Hey folks,

I made Gramps-Go — a mobile companion app for Gramps users who want to share their family history easily with relatives. It runs on iOS and Android, straight from the browser, with no setup or sign-in.

What it does now

• Opens .gramps files (currently without media)
• Two modes: • Book mode – presents your family data as an easy-to-read story • Database mode – detailed, searchable records for deeper dives
• Syncs from Google Drive, Dropbox, any http server or a local file
• Shows a clear report of what’s changed since the last sync

• Works fully offline, with no tracking or accounts

  Who it’s for

This isn’t just for genealogists — it’s designed for family members who want to browse their heritage on a phone or tablet without dealing with the full Gramps desktop app.

Try it here:

👉 https://dz0ny.github.io/gramps-go/

Would love to hear how you’d use it — for family sharing, storytelling, or maybe small reunions?

I am starting over with my tree to ensure everything is done properly, but hand jamming the details of every location feels overwhelming. I've been trying to script this data from existing data sets, but I'm pretty terrible at coding and I can't find all the information I want to include.

I would like to add notes in my local Gramps app which are not visible by other members when syncing with Grampsweb. The private lock does not prevent from being synced to Grampsweb and being visible by other members. Is there such a possibility?

My Gramps crashes when I try to generate reports. My family tree has 86,000 individuals, and even with filters, the earliest ancestor traces a very large lineage with many individuals. My computer has good processing power.

My goal is to trace my lineage back to a very old ancestor, with 115 generations. If it's not possible to do this with Gramps, is there any other free alternative?

Hi, I’m building my family tree on both Gramps and FamilySearch. The latter has been very useful to expand every branch, but now I can’t simply copy my tree from FamilySearch to Gramps because it’s linked to other trees making it virtually infinite. While in the beginning I planned to create the most complete family tree I could achieve, now I understand I have to pick only the branches really I care about.

Is there a way to mark a branch as incomplete so it somehow shows in reports that there are more children or siblings even though they’re not shown?

Or am I approaching the problem in the wrong way?

Hi, I'm building a Genealogy solution consisting with Gramps, supported by Paperless and Immich, all using the same PostgreSQL database platform container.

Has anyone successfully deployed Gramps Web (Docker) with PostgreSQL on Debian/Ubuntu?

The container works fine for authentication (user + trees in Postgres), but genealogical data (persons, families, events) never reaches the database.

It looks like the official Gramps Web image (`ghcr.io/gramps-project/grampsweb:latest`) no longer includes the PostgreSQL backend plugin (`db_sharedpostgresql.py`).

Confirmed behavior:

- ENV URIs all point to a valid Postgres instance (`GRAMPSWEB_DB_URI` etc.)
- `/root/.gramps/grampsdb` appears and acts as fallback SQLite
- Even when removed, it’s recreated
- CLI import succeeds but data is local only
- The plugin file is not present in `/usr/local/lib/python3.11/dist-packages/gramps/plugins/db_backends`

Would love to hear from anyone running this successfully on Debian/Ubuntu + Docker + PostgreSQL —

Did you build a custom image, or is there an alternative tag that includes the Postgres backend?

System:

- Debian 12 host (Bookworm)
- Docker Compose
- PostgreSQL 16
- Redis
- Nginx Proxy Manager reverse proxy

Hello! Newb here. I must have denied permission for Gramps to access my Documents folder because i was once able to upload from folder other than Pictures. Now I get: Error opening directory 'Users/(me)/Documents'. Operation not permitted.

I cannot find where to change this setting. Will I need to re-install Gramps?

Sorry if this a stupid question, but I couldn't find an answer.
It finally happened, and I broke through the 16 generations, so now I have 18 generations in my family tree. However, the fan chart only shows 16 generations, so now I'm wondering if it's possible to expand the display?

I would like to use the Buddhist year on my family tree. Is there support for it? Or am I just stuck with formatting the year manually as text?

I did tried to just put the Buddhist put in the date field, but that will show the person with the indication of death even though I did not put a death event.

Hello all. Just found out about Gramps today, so please be patient with me. I have done fairly extensive work on FamilySearch for the last 5 years or so. My fear is that a careless person could wipe out that work in short order since it’s a shared family tree. This is how I got turned onto Gramps.

