# WitnessLives — Witnesses to History > Witnesses to History (iPhone/iPad app by Rufus Howe.) - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/witnesslives/id6786499130 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`) - Developer: [Rufus Howe](https://appshunter.io/developer/6782734967) - Category: Lifestyle - Price: Free with in-app purchases (on sale, was $19.99) - Age rating: 4+ - Requires: iOS 16.4 · 65 MB - Languages: American English - Released: 2026-07-27 - Data updated: 2026-08-25 - User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/witnesslives/id6786499130/reviews.md ## What is WitnessLives? You’ve invested years of research and built a family tree with hundreds — maybe thousands — of names. But your ancestors are more than a collection of birth and death dates. You’ve found yourself wondering: who in my family was actually alive during the American Revolution or the 1918 flu? I’m standing in this historic town — did my ancestors walk these streets? Which lines carry the most remarkable stories? Welcome to Witness. Witness is not another tree builder. It is an intelligent discovery and analysis layer that sits on top of the tree you’ve already built. Import your standard GEDCOM file and Witness transforms your raw data into a living, breathing family chronicle. Discover the Stories Hiding in Your Data Temporal Intelligence: Instantly see who was alive during major historical events — “188 of your relatives were alive when the Mayflower landed” — every match labeled documented or probable, and marked by how they relate to you: your direct line, a blood relative, or kin by marriage. This Week’s Issue: Home is a weekly edition — a lead life placed in its historical moment, one curiosity from the Tree Check, the Archives’ waiting count, and one pattern your family made. This Week in Your Family still carries the anniversaries, with its Sunday reminder. The Family Stage: One household — a marriage and its children — drawn as lifelines against falling time. Sweep the years and watch ages, unions, and departures unfold across a century. The Portrait: Every person opens as a portrait of their family — parents, brothers and sisters in true birth order, each marriage with its children, and a running head naming their household and their place in its birth order. A compass on your direct line (“gen 7 · father’s side”), a birthplace that opens the place itself, the household drawn as a length of time. Story and world open inline. Stories open with the family chart — parents in the marriage tie, aunts and uncles on their true sides, the sibship in birth order; tap a tile to travel, or hide it. Search by Name or Place: One search box finds people by name or by where their lives were recorded. Type “Worcester” and meet everyone in your tree who was born, married, or buried there. Every match is counted, newest first, paging back in time. Patterns in Your Family: where the family began, the moves it made, the oceans it crossed, and who turned out to be kin — one door, four findings. Field Discovery & Cemetery GPS: See who in your family has history within a mile — or a hundred — of where you’re standing, and the whole world of your tree on a map, era by era. AI-Powered Rich Biographies: Read warm, beautifully written life narratives for your ancestors, synthesized by AI that blends your tree’s data with real historical context — carefully constructed to never make unsubstantiated claims. Tree Health: Twenty-two forensic data-integrity checks — the FTAnalyzer catalog trusted by serious desktop researchers — run over every person, family, and date, each finding one tap from the person it concerns. Orphan Records finds the people disconnected from your tree and suggests where they might belong. Break Through Brick Walls: Stuck at a dead end in 1720? Witness analyzes your data gaps and generates a structured, expert Research Brief with suggested sources and local archives. In the National Archives: Federal records matched to your ancestors — draft cards, naturalizations, and more — each awaiting your judgment. The Field Guide: Every screen, explained — annotated walkthroughs of the whole app, one tap away. Absolute Privacy Witness is entirely read-only — we will never alter your original tree. Your GEDCOM file is encrypted with a key created on your iPhone that never leaves it: we store your file, but we genuinely cannot read it — and your recovery code brings it back on any device. Stop building. Start experiencing. Terms of Use: https://witnesslives.com/terms Privacy Policy: https://witnesslives.com/privacy ## Pricing and in-app purchases Base price: Free. **Subscriptions** | Subscription | Price | Period | | --- | --- | --- | | Witness Premium | $19.99 | per year | ## Version history (last 5 releases) ### 1.5.2 — 2026-08-22 Bringing in a newer export of your tree is now the front door: Witness recognizes it, keeps your research briefs, archive verdicts, fixed marks, and shared links, and reports what the new file actually fixed — "you marked 17 findings, this file confirms 12." Stories gain the family around a life: siblings and aunts & uncles woven into the narrative where records place them nearby, and the moments of their lives — a brother's marriage two towns over, an aunt's arrival. Any story can now be shared or saved as a file. Under every story, a note of your own: what you've documented, or family lore — kept with the ancestor in your words, visible only to you, and carried along clearly labeled when you share the story. Every story now also says plainly that it was written by AI from your record. And a small star marks the people you've already visited, so wandering the tree never circles back unknowingly. The family chart, redrawn: a story now opens with two generations you can read at a glance — parents inside the marriage tie, aunts and uncles seated on their true sides, and the sibship in birth order, with the person you're reading in their true seat. Tap any tile to travel; hide the chart if you're here for the words. Search now counts everyone: