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Kinwheel keeps your family history in two kinds of things: trees that map the people and how they are related, and albums that hold the photos, documents and stories behind them. You can share either with family, and almost every change can be undone.

At a glance

Getting started

To start, create a free account. After that, every page has the same menu in its top-right corner.

Create an account

1. On the home page, click Log in, then click Click here to register!
2. Enter a username, your email address and a password. Type the password a second time to confirm it.
3. Click Register. You are logged in and taken to your trees.

Log in and out

• To log in, click Log in on the home page and enter your username and password. If you were trying to open a page, you go straight back to it.
• To log out, open the menu and choose Logout.

The home page

The home page offers two ways to begin:

• Start your tree: map the generations of your family, one person at a time.
• Start your album: collect photographs, documents and letters into a book your family can page through.

You can do both. An album can be linked to a tree, so the photos sit next to the people in them.

The menu

Click the menu button (three lines, top right) on any page to open it. It holds:

On a tree page the menu changes. Its Trees section holds tools for the tree you are looking at: Search, Tree summary, Views of this tree, History of changes and Colors.

Your trees

Every tree grows from one person, the root relative. You can start a tree by hand or import one from another genealogy program.

My Trees

My Trees (menu: Tree > View all trees) lists every tree you own or that someone has shared with you, newest first. Click a tree's name to open it.

On trees you own, two icons appear on the right:

• Pencil: edit the tree's name and description, manage who can see it, or view its history.
• Trash can: move the tree to Deleted Trees. You can restore it for 90 days.

Trees gallery

The Trees gallery (menu: Tree > Trees gallery) shows example family trees that anyone with an account can explore, such as the House of Tudor and the Warburg family. Click a tree's card to open it. Gallery trees are view-only: you can look around, search and switch views, but not change them. If you want to change one, open it and choose Trees > Make a copy of this tree from the menu -- the copy is yours to edit.

Start a tree by hand

1. Open the menu and choose Tree > Create new tree.
2. Enter a Tree name, for example "Sharpe family".
3. Under Root relative, enter the person the tree grows from: yourself, a parent or a grandparent. Give a first name, last name and gender. Date of birth is optional.
4. Click Start your tree. The tree opens with the root person in the middle, ready for you to add relatives.

Import a GEDCOM file

Most genealogy programs and sites (Ancestry, FamilySearch, MyHeritage, Gramps, RootsMagic) can export a tree as a GEDCOM file, ending in .ged.

1. On the Create new tree page, click …or import a GEDCOM file from another genealogy program.
2. Choose your file and click Continue. Files can be up to 10 MB and hold fewer than 5,000 people.
3. Pick the Root person. Everyone connected to them is imported. People with no connection to the root are left out.
4. Name the tree and read the summary. It tells you how many people will be added and lists anything that can't come across exactly. Common notes:
   • Couples who are already related through other relatives, such as cousins who married, may not be linked as spouses yet. Their children still get both parents.
   • Couples who married each other twice are shown as one marriage.
   • A person with more than two listed parents keeps only two.
   • Dates the site couldn't read are left blank.
5. Click Import tree. Large files can take up to a minute.

Nothing is saved until you click Import tree. If an import fails partway, you are offered a button to delete the partial tree.

Edit a tree's details

Click the pencil icon on My Trees to open Edit Tree. There you can:

• Change the tree's name and description.
• Click Manage access to share the tree (owners only; see Sharing and permissions).
• Click View tree history / restore an earlier version (see Troubleshooting).
• Click Make a Copy (see below).
• Click Delete Tree.

Make a copy of a tree

A copy is useful when you want to try a big change without risking the real tree, or when you want your own version of a tree someone shared with you or published to the Trees gallery.

Open the tree, then choose Trees > Make a copy of this tree from the menu. You can also click Make a Copy on the Edit Tree page. The copy opens as soon as it is made. It is named Copy of the original; rename it on the Edit Tree page.

You can copy any tree you are able to open, including trees shared with you and trees in the Trees gallery. The copy belongs to you, and the original is never changed.

