How can we help?

There is no password. You sign in with your email address, every time.

1. Go to your album's address: your family's own name, like yourfamily.ke, or the address in your welcome email.
2. Type the email address the album owner added for you, and press Send me a code.
3. Open the email. Either tap Open my album or type the six-digit code into the page. Both work.

The code and the link both last ten minutes and each works once. After that, ask for a fresh one. There is no limit on how many times you can.

Once you are in, that device stays signed in for thirty days.

1. Is it the right address? The code only goes to an address the album owner has added. If you have two email addresses, try the other one, or ask the owner which one they used.
2. Check your spam folder. The email comes from your own family's name rather than from "Album", which is sometimes enough to catch a filter.
3. Wait a minute and try once more. If you have pressed the button many times you may have reached our limit, which clears within the hour.
4. Ask the owner to check the Members tab. If your address is not listed there, no code will ever arrive, and the owner can add you in a few seconds.

We give the same answer whether or not an address is on the list, so nobody can use the sign-in page to find out who is in your family. That is also why the page cannot tell you "you are not a member".

The page tells you which of these it was:

• It expired. Links last ten minutes.
• It was already used. Each link works once.
• It looks incomplete. Some email apps cut long links in half. Use the six-digit code from the same email instead.

In every case the remedy is the same: enter your email again for a fresh code.

Your album can sit on your phone or your computer like any other app, with your family's name under its icon. There is nothing to download from an app store. When your album can be installed, a bar under the tabs offers it. Once you have installed it on any of your devices, the bar is not shown to you again.

• Android (Chrome): open your album and a bar offers to put it on your phone. Tap Add. If you waved it away, open Chrome's menu and choose Install app or Add to Home screen.
• iPhone and iPad (Safari): open your album, tap the Share button at the bottom of the screen, then Add to Home Screen.
• A computer (Chrome or Edge): press Install in the bar, or the install icon at the right of the address bar.
• A Mac (Safari): choose File, then Add to Dock.

Once added, the album opens full screen with its own icon, and the photographs you have already looked at stay readable when there is no signal. On Android you can also share a photograph from your gallery straight into the album: choose your family's name in the share sheet and it lands in the upload dialog, ready for a caption.

You sign in inside the installed album the same way, with a code to your email, and you stay signed in for thirty days at a time.

It keeps itself up to date. When we improve something it arrives the next time you open the album. There is never anything to download, and never any reason to remove the icon and add it again.

Press the Photos button at the bottom right of the screen, then drag your photographs in or press Browse Files.

Before you press Upload All you can set, for all of them at once:

• a caption;
• the date it was taken, or leave it blank and we read it from the photograph itself where we can;
• one or more categories (Wedding, Funeral, Christmas, and any you invent yourself);
• a generation;
• the people in it. Type a name that is new and that person is added to your family tree automatically;
• who can see it: everyone, contributors and above, or owners only.

Limits. Up to 50 MB per file. JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP and HEIC. An iPhone photo (HEIC) is turned into a JPEG, so every phone and computer can show it. Your photographs are never resized or recompressed unless you ask: what you upload is exactly what is stored, and exactly what you get back.

How many fit? A photograph from a phone is usually 3 to 5 MB, so 10 GB holds about 2,000 to 3,000 of them, and 50 GB about 10,000 to 15,000. Smaller pictures, like ones saved from WhatsApp, take far less.

Save space. Tick Save space in the upload box and each photograph is made smaller before it goes up, so more fit in your plan. They stay sharp on phones and computers; the box shows each one's size before and after. Leave it off for photographs you may want to print large.

Videos are not uploaded here. See Adding videos.

Open the upload box and press Import from Google Photos. A Google window opens: sign in, allow Album to see the photographs you choose, pick as many as you like, and press Done. The window closes and they arrive in the upload box at full quality; add a caption and who is in them, then press Upload All.

Album sees only the photographs you choose, only for that visit. It never sees the rest of your Google Photos, and keeps nothing from Google once they are uploaded.

Videos are left out of an import: put them on YouTube as Unlisted and add the link on the Videos tab. See Adding videos.

Videos live on YouTube and play inside your album. A few minutes of phone video can be bigger than a thousand photographs, so keeping them on YouTube saves your album's space, and YouTube keeps them for free.

1. Open YouTube with your Google account and upload the video.
2. Under Visibility, choose Unlisted. Only people with the link can watch it; it does not appear in searches or on your channel.
3. Copy the video's link.
4. In your album, open the Videos tab, press Add video, paste the link and add a caption.

Choose Private instead of Unlisted and it will not play in the album, because Private videos only play for the account that uploaded them.

The upload box tells you why.

• "Videos go on the Videos tab." Videos are not uploaded as files. Put the video on YouTube as Unlisted and add its link on the Videos tab; see Adding videos.
• "That file is larger than 50 MB." A very large photograph, often a scan. Save it again as a JPG and it will usually be a fraction of the size.
• "Please upload photographs." The file is a PDF, a document, or a camera RAW file. Convert it to JPG first.
• "This would take you over your plan limit." You are out of space. Owners can upgrade under Settings, or delete some photographs.
• "Your role cannot upload photos." You are a Viewer. Ask the owner to make you a Contributor.

The tree fills itself in. Every time you tag someone in a photograph, that person appears in it.