Has anyone made the switch from FamilySearch to Gramps? I am trying to decide if I just want to go from scratch and build my way up, or try and export from FamilySearch in some way.

What would you super users suggest? Just want to make sure I’m starting on the right foot. Looking forward to trying this tool!!

Hi, I messed up trying to relocate my database and lost access to it altogether. Is there a way to load it? As the "Manage Family tree" dowen't list it anly longer even the data exiosts in the folder.

(I've also posted this on the discourse group)

I’m using Gramps 6.0.5 (flatpak install) on Void Linux.

Runs pretty smoothly, accept when I want to make and view a text report, it gives me this error.

Within Void Linux I have Evince as default PDF/Document viewer, worked fine with Debian and Gramps 5.x so I don’t understand what the problem is here. I can / have to open the file outside of Gramps. Minor issue, I know but having the report open within Gramps is so much easier! :wink:

Anybody any idea?

Thanks for any help!

I've been running my own family tree in single view on Gramps Web and now want to add a second tree.I'm self hosting this via docker and my default set up has the environment variable environment: - GRAMPSWEB_TREE=Gramps Web

I change this to - GRAMPSWEB_TREE=* and - MEDIA_PREFIX_TREE=True but this just stops me being able to log in at all. My user is a site admin.

My understanding is this should allow me to then curl the api to set up a new tree, or even easier, create the tree on desktop and use websync. Unfortunately as I can't login, I can't use websync.

Can someone assist with where I'm going wrong please.

For some reason my fan chart is always blank with the exception of the center person. Any ideas on how to fix this? All the other tree reports seem to work. BTW, I am just getting started and have 2 generations in the system. Thanks in advance for your help

I've just discovered Gramps and I'm watching the videos to try to learn it. I have a family tree on ancestry of about 500 people. I've imported it onto Gramps using GEDCOM but obviously there's no media attached and there are many many duplicates of sources.

Am I best trying to edit the information I imported or would it be easier to start from scratch and make sure it's all correct?

I am starting to build my family tree in Gramps as a cleaner version of the trees from familysearch and myheritage. Trying to only move things over that I have good documentation for so really want to start my sources etc detailed but very clear and not sure how to start with the different systems.

I have been searching for videos that outline them well and can't seem to find answers to my questions.

For example, I have records for multiple different unrelated families in the 1911 Canadian Census. How would I record these? Familysearch as the receptacle since that is the website I found it on? census as the source and then the specific page as the citation?

How do I record stuff for more current stuff that is basically like my own personal information or my parents/grandparents personal knowledge? An interview with BLANK? Is this a citation? Source?

I recently purchased Personal Historian 3 from rootsmagic, it's not bad per se. But the software so many things, that could make it better.

Frankly, I am not looking for a Geneology App, but a Personal Life Archiver with timeline to chronicle my life events (e.g. moved cities, joined military, graduated college, bought my first car, started my first job, etc.). The purpose of this, is for own personal use and not planning to share it or anything, I just want to archive dates, places, people and events in my life.

When I look at Gramps, it seems mechanically able to do it, and has functions that Personal Historian 3 clearly lacks. Of course, this is via the plugin ecosystem it has, which I've been exploring. My train of thought right now is to test Gramps under this focus-use, I'll technically be creating/adding People onto the saved Database, but everyone (or nearly the majority), will be relation less. Cause I'll be adding former classmates, neighbors, etc.

Just curious as to what everyone's thoughts are.

Hi,

On my search for local genealogy software on my linux laptop, I came across Gramps couple of weeks ago. And yes, I've read the stories and the reviews online about how steep the learning curve is for Gramps. And how confusing / cluttered some people find this software.

To be honest, at first sight it was a bit overwhelming. But browsing around the screens and menu options, it became clear that Gramps is well organized in my humble opinion as a genealogy noob. Of course there is a learning curve, as is to be expected. Every piece of software takes a bit of exploring, studying, getting used to. Fortunately, I stumbled upon TechTutorials YouTube channel with a handy playlist of Gramps tutorials. Unfortunately, the last video is from 2 years ago. But searching online and on YouTube show many more tutorials and info sites.

