their Memories gallery.

Social Interactions and Social Media

In 2020, FamilySearch will make updates to help improve social interactions between users on FamilySearch.org. For example, Family Tree users will find it easy to share the profile pages of their ancestors on social media channels.

Searching Records

A new tool, Explore Images, will be available for viewing new record images within days of their being digitized from archives worldwide and published on FamilySearch.org, not to mention the billions of other historical records images FamilySearch already has online. This feature will give users quicker and better access to images that aren’t yet text-searchable.

Indexers will be able to edit dates and places on indexed records. This feature is an expansion of the update from 2019 that allowed users to edit the name field on indexed records.

10th Anniversary of RootsTech

RootsTech, one of the largest genealogy conferences in the world, will once again be held at the historic Salt Palace in Salt Lake City, Utah, on February 26–29, 2020. The theme, “The Story of You,” will celebrate the many contributions that have been made in genealogy research and encourage attendees to reflect on their personal journeys. For seasoned researchers as well as beginners, the 300 breakout sessions, impressive keynote speakers, professional entertainers, and exciting events are sure to have something for everyone.

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