Who’s your daddy? Everybody on earth has ancestors, and the study of who we are and the people we came from (genealogy) is currently one of the most popular pastimes, online and off. The internet has made it extremely easy to perform this research for free, with paid (subscription) options also available.
As you do this research, you will soon run into the problem of what to do with all the facts and materials you are finding (names, dates, images, articles, etc.).
That’s where Synium’s MacFamilyTree 10 comes in. Provided in both desktop and mobile format, MacFamilyTree/MobileFamilyTree not only offer you a platform into which to input your findings as raw data, but also do some incredibly useful things with those otherwise boring facts. (See the bottom of this page for what’s new in version 10.)
For instance, the screenshot above (in macOS Dark Mode) shows what you can end up with when enough people are entered into a family. This colorful presentation style is called a “fan chart”, and you can choose any person in your family tree and immediately get an attractive visual representation of that person’s ancestors on each side (mother/father). The further back into your family line you can go, the bigger this chart gets.
Another way to view a family is via a Descendant chart, as shown below, with the oldest members at right:
Let’s take a look at some actual examples from my own family tree, whose members I have been entering into MacFamilyTree for well over a decade now. The screenshot below centers on a particular person and displays the available fields for entering information: Name, gender, life events (such as birth, marriage and death and the locations of each of these events), parents, spouse and children. Further down on this same screen (not shown) are fields for adding various facts about the person (physical attribute, Social Security number, etc.), media (images, documents , etc.), text notes, citations of your sources, people associated with the target person and To Do items.
The strip along the bottom of the window offers additional functionality, such as being able to view the selected person in context with the rest of his or her family, a timeline chart showing the relation of the person’s lifespan to those of other family members, plausibility warnings, a map where coordinated assigned to family events will appear, a list of world history events that overlap th lifetime of the selected person, an Action option to add/delete people, find duplicates, etc., alternate views (8 different style trees/charts and two reports), a place to enter To Do items and a change log. At far right you can also access a Person List of everyone in your extended family and view it organized by first or last name, birth or death date and other factors.
Kinship Reports (shown below) are another way to view a person’s information in the context of his or her family members:
A main advantage of MacFamilyTree is that because of running exclusively in 64-bit on Apple operating systems, its performance is great and its charts are not dry and ugly like many other genealogy applications. Below is an example of the Virtual Tree where you can view your ancestors in a 3D environment! The Virtual Globe option (not shown) is another way to view your family’s history, in this case their movements across continents over time.
So what else can you do in MacFamilyTree 10? For the convenience of the researcher, you can interact with the free and very popular FamilySearch website from right within MacFamilyTree, downloading data and also uploading your research to share with others if you desire. Or perhaps you wish to generate an interactive website (below) or PDF chart for other family members to access, or design and export a PDF family history book (see templates further below) as a gift for a special occasion. If you wish to share your research with others in a form that can be imported into other genealogy apps, you can export an industry-standard GEDCOM.
Using iCloud and now CloudTree as database repositories, MacFamilyTree 10 gives you maximum flexibility when editing and managing your family tree. MobileFamilyTree now enters the picture, enabling you to continue inputting data while out and about on your mobile devices. The interface is pretty much exactly the same in both desktop and mobile apps, further contributing to the seamless experience.
As I said above, I’ve been using MacFamilyTree for well over a decade (and it’s been around even longer, over 21 years!) and really enjoy firing it up often to add some new bit of information I just discovered. It’s a great place to keep all this valuable information together in one easily accessible database.
If you’re a Mac user interested in family history, MacFamilyTree and MobileFamilyTree are definitely worth checking out.
WHAT’S NEW IN VERSION 10:
MacFamilyTree 10 is the largest update Synium has ever released, with a huge number of new features and improvements. Almost every section of the app was either re-developed or hugely improved. For the first time, MobileFamilyTree's edit section is on par with MacFamilyTree:
New: Edit Section
•Completely new edit section – redeveloped from scratch
•Automatically adjusts to small and large screen to make the best use of the available space
•Edit most information directly in lists: A tap on a list expands a specific row and reveals a form to enter data
•Completely configurable: Specify which forms should be present when editing a specific entry and where they should appear
•Separate edit and display mode: In display mode, only forms with information present will be displayed. In edit mode, all forms are shown
•Use speech recognition to fill in long texts
•Directly display the Interactive Tree or maps in the person edit section
New: User Interface
•Modern, convenient, powerful
•Redesigned function selection
•Assign unique colors for genders and function categories
•Re-order and enable/disable specific functions
•Greatly enhanced user interface when MobileFamilyTree is used in Side-By-Side-Mode
New: Interactive Tree
•Greatly enhanced appearance: New person symbols, new generation sections and connections
•Vastly improved performance
•Improved editing of persons and families
•New camera orientations added
•New lighting modes added
•Improved display of numbering systems
New: Virtual Tree
•Completely rewritten from scratch, relying on the latest Apple technologies
•Vastly improved appearance
•Simulates depth of field for impressive visuals
•Greatly enhanced alignment of persons in the Virtual Tree – even for complex family trees
•Vastly improved performance: Most of the family trees will be displayed instantaneously without delay
•Relationship paths: Display, how two persons are related – just like in the Relationship Chart
Virtual Tree AR mode – Standing right in the middle of your Family History
•New and spectacular: Literally walk through your tree
•Place your tree on the table or in the entire room
•State-of-the-art technology makes it possible: no matter how you move, the tree stays in the same absolute position in the room
•You’ve never experienced your family history this close before
New: Person Groups
•Create as many person groups as you like (e.g. members of the Miller family, relatives you know in person, relatives from Tampa)
•Branches and specific parts of your family tree may now be separated using Person Groups
•Option to only display members of specific person groups in charts
•Statistics Chart may be limited to specific person groups allowing only the evaluation of specific branches or set of persons
•The Interactive Tree as well as all charts can now show persons in the colors of their person group
New: Source Management
•Completely new template system for sources
•Large number of included source templates for all commonly used sources – but you can also add your own, custom source templates
•Fully configurable source templates: Add your own fields to source templates or remove fields you don’t require
•Completely configurable source citations: Specify how source citations should be displayed in reports
•Source repositories may now contain a complete postal address, web site address, phone number and email address
•Unknown GEDCOM tags may now be added as new source template fields when importing a GEDCOM file
•Duplicate source templates or source fields may be merged to avoid duplicates
New: Virtual Globe
•Completely redeveloped from line one – based on Apple Metal for the best possible performance
•Available on iOS and iPadOS for the first time
•Improved appearance
•New timeline control: See when events took place and adjust the date range to limit the number of results
•Pictures of places are now displayed on the Virtual Globe
•Spectacular AR mode: Place the Globe on your table or in the room
Performance!
•Restructured family tree database resulting in greatly enhanced performance
•Zooming in larger pictures is now much more responsive
•Vastly improved performance when using FamilySearch – especially in larger family tree with many results
•Reports are now displayed using considerably less processing power
•CloudTree: Synching is considerably faster now
New: Scan Documents using iPhone or iPad camera
•Take pictures of photos or documents and import them into your family tree
•Documents and photos will be automatically straightened and cropped
•No scanner required – the camera of your iPhone and iPad is all you need
