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Rootsgen features

Everything you can do with Rootsgen, explained with screenshots - from importing your GEDCOM to printing reports and sharing your tree with family.

Getting started

Get started with Rootsgen: register with a passkey and create your first treeCreate a Rootsgen account with just a username and a passkey - no email address, no password - save your recovery code, and start your first family tree.
Use Rootsgen on a phone or iPad: browse, edit and print your family tree anywhereRootsgen works in the browser on phones and tablets as well as computers, with a Browse/Edit switch, full editing, charts and print-to-PDF reports on iPad.

Working with your tree

Browse your family tree: parents, spouses, children and photos in one viewMove through your family tree by clicking. See a person with their parents, spouse, children and photos in one two-pane view, and jump to anyone with instant search.
Edit people and facts: dates, places, notes and occupations in your family treeAdd or change a person's name, sex, occupation, birth, baptism, death and burial, write formatted notes, and rely on edit-conflict protection when several people work on one tree.
Add parents, spouses, children and siblings to your family treeGrow your Rootsgen tree by adding relatives: link someone already in the tree or create a new person, order marriages, and unlink people wrongly connected.
Protect living people's privacy: masked GEDCOM and CSV exportsRootsgen can mask living relatives when you export or share, replacing given names with "Living" and removing dates, places, notes and photos, to help with privacy law such as GDPR.

Photos, sources and places

Photos and documents: attach, rotate, caption and share pictures on your family treeAttach portraits, group photos, certificates and PDFs to people in Rootsgen. Caption them, rotate a sideways photo in one click, and keep every original file.
Face tagging: identify who is in a family photo and find every picture of a personDraw a box around a face in any Rootsgen photo and link it to a person. Tag people you cannot identify yet as unknown, and see every photo someone appears in.
Sources and citations: record where every fact in your family tree came fromAttach source citations to births, baptisms, deaths, burials and marriages in Rootsgen, rate their reliability, and print a bibliography of every source.
Places and maps: locate every birthplace and burial on your family treeSee where events in your family tree happened. Pin places on an OpenStreetMap map, correct coordinates by hand, and explore every event at a place with the Places Report.

Charts and reports

Ancestor and descendant charts: explore your family tree visuallyInteractive Rootsgen charts show a person's ancestors or descendants as a clickable tree. Follow a line back generation by generation, with every spouse shown.
Family Group Sheet: print a couple, their marriage and their childrenThe Family Group Sheet puts one couple, their marriage details and all their children with birth, death and marriage facts on a single printable page.
Individual Summary: everything known about one person on a pageThe Individual Summary report gathers one person's facts, family, notes and photos into a single printable page.
Pedigree Chart: a numbered list of a person's ancestorsThe Pedigree Chart report lists a person's ancestors generation by generation with standard ancestor numbers, ready to print or save as PDF.
Fan Chart: a half-circle chart of your ancestors, colored by family lineThe Fan Chart draws a person's ancestors as a half-circle, one ring per generation, colored by family line, with a printer-friendly black and white option.
Ancestor Report: a person's ancestors as an indented outlineThe Ancestor Report walks back through a person's father and mother lines as an indented outline, showing where each line ends.
Descendant Report: everyone descended from a person, as an indented outlineThe Descendant Report lists a person's children, grandchildren and further descendants as an indented outline, with every spouse shown on their own line.
Register Report: a numbered narrative of a family, generation by generationThe Register Report writes a family's descendants as numbered narrative paragraphs in the style used by genealogy journals, with a "continued as No." cross-reference.
Individual Timeline: a person's life in date order, with age at each eventThe Individual Timeline merges a person's events with their relatives' births, marriages and deaths into one chronological list with their age at each.
Relationship Calculator: work out how any two people in your tree are relatedPick two people and Rootsgen tells you how they are related - such as second cousin once removed - using their common ancestor, and close in-law relationships.
Places Report: every event recorded at a place in your family treeThe Places Report lets you search a place name and expand it to see every birth, marriage, death and other event recorded there, with the people involved.
Source / Bibliography Report: every source in your tree and what cites itThe Source / Bibliography Report lists every source in your family tree with each fact that cites it, its page detail and evidence quality, ready to print.
Surname Index: find everyone in your tree with a given surnameThe Surname Index lets you search a surname and expand it to list every person who carries it, with life years and links to their pages.
Custom List Report: print any saved search as a reportThe Custom List Report prints the result of any Query tree search - by name, place, date, event or relationship - as a tidy printable table.