A copy carries over every person, every relationship and all of their dates and places. These do not come across:

• Sharing. The copy starts private, even if the original was shared or published to the gallery. Share it yourself from Manage access.
• Albums. Albums stay with the original tree.
• History. The copy starts a fresh history of changes, with the copy itself as its first entry.

Delete and restore a tree

Deleting a tree moves it to Deleted Trees (menu: Tree > Deleted trees). It stays there for 90 days, then is deleted forever.

• To bring a tree back, click Restore next to it.
• To delete it at once, click Delete forever. This cannot be undone.
• Deletion history lists every tree you have deleted, restored or purged.

Viewing a tree

A tree opens centred on its root person, with ancestors above and descendants below. Click any person's box to see what you can do with them.

Move around

The buttons above the tree:

The person menu

Click a person's box to open their menu:

• Person bio detail: their profile page.
• Edit person: change their details and parents (see People and relationships).
• View albums: albums linked to this tree.
• Add relative: add a parent, spouse, child or sibling.
• Set as root: redraw the tree centred on this person. Use this to explore a branch that doesn't fit on screen.
• Delete person.

Find someone

Click the magnifying glass, or choose Trees > Search in the menu. Type all or the start of a first name, a last name, or both, then click Find. Last-name search also matches maiden names.

• With one match, the tree jumps to that person and highlights them.
• With several matches, a list shows each person's name, maiden name, birth and death years, and generation. Generation 1 is the oldest generation in the tree. Click a name to jump there.
• If the person is off the current page, the tree redraws with them as the root.

Choose a view

Open the menu and choose Trees > Views of this tree. The site remembers your choice on this device.

Text list

Text list shows the tree as an outline, oldest generation first. Each line is one person, with their partners after "m." and their children indented underneath. Children of two different partners are grouped under "with …".

• Click a row (or its ▸) to open or close that person's children. Click all to open every generation below them.
• How much is open at first depends on the tree's size: whole generations open until about ten lines are showing.
• Expand all, Collapse all and Open through Gen … change the whole outline at once. Find a name opens the branches that hold a match.
• Someone descended from two lines (for example, the child of cousins) is listed once; the other place says "see under …" and links to them.
• Relatives of people who married into the family, such as an in-law's parents, are under Other family lines at the bottom.
• Click a name to see that person in the tree.

Badges and markers

• +N on a box: this person has N more partners, children or parents who aren't shown on this page. Click it to see who; set that person as root to see them in the tree.
• ↻ repeated (dashed purple box): an ancestor who appears twice in the root's line, for example when cousins married. The dashed copy is a pointer; click it to jump to the original, which carries a small ↻.
• see 12 older gens… (in Classic) or an orange ▲ just above the top-right corner of a box (in the other views): more ancestors exist above this person, and the number is how many generations of them are in the tree. Click to open that person’s ancestors in a panel above the tree, drawn as a pedigree chart (in Classic, as a tree); a ▲ inside the panel stacks the next one above it, and Reset closes them all. On the line between two panels, ▼ …’s younger generations just above it goes down to the panel below; it then becomes ▲ …’s older generations, just below the line, which goes back up.
• Dashed couple line: a marriage that ended in divorce or separation.
• Row counts: rows with five or more blood relatives show a count of blood relatives against total people.

Change the colours

Choose Trees > Colors to change the name background and text colours and the line styles. Click Save to keep them.

People and relationships

You grow a tree by adding relatives to people already in it. Every change is recorded, so a mistake can be undone from the tree's history.

Add a relative

1. Click the person the new relative belongs to, then choose Add relative.
2. Fill in the New relative profile: name, maiden name (née), birth and death year or full date, places of birth and death, and gender. Tick Estimated when a date is a guess.
3. Under Relationship, tick one box: Mother, Father, Daughter, Son, Spouse, Partner, Sister or Brother.
4. For parents, children and siblings, you can also tick step, adopted or foster.
5. For a spouse or partner, fill in Relationship details: year began, year of marriage, year ended, and outcome (Lifelong, Current, Ex or Unknown).
6. Check the Other relatives also to be added box, then click Save new relative.

