A family tree that builds itself from your photos
By The Glow Editors · September 23, 2026
Category: ask-them-now
Name the people in your photos and Glow builds the family tree. Slide through the years and watch each person appear the year they were born.
Key takeaways
The problem Family stories scatter across folders, albums, and group chats that no one can find later.
Core insight A living family tree attaches voices and names directly to photos, so stories stay with their context.
Practical outcome Start with one photo and one name - then invite the rest of the family to build from there.
You are probably the one who found the shoebox. You are probably the one who keeps thinking someone should record Grandma before she forgets the rest of it. Glow's living family tree is built for that person - a shared family archive where photos, voices, and names stay together, and where the rest of the family can actually participate.
What you get
When your mother tells a story, you can record her voice directly onto the photo it belongs to, so the story and the face stay together in the archive.
Your siblings can upload photos from their own phones without emailing you a file or waiting for you to add it for them.
A year-by-year timeline shows every photo in the order it was taken - including the undated prints where you're guessing at the decade.
The tree builds itself from the people your family names in photos, so your children can see great-grandparents appear by the year they were born rather than scroll a flat folder of files.
Relatives who won't make an account can still contribute: a guest link lets them add a story to one photo without signing up for anything.
Everything lives in one place - not split across a Drive folder, a Shutterfly album, and a group chat that nobody can find next year.
How it works
Scan a print or add a photo from your camera roll - that is enough to start. If you have a box of old prints to work through, our guide on how to scan a shoebox of family photos without losing a weekend walks you through a method that keeps things manageable. You name the people in it, and Glow places them in the tree. You record a voice note or type a caption directly onto the photo while the memory is fresh. Then you send an invite to a sibling or cousin; they accept and add their own photos and stories when they are ready. Relatives who won't make an account can use a guest link to add a story to one photo. The archive grows each time someone adds something - no coordinator required after the first invite goes out.
The parts that matter
People
You name who is in each photo, and the tree organises stories and images around those people - your mother, your grandfather, the great-aunt nobody has a good photo of yet.
Timeline
The year-by-year view shows photos in chronological order, so you can see a life unfold rather than hunt through upload dates - undated prints included.
Voices
You record audio directly onto a photo; the voice note stays attached to that image in the archive, so the story doesn't outlive the context.
Invitations
You control who is invited to the archive, as an admin or a member - useful when extended family is scattered or when one branch of the family is less connected than another.
Start building your family archive
You have probably been thinking about this for a while - the slides in the garage, the aunt who knows the immigration story, the parent whose memory is starting to soften at the edges. It helps to come prepared: a list of questions to ask your parents while you still can gives you a place to start when you sit down together. Starting does not mean finishing. It means putting one photo in and naming the person in it. And if the urgency feels more immediate right now, our guide on how to save a loved one's photos, messages, and voicemails covers what to do when time is short. Join the founding families and build from there.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is Glow different from Google Drive, Shutterfly, or StoryWorth?
Google Drive is a folder - organized by whoever made it, searchable only if files were named carefully, with no way to attach a voice to a face. Shutterfly is photo storage with albums; it doesn't connect people across generations or let you record oral history. StoryWorth prompts one person to write answers to questions and emails them out, but those answers don't attach to photos or build into a shared archive. Glow puts names, voices, and dates on the photos themselves, and the whole family can add to the same space.
How do I get started if I only have a few photos and no family buy-in yet?
You create an account, add one photo, and name the person in it. That is a complete start. You can invite family members by email when you are ready, or use a guest link so a relative can add a story to one photo without setting up an account. You do not need to build it all at once - the archive is designed to grow slowly, one contribution at a time.
What if the photo is blurry or the recording is imperfect?
A blurry photo of your grandmother at nineteen is still your grandmother at nineteen. A shaky phone recording of your father explaining where he grew up still carries his voice and the way he pauses before he gets to the hard part. Glow runs in the browser and installs as a phone app, so you can record wherever the conversation happens - at the kitchen table, at a family reunion, on a video call. Imperfect is not a reason to wait.
Can I start this for a parent or grandparent who is reluctant to participate?
Yes. You can start by recording a parent's voice on a photo and invite others later - your relative never needs to touch the archive themselves. Some families find that showing a parent their own face in a photo, labeled and placed on a timeline, is the thing that makes them want to add a story. Others build the archive quietly and share it when it has enough in it to feel real. Either way works.
Is the living family tree only for people whose relatives have died?
No. The archive is built for living families who want to record the story while the people who lived it are still here. Memorial features are coming in a future version of Glow, but the family archive you build now - the voices, the photos, the timeline - is designed to keep growing for as long as your family wants to add to it. Contributors can add whenever they are ready.