Keep the family WhatsApp group. Give the memories their own home.

Because it was built for conversation, and it is very good at that. WhatsApp is free, nearly everyone already has it, and WhatsApp says every message, photo, video and voice message is end-to-end encrypted by default, group chats included. Privacy isn’t the problem. Keeping things, and finding them again, is.

A family group moves fast. The photo from Grandad’s 80th arrives between “who’s bringing pudding?” and a thumbs-up, and a week later it is hundreds of messages back. The names, dates and stories people add afterwards are just more messages, scrolling away with everything else.

Chats don’t always stay, either. WhatsApp offers disappearing messages at 24 hours, 7 days or 90 days, and since December 2021 you can make them the default for new one-to-one chats, or turn them on for groups you create.

On Android, Google’s own help page is clear about three things. WhatsApp backups count towards your Google Account storage limit. Backups that haven’t been updated in five months may be deleted automatically. And when you delete a WhatsApp backup, it is permanent.

That storage is shared. Every Google Account includes up to 15 GB, split across Gmail, Google Drive and Google Photos, so a busy family group’s photos and videos compete with your email for space. And a phone left in a drawer for half a year may no longer have a backup to restore.

None of this makes WhatsApp unsafe. It means a chat backup is there to restore your chats, not to keep a family’s history. The Library of Congress recommends keeping at least two copies of important photos, stored as far apart as practical, and checking them at least once a year.

Big enough for any family. WhatsApp groups can hold up to 1,024 people, a limit WhatsApp announced in November 2022 alongside Communities, in-chat polls and video calls for up to 32 people. The trouble is rarely size: the bigger and busier the group, the faster a good photo disappears up the screen.

Ancestorii has no limit on family members on any plan, so everyone in the group can join the same private space.

A place built for keeping rather than chatting. In the free iPhone and Android app, your family shares memories in a private feed that only invited members can see. A memory can have a title, your own words, up to 10 photos, a video and a voice note. Relatives can react, comment in writing or out loud, and add their own version of the same moment, which sits beside yours as a tab.

Photos worth keeping go into albums, where each one can carry a date, a story thread and voice notes. Loved Ones profiles and timelines put everything in order around the people in it. Read more about the private My Family feed and albums with stories and voices.

No. The group is where your family already talks, and that is worth a lot. Asking everyone to move their chat to a new app is a big ask, and it isn’t necessary.

Treat the two as different rooms. The group is for plans, news and jokes. Ancestorii is where the photos and stories you will want in twenty years are kept. Post the share link in the group once, and when a good photo lands in the chat, whoever sees it first adds it to the family album with a line about what was happening.

It helps the relatives who rarely post, too. A grandparent who scrolls past most messages can open one album and find each photo with its story beside it.

Ancestorii isn’t a chat app, and it won’t replace your family group. It is a private archive, My Family, that only the people you invite can see, with free apps for iPhone and Android and the same login on the website.

The Free plan needs no card and gives the family 1 GB of shared storage with unlimited albums, timelines and capsules. That suits a chosen set of photos rather than every message ever sent, and it shouldn’t be your only copy of anything. Premium is £3.99 a month for the whole family and raises the shared storage to 100 GB. Ancestorii shows no ads and doesn’t sell your data, and nothing becomes public unless someone chooses to publish it on Our Stories, the separate public feed.