The site fills in links you would otherwise add by hand. The box under the relationship lists them before you save.

Step relatives are attached through someone already in the tree:

• A step-parent is added as the spouse of the person's other parent.
• A step-child is added as a child of the person's spouse.
• A step-sibling is added as a child of a parent's other spouse.

If the needed person isn't on file yet, the form says who to add first.

Edit a person

Click the person, then choose Edit person to open Edit Bio Information. Change any personal details, then click Save changes.

Under Relationships you can also:

• Click + Add child or + Add spouse/partner to open Add relative.
• Edit each spouse or partner: whether they are a spouse or partner, the years the relationship started, married and ended, and its outcome.
• Set a spouse's Order to control which marriage is drawn first. When left blank, marriages are ordered by date.

Fix a person's parents

In the Parents row of Edit Bio Information:

• Empty slot: select a person already in the tree as the mother or father, or use Find to search for them.
• Pencil: replace the parent with someone else in the tree. Tick Keep … too to add a second parent instead.
• x: remove the parent. Click again to undo before saving.
• Lock: this parent is on the tree root's line and can't be removed here.

The site won't let you remove a person's last parent if that would cut them off from the tree. Pick a replacement instead. After a parent change, sibling links are recalculated, including step-siblings.

Delete a person

Click the person, then choose Delete person. The person and their relationships are removed straight away, with no confirmation. To bring them back, use History of changes (see Troubleshooting).

Albums

An album is a book of pages you fill with text, photos and stamps. Your albums sit on a bookshelf in My Workspace, and your work saves itself as you go.

My Albums and My Workspace

• My Albums (menu: Albums > View all albums) lists your albums, newest first.
• My Workspace (menu: Albums > My Workspace) shows your albums as books on a shelf. Click a book to open it. With more than eight albums, a +N more tile shows the rest.

Create an album

1. Open My Workspace and click an empty New album slot on the shelf.
2. Give the album a title. A title is required.
3. The album opens at its cover, ready to edit.

Edit pages

The toolbar beside the page holds the editing tools:

Use the arrows or click the page edge to turn pages.

Each page is a single text box that fills it: click anywhere on the page and start typing, no tool needed. You can mix styles within the page — select a word or a line and give just that part its own font, size, colour, bold or italic. For a bulleted list, click • List in the Tt panel, or type - or * and a space at the start of a line; Enter adds the next bullet, and Enter on an empty bullet (or Backspace at the start of one) goes back to plain lines. A page written before this changed shows its first text box, filling the page.

Line spacing works at three levels, and the narrowest one wins. Select a line or two and the Tt panel spaces just those; with nothing selected it spaces the whole page; and Album properties has a slider that sets every page in the album at once, which is also what a new page starts with. A line you spaced by hand keeps its own spacing when you move the album slider.

The cover and album properties

• On the cover, Tt opens a Format the album cover section: background image, border style, the sizes of the three cover text zones, and Add a text box for a free text box you can drag, resize and delete.
• Click the tag icon (Album properties) on the cover to change the title, subtitle and spine label, to set the line spacing for the whole album, and to link trees. The spine label is the text on the book's spine; leave it blank to use the title.

On a tablet

The editor works with a finger as well as a mouse: drag a photo, a stamp or a cover text box to move it, and drag a corner handle to resize. On a touch screen each handle has a larger invisible target around it, and two opposite corners are shown instead of four so they don't overlap.

To type in a cover text box, tap it once to select it and tap again to open it. (With a mouse, double-click it.)

Saving and undo

There is no Save button. The album saves 3 seconds after you stop editing, at least every 30 seconds while you work, and whenever you turn a page or close the album. A status line under the page counter shows when it last saved.

• Press Ctrl+Z or click Undo to take back an edit. Ctrl+Shift+Z or Redo puts it back. While you are typing in a page, Ctrl+Z is your browser's own undo for that text.
• If the album is open in two windows, the second one stops saving and shows Changed in another window. Reload it to continue.
• Click Close to put the album back on the shelf.