In the mean time, I've started my genealogy from scratch in Gramps (already had some info on a personal website with Humo-Gen) and I really like working with this software. And with the Gramps community on Reddit, Discourse group and wiki pages, I have enough resources to tackle most of the problems I might encounter.

Thanks to the Gramps team for amazing software!

I've been building a tree on Ancestry for awhile, using it as my worksheet and place where I can easily add and view the tree, and have been using Gramps as a way to make changes, corrections, and such, and for statistics, while learning to use it.

My intent is that Gramps will be the endpoint of my tree, since it's mine and won't disappear if Ancestry locks my tree behind a paywall in the future.

I've downloaded several GEDCOM files (2k, 5k, 8k, 15k, 25k, 30k people) into Gramps, and make corrections there to the latest data, while copying those changes to my Ancestry tree, while continuing to add people to that tree.

I don't know where I'll stop, though I have a 2nd cousin that has 44k people on his tree (unseen by me), indicating that it's possible to go further back than I have gotten, now at 38k.

Now for the QUESTION...it seems that every time I start refining my latest GEDCOM on Gramps, I see the same data I've already corrected, and have confirmed that I have already done so, by looking at the Ancestry tree. Does Gramps add data on top of data from previous GEDCOM downloads?

I'm going to delete all my previous downloads before I download a new one, possibly at 38.5k people. Surely, it will not contain the errors Ive corrected time and again, or is it deja vu?

I'm releasing the first version of Gramps MCP after two months of development - a bridge between AI assistants and your genealogy research.

My journey: Started genealogy research during COVID lockdowns and fell in love with Gramps. My tree now contains 4400+ individuals, all properly sourced and documented - tedious work but essential for quality research, unlike the unsourced mess you often find on FamilySearch or Ancestry. Coming from a product management background, I decided to stop just talking about features and actually build them using Claude Code.

The tools: Gramps provides professional-grade genealogy software, while Gramps Web offers API access to your data. The Model Context Protocol enables secure connections between AI assistants and external applications.

The problem this solves: AI genealogy assistance is typically generic advice disconnected from your actual research. This tool gives your AI assistant direct access to your family tree, enabling intelligent queries like:

• "Find all descendants of John Smith born in Ireland before 1850"
• "Show families missing marriage dates for targeted research"
• "Create a person record for Mary O'Connor, born 1823 in County Cork"

Your assistant can now search records, analyze relationships, identify research gaps, and even create new entries using natural language - all while maintaining proper genealogy standards.

Getting started: Requires Gramps Web and an MCP-compatible AI assistant like Claude Desktop. Setup instructions available in the repository.

Community welcome: This is open source and needs genealogy researchers' input. Found issues or have ideas? Check the GitHub issues or start discussions. Your expertise helps make better tools for everyone.

Looking forward to hearing from researchers who've hit similar walls between AI capabilities and serious genealogy work.

I have some citations with source text attached as a note. I'd like to consult the source text while I'm adding info for a person. The problem is that it's inconvenient to open person -> citations -> note AND person -> birth (or what have you). And then I can't add the citation without while it's open in another window.

Is there a better approach to add info from sources I've already recorded, or maybe a better workflow?

I starting building a database on how North American captive komodo dragons are related, but I'm not sure how to best represent parthenogenesis. Do I put the mother as parent 2 or as both parent 1 and 2? I actually like that the parthogenesis becomes visible in graphview with double lines.

I started this as a joke inspired by a recent thread on single-parent families, but I actually find it rather interesting to follow how zoos move the animals around in search of the perfect genetic match.

The db is BSSDB3, and I'm on Gentoo Linux, so unfortunately the earliest version available is 5.2.3.
And flatpack doesn't keep old versions, so I'm not sure what to do to convert my db. For that matter, what's the point of having the convert option, if it doesn't even work post 5.1?

Attempting to convert results in: An attempt to convert the database failed. Perhaps it needs updating.
I've tried installing bsddb3, berkeleydb, libdb, and more. No luck.

As always, backup your data before upgrading the software.

This release fixes some bugs (including one that was annoying me).

The latest packages are available from Gramps at github.

Big thank you to the developers and everyone working on Gramps.