RootsMagic 4+

For anyone who wants to dabble in their family history or gets very serious about genealogy research, RootsMagic software is great. I particularly recommend it for anyone who cares about keeping their information on living individuals private, but still wants to collect that data while they can interview them personally. This app is really only for reading your data, making a portable so we can travel with you. You really need to be on your laptop, or at least a web browser, to enter your data.

I am a long-time user of the RootsMagic software. While I generally enjoy desktop software applications that syncs both ways to mobile apps, I find this read-only app should be an exception to the rule. Due to the complexity of linking family relationships, I envision a far greater possibility of unforeseen software problems in trying to two-way sync desktop to a genealogy app—potentially corrupt data files and/or lose invaluable information that taken years to create or capture. I recognize a back-up file may save and allow recovery of a significant amount of genealogy data. As one ages, who would want to recall or recreate any data that were possibly lost. Therefore, it is appropriate Developers keep edit capability within the desktop software or web-based level only and keep this app as a read only capability. I am one user with one viewpoint. If the Developers desire to opt to execute or implement a two-way edit feature, then I will embrace their efforts and hopefully continue to use the product.

While the computer software, Roots Magic, is outstanding, this app is merely serviceable. It's faults have persisted since I began using the app years ago and have never been corrected, which I find odd.

The app's structure is not intuitive. Some windows have no back button, so navigation quickly becomes cumbersome. And perhaps most confusing, shared facts are listed not chronologically but at the end of the individual view, yet their dates are deferred to in the summary views. Difficult to explain in this review, because it is so illogical, but it means that one must truly open each individual view and search it even for births, marriage and death dates, instead of trusting the more accessible summary views. Why even have dates in the summaries if they are not correct?

It would be nice to have a "favorites" tab, so we wouldn't have to search the entire database by surname, then again by first name, for ancestors we refer to often.