To record how people are related, the owner hovers over a person and presses the pencil. There you set the years they were born and died, their generation, who they were married to, and their parents. A person can be married to more than one person: press Add another husband or wife for each. Married people appear side by side with a heart between them, and lines are drawn from parents to children. When a man has several wives, he stands with all of them, and each child's line comes down from the child's own mother.

Adding aunts, uncles and cousins

Tap a person to open their panel and choose Parent, Child, Husband or wife, or Brother or sister. Type a name, or pick someone already in the tree. The new relative is put in the right generation for you.

To add your auntie, open your father or mother and add a brother or sister. Her children are then your cousins, added the same way from her panel. If your grandparents are not in the tree, a parent with no name is added to join them, so your auntie still shows as your auntie. You can name that parent later.

For a half-brother or half-sister, open the parent you share and add a child. When adding a child to a man with several wives, choose the child's mother so the child sits in the right house.

On a phone the tree becomes a list of generations you can tap open, eldest first.

Everyone has the same picture

Until you choose one, a person's picture is simply the newest photograph they are tagged in. Most family photographs are of everybody at once, so to begin with the same group photograph often stands for every person in the tree, cropped to its middle.

To fix it, tap a person to open their panel. Every photograph of them is there, each with a small round button in its corner: tap the star on the one that shows them best and it becomes their picture everywhere. The photograph in use is outlined and carries a tick instead. A photograph of that person alone works far better than a group one, because the picture is cropped to a circle.

Anyone with no generation set appears at the bottom under Not placed yet. That is where to look if somebody seems to be missing.

Owners and managers invite people from the Members tab. There is no limit on how many people can join and no extra charge per person.

Give people the smallest role that lets them do what they need. You can change anyone's role later, and there must always be at least one owner.

Have two owners. Renewal reminders go to every owner, so if one of you changes email or cannot be reached, somebody else can still renew the album and get into it. To add one, press Invite and choose Owner, or set a member who is already in to Owner.

If your album only needs photographs, or you would rather not have a section such as Videos or Stories, the owner can switch it off for everybody: Settings → Sections, then the switch beside it.

Nothing is deleted. The section's tab goes, but everything in it stays, is still in Download my album, and is all there again the moment you switch it back on.

Photos, Members and Settings are always on, so you can always find your way back.

A photograph from a phone brings its own place. Most phones write where a picture was taken into the photograph itself. When you upload it, the album reads that and shows the place above the caption, such as Fushimi Inari Taisha, Kyoto, Japan, without anybody typing it. Photographs already in your album get theirs over the next few days.

WhatsApp removes it. So do most messaging apps, and screenshots never had one. To give a photograph a place, open it with the pencil button, type the place in Place, press Find, and choose it from the list.

You can change or remove a place. In the same box, search for another or press Remove. A place you remove stays removed.

Everyone who can see the photograph sees its place, and All Places beside the other filters shows the photographs taken in one place. If you would rather the album showed no places at all, the owner can switch them off in Settings → Sections; nothing is deleted.

Place names © OpenStreetMap contributors.

Your photographs are yours. The owner can take a full copy at any time: Settings → Download everything → Download my album.

You get one zip file holding every photograph at the resolution it was uploaded, a spreadsheet of the captions, dates, people and categories, your stories, your tribute page, and a short note explaining the rest.

A large album takes a few minutes to prepare, so leave the tab open. You can do this three times a day. Very large albums (more than 5,000 photographs) are prepared by hand instead; the button will say so and we will send it within a working day.

Keep your own copy of anything irreplaceable. Album is a safe home for your photographs, not a substitute for your own backup.

If your album was filled for you, or the photographs were added before previews existed, the grid may load slowly.

Owners can fix it: Settings → Older photos missing previews → Generate missing previews. It works through them a dozen at a time in your browser, so leave the page open for a minute. Nothing about the photographs themselves changes; it only makes the small versions the grid uses.

Every album comes with a .ke or .co.ke name, chosen when you bought it and registered for you in your family's name. It usually starts working within a day. Until then your album opens at a temporary address, and once your name is live that address simply takes people to it. There is nothing for you to do.

If your family already owns another domain and wants the album there, an owner can connect it under Settings → Your own domain:

1. Type the domain and press Connect domain.
2. At the company you bought the domain from, add the one record shown on screen, exactly as shown.
3. If your domain is on Cloudflare, that record must be Proxied, the orange cloud. A grey cloud will not work.
4. Press Check status until it reads Live and secured.

Album is paid once a year, by M-Pesa or card, in Kenyan shillings.

We email every owner thirty days, seven days and the day before the renewal date, each time with the amount and how to pay.

If the date passes, your album keeps working. We write twice more. Thirty days after the date the album is made private and the family can no longer open it.

Nothing is deleted when it goes private. Every photograph, story and name stays exactly where you left it, and renewing brings the album back the same day at the same address. We hold a private album for twelve months. Then we write to every owner one last time, and if nobody answers within thirty days the album is deleted. If you decide not to continue, download everything first, then tell us and we will help.

If Album does not work as described, tell us within 14 days of paying and we will refund you in full.

• Only people you invite. There is no public page, no browsing and no search-engine listing. We ask search engines not to index family albums.
• We do not track what you look at inside your album. There is no record of which photographs anyone opens.
• We never see your card or M-Pesa details. Payments go straight to Paystack and Safaricom.
• Everything you upload belongs to your family. We claim no rights over your photographs or your writing, and we never sell or share them.
• Every photograph is copied to a separate backup each night. A photograph you delete stays recoverable there for 90 days, then is removed for good.