Adding a memory: the story, the photos, the when and where

Choose Add to the page → A memory. Give it a title and write the story the way you'd tell it, add photos or a video, or both.

When

A memory can have a full date, just a year, or a decade — the 1970s — when that's all anyone remembers. Choose Not sure if you don't know; the memory sits under Not yet dated until someone does. A date can't be in the future.

Where

A town, a neighbourhood or a named place — never an address. See Places and the map.

Photos and videos

Uploads begin the moment you pick a file, so Save is quick. Photos are shrunk for the page but the original is kept — anyone who can see a photo can save it. Videos play at 1080p and can be up to 1 GB — fifteen minutes or so of a barbecue; the phones upload big files in pieces and pick up where they left off if the connection drops. If you close the form before saving, what you picked is waiting when you come back. Each account has room for about 5 GB of photos and videos across its pages.

Photos and videos can also arrive from another app — the share sheet on your phone has Beyond My Time in it — or many at once from your camera roll. See Sharing from other apps and From my photos.

Theme, and a question to start from

Beside When and Where, a memory has a Theme — Family, Work, Travel, Hard days… — set by anyone, never required, and the way the page's filters find it later. Above the story, Start from a question ▾ lists the questions: what they taught you, the recipe you can still make, how they got into their line of work, where they always wanted to go. Pick one and it seeds the title and fills in the theme, which you can still change; the questions read in the present on a living page (what always makes them laugh?), to you on your own page, and in the past only once a page is Remembered. There is no section for advice, recipes or goals — each is simply a memory with the right theme, so it sits with the others and can be found by it.

Not every memory is a happy one. The Hard days theme is for the ones the feeds leave out — the hardest thing they went through and how they got through it, a day that didn't go to plan, what they carried quietly. Choose Only the people on this page if it's tender; the people who respond can offer a hug or a candle rather than a like.

If you're a contributor

On a living person's page the owner may have chosen to read contributors' memories before they're published; yours waits for them and you hear on your bell when it's published. Everything you add carries your name — or, if you're adding it for someone else, theirs. See Memories on behalf of someone.

Not ready yet?

Keep to myself for now saves the memory where only you can see it — not even the people who look after the page — until you add it. See Keeping a memory to yourself.

Who's in the photos

Name the people in each photo or video right in the form — see Naming people in photos.