Exploring Life Threads
Visualize the connections between your family members through shared memories.
Life Threads is a visual relationship map that shows how your family members are connected through the memories you have recorded. It turns your collection of stories into something you can see and explore.
What You See
When you open the Life Threads tab, your family members are arranged by generation:
- Grandparents at the top
- Parents in the middle
- Children and younger generations at the bottom
- Friends and pets along the sides
Curved lines connect people who share memories together. The thicker the line, the more stories those two people have in common. A thin line means one or two shared memories. A thick line means dozens.
Filtering Your View
Life Threads offers two ways to narrow what you see:
By decade — Tabs at the top let you filter by time period (e.g., 1980s, 1990s, 2000s). This shows only the connections from memories dated within that decade, so you can see how relationships appeared at different stages of life.
By category — Filter chips let you show only Trips, Holidays, Milestones, or other categories. This reveals which relationships are strongest around specific types of memories.
Try Different Filters
Filtering by decade can reveal surprising patterns. You might discover that most of your childhood memories feature one grandparent, while your adult memories center around a sibling. These are the hidden threads in your family story.
Exploring a Person's Stories
Click on any family member in the graph. A sidebar opens showing all of their memories, sorted by date. You can:
- Scroll through their stories
- Tap any memory to open it
- See which other family members appear alongside them most often
When no one is selected, the sidebar shows a decade overview — a summary of the memories and connections from the currently selected time period.
Getting the Most From Life Threads
Life Threads becomes more meaningful as your collection grows. Here is how to help it along:
- Tag multiple people per memory. A memory with three tagged people creates three connections. A memory with only one person creates none.
- Add accurate dates. The decade filter only works if memories have correct dates.
- Build out your family roster. The more people in your roster, the richer the graph becomes.
- Record stories from different eras. Mix childhood memories with recent ones to see how your family connections have evolved over time.
Life Threads is not something you build deliberately — it grows naturally from the stories you tell. The more memories you add, the more the connections reveal themselves.
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