The "Gallery" page is the main landing webpage that displays all the photos, stories, and documents. The other menu options on the page are discussed by clicking on the red information dots. They are basically ways to filter your memories by different groups or to apply actions to selected items such as to add to albums, delete, bookmark, and so forth. Important things to remember about this page:

     This memories page displays TAGGED individuals both by yourself AND OTHERS depending on the filters you apply. It is different than the Gallery Page which shows all memories uploaded by you. This People Page displays other people that you may have additionally tagged, even though the original photo is not in your Gallery. The default "Show" setting is set to ALL. Specific settings are described below:

     The other "Sort By:" and "Search" icon are pretty self explanatory. You can sort the display by first name, last name, or by birth year. Clicking on the search icon allows you to start typing in a name that will begin to filter out any people that don't match the search parameters.

     This page is a fun page to explore. By typing in a name, Family Tree will begin to display EVERYONE (Living AND Deceased) that matches the name you type in the search box, regardless if they are your relative or not. You can sometimes find memories of your living family members, even when those memories were submitted by a distant cousin that you have never met. The find feature uses the Title, description, and the filename as sources to search through.
     Some "boolean" search parameters are used, such as "Charles Meyers" will only search for people that have that specific combination in the searched fields. Without quotes, you will see a lot of Charles with many different last names, or a lot of Meyers with many different first names. There is a blue link that will provide you with instructions on how to better search for people labelled "How to Use the Find Features in Memories" that will further explain things for you.

     The top left icons are filters for the different types of memories showing in the large main content area. They are, from left to right:

     When you have a thousand or so memories, it's nice to be able to show only those items you wish to see.

     On the right side of the menu are other helpful icons. The "Arrange:" dropdown box will give you several additional filters to arrange your content area by. They are:

     There are two icons to the right of the "Arrange" dropdown box. The first is the icon view (default), and the second is a list view. The list view will show you the event date and place for each uploaded photo or document.

     Clicking on the 'magnifying lens" icon will bring up a small search text box. Type in a name, date, or event place and your content area will populate with items that have that search text in the Title, Description, Event Place, Event Date, and even the file name.

     Note that the search function searches through all the fields on the "My Memories" tab of the Gallery page. If you have lots of photos that you have placed into the "My Archive" tab, you will need to be on that tab to search as well. Unfortunately, the search function does not search across both the "My Memories" and "My Archive" tabs.

     The gallery page is basically a collection of every memory that YOU have uploaded to FamilySearch. This includes the photos, stories, audio recordings, & documents. Your gallery is visible ONLY to you. No one will ever see your gallery page, even after you become deceased. The best way to think of your gallery page is like this:

WHAT ARE THESE ACTIONS?

     For a memory to become visible to others, each memory requires at the minimum, a "TAG" which associates the memory with a person or persons. A photo with multiple deceased persons only needs to be imported ONCE, but can be seen across many different person pages by tagging them in the memory. After tagging, and when you hover over the person's picture, you will commonly see a small rectangular box around a person's face with their name underneath. This allows others to know specifically who is who in the photo. Once a tag to each person in the memory is is completed, FamilySearch will now be able to display the memory on each person's memory page. Until then, the memory remains in your gallery invisible to others. Tags are just one of the important processes that need to be done. Many individuals forget about all the next important process.

     The other process that should be done by you is to complete the information in the Title, Date & Place (if known), and Description areas. A photograph, for example, is much more meaningful when there is information about the photograph. Even if you only have 1 small fleeting memory about that photograph, enter it into the description field. Titles are helpful to quickly view what the memory is about. So many people just upload their photos without providing any of this descriptive information. It's sad because their photograph just becomes another photograph or memory of "old people". If you have a story about that photograph, then write one, even if it is only a few sentences. Providing all this descriptive information about the memory will help others better understand what the memory of their ancestor is about.

     Alright! You have processed a memory, or in other words, the memory has been tagged and all associated descriptive information about it is now complete. As you get more enthusiastic about uploading or creating different kinds of memories, you gallery page begins to fill up. It may look pretty cool to have all those memories visible on your page. However, you need to realize that the greater number of memories you have in your gallery, the greater is the demands on your local computer resources. As the computer demands increase, browser crashes, system slowing, and other issues may result. As a "general rule", we should be able to display about 1200-1500 memories display on our gallery page without too much of a problem for computers with about 8gb of computer memory. At this point or even beforehand, move all those completely processed memories to the "My Archive" folder. You really don't want to have a zillion memories cluttering up your staging area. It would almost be like looking at a big box of disorganized photos and documents and wondering what you need to do first. The archive folder will have the same appearance as your gallery page, but will only contain memories that are now fully processed. The archives folder can be searched and viewed just like your main memories gallery tab. Those memories are still completely visible to others as they view a person's memory page.

What About Tagging Living People?

     Tagging memories to living people presents a challenge that is thankfully pretty easy to overcome. This is because of privacy issues. Living people exist in a separate "private space" in the FamilySearch database. We can not view what it is in another person's private space. When we become deceased, our private record now becomes public for all to see. Here's where people get confused. It's likely that they have added their living parents, and maybe even some living grandparents to THEIR tree. Those living person's ID numbers or records are completely different records from the records that belong to those living individuals. For example, MY living mother's FamilySearch record ID is different from that of HER FamilySearch record ID. ** ALL memories that are tagged to a living person's ID # will be LOST when the submitting person becomes deceased.** The only situation in which this is NOT the case is when the memory has been tagged to a DECEASED persons record ID. FamilySearch will then always display the memory on that deceased person's page, although the tags to living people will not be associated with anyone in FamilySearch.

