I'm not always a fan of change, especially not with websites I use day in and day out. The seemingly endless roll-out of changes at Ancestry is no exception. I'm just as frustrated as many other users are. Getting used to changes takes a bit of time, and can make research feel a little more cumbersome for a bit. And when changes seem to roll-out day after day after day, it can be overwhelming! Beta features contribute to this, as they may come and go during the testing.
But, at least one of these changes actually fixed a problem I blogged about back in October 2025. For a long time the collection "Web: Obituary Daily Times Index, 1995-2016" wouldn't properly save an edited citation. With the new updated edit citation screen (shown below) I can once again enter and save data with no errors! And, I no longer have to edit special characters (like the ~ tilde) and change them to something else. OCD or not, I won't be going back to change these in my older citations. It will just be nice moving forward not to have to remember to edit them.
The fields are actually the same, they're just in a different order and new layout. After about 2 days, I got used to how the new screen is populated. It still feels a little odd, but the fact I'm not encountering errors any longer makes the learning curve worthwhile.
However, if you add your own sources on Ancestry (and I use this frequently) the new layout on this screen is a little less intuitive. It defaults to creating a totally new source. It's fine if indeed you want to do this, but if you just want to use one of the sources you've added in the past, you'll have to choose "Select existing source" to get to the dropdown of all your sources (as shown below). Fear not! All your sources are still there, just another click away.
This is a bit like how they changed the media gallery a while back, requiring different steps to see user uploaded content and images from Ancestry hints. You have to make a choice you weren't used to making. Once you do it a few times, it's no big deal, but the first time you go to use it, you may have a brief moment of panic (as I did) wondering where all your custom sources went!
While I'm not always a fan of change, I am a big fan of fixing broken features. In this case, I'm super glad I can go back and deal with my hints from the collection "Web: Obituary Daily Times Index, 1995-2016", since I've been skipping them for about 6 months now. I was convinced I had hundreds of hints waiting for me in this collection, but in reality, it was only about 60. I'm working my way through them and hope to finish this weekend. This project is also consistently generating a few new hints for each person. It's a double win and I'm eagerly anticipating going back to check the new hints out (after I finish with this collection).
So, while you may find the plethora of new beta features and GUI changes (graphical user interface - fancy words for how the screens look), frustrating....give it a little time and it will become second nature again. Especially if you're returning after an Ancestry break, you may be visually overwhelmed. Just give it a few days and I bet you'll find you're zipping around as quickly as ever. Let me know how you feel about the new changes. Do you wish they'd leave well enough alone? Have you found a new feature you really love?