results arrive newest first, twenty-five to a page, and page back through the generations — no match is ever silently cut off. Also in this release: • Census, baptism, immigration, emigration, and naturalization records now import from your GEDCOM • The external link on a person's page names the platform your tree actually lives on — Ancestry or FamilySearch • Import errors now recognize desktop project files (RootsMagic and others) and point at the right export menu • The free trial is now a full month • Stories no longer puzzle over twins — two children born the same year are told as what they are • Various bugs were fixed ### 1.5.0 — 2026-08-15 Sign in with Apple — one tap, no password to invent. The story of what Witness does now plays before you create an account, with the price stated plainly. Managing your subscription, unsubscribing from the weekly email, and deleting your account are all built into the app now. And screens with nothing to show finally say why. ### 1.4.0 — 2026-08-10 Home is now this week's issue Each Monday a new edition is set — the same one on every device you own. Each part of Witness files exactly one piece into it: a lead life placed in its historical moment, a single curiosity from the Tree Check, the Archives' waiting count, one pattern your family made — an ocean crossed, a migration begun. One is inviting where hundreds would be a chore; a thin week simply prints fewer pieces. And once you tap into a piece, the issue follows you: a slim band on every person's page offers the next piece, however deep the reading has wandered. The Portrait learns to say where you are A person's page now carries its own instruments. The record line ends with a compass on your direct line — "gen 7 · father's side." Above the family register, a running head: "House of Stephen Gates & Anne Neave · fourth of 13 children." The birthplace is a doorway to everyone recorded there; the register ends at the household drawn as a length of time on the Family Stage; and the Tree Check's open curiosities about this person appear on their page, worded as prompts, not problems. One Map, near and far Nearby has folded into the Map, where it belonged: a Near me chip swaps between the whole world of your tree and who has history around where you're standing. Four tabs now — Home, Tree, Explore, Map — each with one job. Patterns in your family Where the family began, the moves it made, the oceans it crossed, and the couples who turned out to be kin — four findings behind one door on Explore, and the source of the front page's weekly pattern. Your reading, kept Each week's printed pieces are recorded as back issues — carried across to the new tree alongside your research briefs, archive verdicts, and home person. On iPad, Witness now opens in its full reading layout — the rail, the masthead, this week's issue set wide — the same edition the web app prints. ### 1.3 — 2026-08-05 Every relative, placed at a glance Wherever people are listed, a small mark now tells you how they relate: an up-and-down arrow for your direct line, a drop for blood relatives beyond it, no mark for kin by marriage. Beneath every name runs the line of descent — “Daughter of William Towne and Joanna Blessing.” And a new setting, Who gets featured, lets you choose whether the digest, the Sunday reminder, and “Related” filters celebrate your direct line only or every blood relative. Nothing is ever hidden — it just isn’t celebrated. The Field Guide Every screen, explained: annotated walkthroughs of the whole app, one tap away from You, from Questions & Answers, and from the ? on the app’s densest screens. The Family Stage finds its way home “← Families” now returns you to the Register in one tap, however deep you’ve wandered through the generations. Your original file, kept safe When you import a tree, Witness now keeps your original GEDCOM file encrypted on our servers. The key is created on your iPhone and never leaves it — which means we store your file but genuinely cannot read it. You’ll get a recovery code the first time; save it, and you can bring your file back on any device. If you lose both the phone and the code, that file can’t be opened again, by you or by us. That’s the trade for a promise we can actually keep. You can also restore a tree from that stored original at any time, from You. Choosing which tree you’re looking at If you have more than one tree, you can now pick which one Witness is reading. Explore’s search, the Register and the Archives all follow your choice instead of quietly guessing. Deleting a tree tells the truth Deleting a large tree now shows what it’s working through, and says so plainly if it doesn’t finish — rather than reporting success it hadn’t earned. ### 1.2 — 2026-08-01 Witness 1.2 puts the family at the center of a person's page. • The Portrait — a person now opens as a portrait of their family rather than a tab bar. Parents, brothers and sisters in true birth order, and each marriage with its children, every name tappable onward. "Who were Patrick's siblings?" is answered on the page you are already reading. • Their Story and Their World now open in place, one at a time, so reading a life no longer navigates you away from the family around it. • Search by place, not just by name. One box: type "Worcester" and Witness finds everyone with an event recorded there, each result tagged with the place that surfaced them — then tap straight through to their Portrait. • Large trees load roughly twice as fast. Tree Health, the Map, and the Tree tab now fetch in parallel instead of one page at a time. On a real 8,600-person tree the heaviest load dropped from 11 seconds to just over 4 — the difference is widest on cellular. Plus multiple smaller improvements and bug fixes ## More apps by Rufus Howe - [Notata](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/notata/id6782734965) All apps by Rufus Howe: https://appshunter.io/developer/6782734967 ## Related topics [witness](https://appshunter.io/ios/topics/witness) --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-08-25.*