Enhance DNA match experience for Ancestry site
MedBetterDNA 5.1 adds a new option called "show full length Notes". This option displays up to 99 lines of entry notes on the DNA results summary, rather than the AncestryDNA default of 2 lines.
MedBetterDNA has been updated to work with the July 1st, 2019 major site revision on the AncestryDNA site. This is an almost complete rewrite from earlier versions of the extension.
The biggest change is that MedBetterDNA now supports 100 filters each to only show or hide AncestryDNA DNA Matches page entries based on the notes in an entry. If you place a hashtag (a word prefaced by a '#') in the notes, MedBetterDNA will detect and can filter out those entries with those notes from view, or only show those entries with the notes containing that hashtag or others. Filters can be up to 100 characters long.
Note that MedBetterDNA will match any hashtag that contains the word it's looking for, even if there are extra letters or symbols at the end of the match, e.g. the filter "cow" matches #cow, #cows, and #cowabunga. Spaces are not allowed in filters and will be removed if added.
You can turn off and on filters through the context menu settings "show only with Notes hashtags" and "hide all with Notes hashtags" and clicking on the desired filter. To input the hashtags themselves, navigate to the Configure MedBetterDNA page via the context menu "Configure options" or the Browser toolbar MedBetterDNA icon dropdown menu or the main browser Extensions page settings.
Keeping one filter from the previous versions, MedBetterDNA allows users to filter out any entries on the DNA matches page of AncestryDNA without a profile picture by unchecking show No Profile Photo Entries in the context menu entry for MedBetterDNA.
A few quick questions:
- Can I really put in 100 filters each? Yes, but for performance and memory reasons, you may not want to go full ham on them. I only tested operations with a handful, but each filter will incrementally add to runtime performance overhead. 100 may not be reasonably achievable. I was too lazy to put in 100 unique filters and test them all myself to see how bad things got.
- Are there any known bugs? Nope, but given the complexity of the extension and the first release of an effectively ground-up rewrite, there are probably a couple lurking. Let me know if you see one and I'll try to fix it.
- I briefly see some entries before they are filtered out. You will see this at times, it's a race between the browser pulling more entries and displaying them, and the extension catching the entries and filtering them out. Sometimes the browser wins by a fraction of a second.
- If I filter out most entries, I can't scroll. Actually you can keep scrolling on a blank page and you should see an entry with the note or notes which the filters allow, assuming there are any. Because entries are dynamically loaded by the AncestryDNA website, you may have to keep scrolling for a while, even if you don't see anything (that is, all the entries are still there, but simply hidden from view.)
- I had to refresh the DNA matches page after I Saved settings on the configuration page for the extension to come back. Yup. That's how it works. Chrome has a bad habit of retaining older context menu settings on anything less than a full reload, so the configuration page Save button will reload the entire extension to flush them out.
- Can I set the filters so that no entries will ever be displayed, e.g. simultaneously have a Show only and a Hide All filter active? Absolutely, there's no AI at work. The extension will filter what you tell it, even if it seems a completely useless task.
Latest reviews
- (2019-07-17) Jim Bartlett: MEDBetterDNA is a great labor saving tool. i particularly liked being able to see all of the Notes in my Shared Match lists - a clear Cluster is often obvious.
- (2019-07-16) DC Christensen: The feature that I have been using displayed the notes I had put my matches. This enabled me to see at a glance how I connected with my matches. That was the only Medbetter feature I used. I sure hope that feature will return. The small portion of the notes AncestryDNA now displays is not sufficient, and I'm not sure why they bothered with that if that was all they were going to do. Having to click on the notes to display more doesn't cut it for me.
- (2019-01-11) Mike Cashman: Great help in working with DNA matches - to see the notes, see where there are unlinked family trees, and be able to filter
- (2019-01-09) Craig Neville: Does what it is suppose to do, flawlessly.
- (2018-09-24) Cary Bright: Takes away at least two keystrokes per match!! Great time saver for me. It is all there for me to see the notes from the match screen. THANK YOU!!
- (2018-09-12) Robert Norton: great tool....thank-you
- (2018-07-15) Susan Rogers: A terrific helper for working with AncestryDNA matches. I'm giving a seminar presentation and will tell everyone that they should only use Chrome with this extension, otherwise they are wasting so much time. Thank you to the developer!
- (2018-06-10) mary erwin: I use this tool to display my notes for DNA matches automatically. A real timesaver.
- (2018-05-06) Elizabeth Johnston Vasquez: love the feature of seeing my notes without having to open every person's page.
- (2018-04-14) Phyllis Holloway: It's all well and good having this tool but where are the instructions on how to actually use it. I've installed the extension but don't know how to actually USE all of the so called wonderful functions
- (2018-02-11) Michael Wesley: Very generous of Michael to give us this tool to plug shortcomings of Ancestry.
- (2018-01-24) Walter Steets: I've copied my Ancestry shared DNA cM and number of segments into Notes and added hashtags for various categories. This extension displays all of the notes contents on the Shared Matches pages for review and makes it easy to filter by hashtag.
- (2018-01-21) Tobias Vervaart: A great tool
- (2018-01-19) Karen Ramon: Excellent tool!
- (2018-01-16) Gina Gualco: I love being able to see my DNA match notes without having to click on the note icon for each match. Also love being able to filter my matches based on ancestral line. Great tool!
- (2018-01-14) Cynthia Louise Adkins: This is an extremely helpful tool! Thank you so much to the developer.
- (2018-01-14) Florence B: Boy don't I wish I'd had this from the start!
- (2018-01-14) R Frederick: So happy to have this tool to make working with Ancestry DNA matches easier. Thanks so much for making the extension available.
- (2018-01-14) Lee Ann Dickey: This is a great tool to use with my matches. Thank you for all the time you have put in to it for everyone to use.
- (2018-01-14) Jan Ahrens: This tool makes viewing ancestry dna matches much more useful and functional - don't know how I got along without it.
- (2018-01-14) JackieHollow: This is an amazing tool that is going to help so much when researching on AncestryDNA. Just the ability to see your notes is wonderful, but now that we can filter those with hashtags?? SUCH a timesaver (once I get all my matches labelled!).
- (2018-01-14) Thanks for this much needed capability for filtering Ancestry DNA match results and, additionally, allowing the notes to flow to the summary match list and shared matches list rather than 1 click in for each match. This is a real help in analyzing matches.
- (2018-01-13) Pamela Pierce: LOVE it!
- (2018-01-13) Dora Ville: Great tool that helps fill-in some of the shortcomings of AncestryDNA's website. Ancestry could do any of these things more easily because they have access to the underlying database, but in the meantime I REALLY appreciate Michael Devore investing his time and talents to help out his fellow genealogy seekers.
- (2018-01-13) Debbie Kennett: This is a wonderful tool for working with your AncestryDNA matches and a real time-saver. I love the ability to see all the notes without having to click through to each match. There are lots of useful filters and it's also helpful to use the hashtags to produce tailor-made filters.