Tree options explained

The Tree options menu explained: what every item doesA guide to every item in the Rootsgen Tree options menu - switching trees, statistics, search, reports, sharing, import, merge, export, backup and restore.
Create a new family tree and switch between treesCreate a family tree in Rootsgen in two steps - name it, then optionally import a GEDCOM and photos - and switch between all the trees you own or share.
Family tree statistics: people, families, dates and surnames at a glanceSee how many people, families, photos and notes your Rootsgen family tree holds, the years it covers, the living/deceased split and its most common surnames.
Query tree: search your family tree by name, date, place, event or relationshipSearch a Rootsgen family tree by name, sex, living status, birth and death years, place, events and relationships, combine searches, save them and export to CSV.
Family tree reports: print charts, sheets and lists to PDFThirteen printable Rootsgen family tree reports - family group sheets, pedigree, fan and descendant charts, timelines, place and surname reports - saved as PDF.
Validate your family tree: find impossible dates, duplicates and missing filesRun a read-only data check on your Rootsgen family tree to find impossible dates, broken family links, duplicate-looking people, orphaned records and missing photos.
Share your family tree: invite family as viewers, editors or co-ownersChoose exactly who can see or edit your Rootsgen family tree. Invite relatives as viewers, editors or a trusted co-owner, and change or remove access at any time.
Tree settings: choose which person your family tree opens toSet the default person your Rootsgen family tree opens to, so everyone you share it with lands on the right starting point.

Import, merge and export

Import a GEDCOM file and your photos into a new family treeBring a GEDCOM family tree and its photos into Rootsgen in a few steps. Works with a file from any genealogy program, then adds your media folder as a zip.
Merge an updated GEDCOM into your family treeBring an updated GEDCOM export into a tree that already has data. Compare first, review every conflict, then commit - nothing is written until you say so.
Export your family tree as GEDCOM with photos, with living people maskedDownload your Rootsgen family tree as a GEDCOM file plus your photos under their original names, and optionally mask living people to protect their privacy.

Backup, restore and delete

Back up your whole family tree: the complete, restorable .db backupDownload a complete copy of your Rootsgen family tree - every person, fact, photo, face tag and setting - that you can restore exactly if anything goes wrong.
Restore a family tree from a backup, safelyPut a Rootsgen family tree back to the state in a saved backup. A safety backup of the current tree is required first, then you confirm by typing the tree name.
Delete a family tree permanentlyPermanently remove a Rootsgen family tree and its photos. You see exactly what will go, are offered an export first, and must type the tree name to confirm.

Your account

Your account menu: preferences, feedback and sign outThe round button at the top right of Rootsgen opens your account menu - your name, Preferences, Report a bug or suggest a feature, and Sign out.
Preferences: set up Rootsgen the way you like itEvery setting on the Rootsgen Preferences page - passkeys, recovery code, display name, colors, names, date formats, default tree and reopening where you left off.
Passkeys and your recovery code: how signing in worksHow Rootsgen’s passwordless sign-in works: registering a passkey on each of your devices, and using your recovery code if you ever lose access to all of them.
Display preferences: date formats, UPPER CASE surnames and colorsMake Rootsgen read the way you write: choose date formats, show surnames in UPPER CASE, and change the label and card colors in the family view.
Report a bug or suggest a featureTell the people who run Rootsgen about a problem or an idea in a few seconds. The page you were on and your browser details are included automatically.
Delete your Rootsgen account and see what happens to your treesClose your Rootsgen account yourself. A co-owner takes over any tree that has one, other trees are deleted, and you see exactly what will happen first.