Problems with Ancestry

I see several posts going back to abt. 2013 reporting incompatibility of Safari with the app Ancestry. I had no problems with Ancestry until this last year, when it would have problems saving records, albeit intermittently. Numerous calls to Ancestry ended in frustration with their stock answer: clear your cache and try another browser. I was able to live with this on/off situation until about 3-4 weeks ago, when records on Ancestry suddenly started to display improperly. To be specific, I would bring up a record, the information for which had been transcribed, and there would be a thumbnail image of the basic record itself with a tab saying "click to view full record". This indeed would bring up the record, but would display only the top-left 1/8 of the page - whether it be a will, or a whatever document, rendering it useless. This phenomenon started about the same time I updated Mac OS to 10.15.5. Am running Safari 13.1.1. I don't recall when Safari was last updated. Whether this is pure coincidence or that Apple has now made some change that further exacerbates the problem with Ancestry, I don't know. How does one get to Apple to ask that question? In any case, I get no help from Ancestry - same story. So in desperation, as I have a countless number of hours invested in a massive family tree on Ancestry, I bit the bullet and downloaded Firefox. It runs slow vs. Safari on this app, but at least it seems to work, and I no longer have the problem with the display of partial pages. I have not tried Google Chrome, which is another browser that Ancestry recommends. I bought a Mac to try to live an Apple life!


My remaining issue is to wonder why the tech people of Apple haven't gotten together with Ancestry, a rather significant and broadly used app, to work things out and ensure that Ancestry works as well on Safari as with other browsers. Is there a technical obstacle to this? Does anyone at Apple read these postings to see what problems the "Apple Community" are experiencing?


Why should the Ancestry app be browser-specific? I do not encounter problems with Safari on ANY other website. Weird and frustrating that I have to use a different browser for just this one app! But yes!


MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jun 20, 2020 7:41 PM

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Jun 24, 2020 12:02 PM in response to Givenupnow

Hello Givenupnow,


It sounds like you are having trouble with accessing Ancestry using Safari on your Mac. As it turns out Ancestry does not support Safari's desktop version only the mobile version is supported. Since you stated Safari is working with other websites it sounds like Safari is working fine, Ancestry simply does not support the desktop version of Safari. Check out this link for Ancestry support.


Recommended Web Browsers - Ancestry


Cheers!

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Problems with Ancestry

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