     Here's another common situation. You have several photos of your living family members at a fun family reunion uploaded to your gallery You are NOT in the photo nor are there are any deceased persons. There are only living people in the photo. You may decide to tag each memory to the living children's Person ID you have in your tree. After you accomplished this, your natural assumption is that all those memories will be available for others to see after your death. Unfortunately that is NOT the case. Those reunion photos will not be visible to anyone because the tags to your living family members are "private space" copies. YOUR copy of living family members in your tree have different Person IDs than THEIR Person IDs. You can't even use THEIR Person ID to tag the photos to. Without proper tags to the official records, all of those memories stay in your private space and are invisible to others, EVEN when you die.

     Let's say that you have uploaded lots of memories into your gallery of your very elderly parent. YOU become deceased BEFORE your elderly parent. All those memories that are not tagged to deceased persons will REMAIN invisible to others and so all your work and efforts are lost. If some of the photos had tags to deceased persons, then those photos will still remain visible to others. However, If they die before you do, AND you merge your copy of your parent's record into their official record, those memories will be visible to everyone. Best option in this situation and for the present time is to upload those memories directly into THEIR profile, using their username and password.

     As long as a memory has at least one tag to a deceased person, your memory will be preserved and visible in FamilySearch. It will be found on that deceased person's page, and then can be tagged with the recently deceased person's ID number. Here's a thought though. What if YOUR now deceased father's photo was with a deceased friend of his. You would have to remember to go to that friend's page and tag the photo back to your father as well. As noted above, tags that had been applied to living people will not show as tagged to anyone in FamilySearch.

     With the above information in mind, how can you safely preserve your LIVING family member's memories that you have in your gallery? You want that memory to be preserved, so how can we make that happen? There are TWO options for now to think about.

OPTION #1
     Create a shared album of LIVING family member's memories. Send them the share link and then have each family member tag themselves in those memories. They will still remain "invisible" to everyone except for they themselves and anyone with the shared album link. When that living person becomes deceased, that memory from your gallery will be displayed on their memories page. There is an explanation about how to do this below. Remember DO NOT to delete the memories after they have linked the memory to each of their Person IDs. If you do so, the memory is deleted from FamilySearch. Instead, MOVE those memories to the My Archive folder.

OPTION #2
     This 2nd option is a bit more risky. The reason for this is that it involves creating a share link to that album you created above with your living family member's memories and then texting or emailing that share link to each of them. They will have to remember what the link is in the future. Therein lies the difficulty. Will they remember where the link is next month, next year, or whenever? FamilySearch will continue to display the contents of any album many years down the road, as long as the link to that album is remembered by someone, even after the death of the creator of that shared album.

     If you forget to tag your images, FamilySearch has added a small "Add Tag" notation in the lower left part of the image to remind you that the specific image needs to be "tagged". These images are seen on your main Gallery page.

From FamilySearch Helps:
     If you contribute many photos, stories, documents, and audio files to FamilySearch, your gallery can become so full that is difficult to manage. If you have finished tagging the memories and titles, descriptions, event dates and places, and other information, you can move the image to your archive to declutter your gallery.

     When you archive memories, they remain online for others to see. If you have tagged them to a person in Family Tree, the tag remains, and other users can still see the memories. The only thing that changes is that you no longer see the memory in your gallery.

     When you view your archive, you can see the memory, edit it, add it to albums, share it, and do all of the other things you could do from within your gallery. You can also move it back to your gallery.

     The recently deleted folder will hold any deleted photos, or other memories for 120 days. These memories can not be viewed by others, attached to Family Tree, nor edited. They can be restored at any time before the 120 days.

     If you "like" a memory, you can "bookmark it" so that you can more easily find it later. This used to be called "Favorites".

     Albums are a powerful way of collecting groups of memories into one collection. There are no set album names. You can create them based on your needs. For example, let's say that you are going to have a family reunion and want to show some photos, play some audio recordings, and maybe show a few documents on both LIVING and deceased family members. Create an album such as 2021 Family Reunion. All you need to do is assign those memories to that album. There is an option to display your album on a computer screen or TV monitor as a slide show. You can also share a link to each of your family members. When they click on the link, they are taken right to the album without having to even log into FamilySearch.

     Albums are a great way to allow your family to see all the memories of you and your living family members that you have in YOUR personal gallery, remembering that no-one will ever be able to see your gallery. There is currently no other way that others can view living family members that you have imported into your Gallery, other than to share the album links with your family. FamilySearch is working on a better way to share living photos amongst family members.

     Assigning your memories to an album is the easiest from your Gallery page. You can select MULTIPLE items (right upper circle on memory when hovering over it), click on the Actions link, and "Add to Album" action.

     The main Gallery page is previously shown. The People page (sample image below) is a great way to view memories that have been uploaded to your ancestral tree by yourself AND others. There are several options in how you want your "People" page to display.

     Notice the option bar that is enclosed in the red box in the image below: