Collections September 2026

5 apps for the things you'll hand down

The things you hand down are mostly not objects — a name on the family tree, a tree that will outlive you, a voice, a recipe, a childhood. These five each keep one of them in a form that survives the phone it was recorded on.

The apps for the things you'll hand down are FamilySearch Tree, Bonsai, StoryCorps, Recipe Keeper and Qeepsake. I built Bonsai; the other 4 are other developers’ apps.

MiaAppLog— an iOS developer who reviews other people’s apps
Published September 2026 · apps and prices last checked 6 October 2026

Four stars is my score for how well an app answers this moment. An app I built gets four and a half — that is a rule, not a comparison. The App Store’s own average is on each card beside it.

1. 

   FamilySearch Tree

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Reference · App Store 4.8 (503,168)

   Build your branch of a shared family tree, with the photos and stories.

   Skip it if you want your tree to stay the way you built it — it is one shared tree anyone can edit, and reviewers keep finding relatives changed, duplicated or wrongly linked by other users and by automatic matching.

   Official site ↗More lists with FamilySearch Tree

   
2. 

   Bonsai Editor’s pick

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.5 · Free · Lifestyle · App Store 5.0 (7)

   Each tree gets a profile and a photo timeline that runs for years.

   App Store ↗More lists with Bonsai

   
3. 

   StoryCorps

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Education · App Store 4.6 (1,585)

   Record a conversation with someone you love, in the app, and keep it.

   Skip it if the recording will be the only copy — reviewers report interviews lost to crashes, a phone alarm or an upload that never finishes, so record a backup on something else as well.

   Official site ↗More lists with StoryCorps

   
4. 

   Recipe Keeper

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Food & Drink · App Store 4.8 (30,720)

   Type the family recipes in once; they're kept on all your devices.

   Skip it if you cook from more than one device or share recipes with a partner — Pro is bought separately per platform and per Apple ID, with no Family Sharing, which is the surprise reviewers keep reporting.

   Official site ↗More lists with Recipe Keeper

   
5. 

   Qeepsake

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Lifestyle · App Store 4.9 (14,631)

   Answer a text a day about your kid; it becomes a printed book later.

   Skip it if you want to stay on a free plan — it has been cut back towards paid-only, and reviewers mention prompts that repeat or turn generic and printed books that feel thin for the price.

   Official site ↗More lists with Qeepsake

   

Bonsai is one of mine — everything else on this list is someone else’s app. How that works.