The Timeline in your circle

Every post on the day it happened

Choose Timeline from your circle to see its posts placed on the day they happened, not the day they were shared. A photo from a summer in 1987 sits in 1987, even if someone posted it last week.

1. Scroll down to go back in time. The newest moments are at the top.
2. To jump to a year, tap it in the row of years at the top of the page.
3. Tap a post to open it. A day with several posts is gathered into one card, and the posts from a chapter are gathered into one card for that chapter. Tap it to open the chapter.

How we know the day

1. If the person who shared a post typed the date it's from, we use that.
2. If they didn't, and it's a photo that carries a date from the camera or phone that took it, we use that date.
3. If neither is there, the post has no date we can place, and it isn't shown on the Timeline.

The day stays the day it was written or recorded. It doesn't move with your time zone, so a photo from New Year's Day stays on New Year's Day wherever you are. A date given as just a year, like 1967, sits at the start of that year, and just a month, like March 1987, at the start of that month.

Setting a date yourself

You can type the date a post is from when you share it, or add it later: open the post and write the date it happened, the way you'd say it. It saves as you go. When the date was typed in rather than read from the camera, the post's card on the Timeline says Date set by hand. You can change the date on your own posts. Read Add the real date to an old photo for the ways you can write a date.

Scanned and old photos

A scanned print or an old photo usually carries no camera date, or carries the day it was scanned. Type the date it's from, even if all you know is the year or the season, and it moves to that spot on the Timeline. A photo shared 10 or more years after the day it shows sits in a paper frame, so old photos are easy to spot.

Why a post may have no date

Photos sent by text message often lose their camera date on the way, because phones and phone networks remove it. Notes, links, and screenshots usually have no date of their own either.

The end of the Timeline tells you how many posts have no date we can place. Choose Give them one to go to your circle's posts, then open any post without a date and add the date you know.

Birthdays and anniversaries

Birthdays, anniversaries, and other dates your family mentions in its posts appear on the Timeline on their day each year, and the next few coming up are shown near the top.

A date we found in your posts, but that nobody has checked yet, shows two choices. If it's right, choose Confirm. If it isn't, choose Correct and put in the right month and day. If you only know the month, you can leave the day out. A correction changes the date for this circle only, not anyone's profile or the original post.

If someone else changes the same date while you're checking it, the page shows you their change and asks you to look again before saving yours.

Closed circles

You can still look through the Timeline of a closed circle, but you can't confirm or correct its dates.