Link an album to a tree

On the album's cover, open Album properties (the tag icon) and under Linked trees choose + Link a tree… and pick one of your trees. The album then shows under View albums in that tree's person menu. Click Unlink to remove the link. You can link trees you own or can edit.

Delete pages and albums

Click the trash icon in the sidebar.

• Delete page moves the current page to Deleted pages for 90 days. Open Deleted pages from the same icon and click Restore to put a page back.
• To delete the whole album, open Album properties and click Delete this album. It moves to Deleted albums (menu: Albums > Deleted albums) for 90 days, where you can Restore it or Delete forever.

Sharing and permissions

Trees and albums are private to their owner until the owner shares them. You can give another registered user view or edit access, one person at a time.

Share a tree

1. On My Trees, click the pencil icon next to the tree, then click Manage access.
2. Under Grant access, enter the person's email address or username. They must already have an account.
3. Choose View only or Edit and save.

The Current access table lists everyone you have shared with. Click Revoke to remove someone. To let every logged-in user view the tree, tick Make this tree viewable by all logged-in users.

Share an album

1. Open the album and click Share… at the top. Only the owner sees this button.
2. Enter the person's email address or username, choose View or Edit, and add them.
3. People with access lists everyone you have shared with. Click Revoke to remove someone.

A shared tree appears in the other person's My Trees. A shared album does not yet appear on their shelf or in My Albums, so send them the album's link (use Copy a link inside the album).

Your preferences

Open the menu (☰) and click Preferences. The page has three parts, each with its own save button:

• Your account: change your first name, last name and username. Usernames are unique, so you'll be told if someone already has the one you picked. Your email is what you sign in with and can't be changed here.
• Change password: type your current password, then the new one twice.
• Tree toolbar: untick any of the icons above a tree (zoom + and −, Tree info, Search, Navigator, Fit, Reset, Full screen, My trees) to hide it on every tree you open. New accounts start with only zoom + and −, Search and My trees showing; tick the others to bring them back. This only changes what you see. With the zoom buttons hidden you can still zoom with the mouse wheel or by pinching.

Admin console

Every user is either a standard user or an admin. Admins see Admin console in the menu on tree pages. The console has two parts:

• Users: make someone an admin, or make an admin a standard user again. Only admins can change this. You can't remove your own admin access, and there is always at least one admin.
• Tree page menu: untick an item to hide it from the menu on every tree page, for everyone, admins included. Pick which view is the default; anyone whose last-used view has been hidden sees trees in the default view instead. At least one view always stays visible.

Troubleshooting and FAQ

Most mistakes can be undone. Every change to a tree is saved as a version, and deleted trees, albums and album pages are kept for 90 days.

I made a mistake in my tree. How do I undo it?

1. Open the tree, then choose Trees > History of changes in the menu. You can also reach it from Edit Tree.
2. The current version is listed first, then every earlier version from newest to oldest. Each shows the date, the change and who made it. Click Show all change details for more.
3. Click Set as current on the version you want, then OK. The tree goes back to how it looked right after that change.

Nothing is erased: the later versions stay in the list, so you can move forward again.

A yellow banner says my tree has data issues

The site checks each tree when it loads. It lists problems such as a person recorded as their own ancestor or a duplicate relationship. Use History of changes to go back to a version from before the problem appeared, or fix the people involved with Edit person.

I deleted something by accident

My tree is slow to load

Large trees, with several hundred people on one page, can take 10 seconds or more. To speed things up, use Set as root on someone closer to the branch you want. Saturn classic and Text list are also lighter than the full tree.

Someone is missing from the tree

• Look for a +N badge on a relative. Set that relative as root to see their other family.
• Click see older gens… (Classic) or the orange ▲ on a top-row box to see the ancestors. Outside Classic that opens a pedigree chart of them in a panel above the tree. The number beside the ▲ is how many generations are up there.
• Use the search bar. If the person is found but off the page, the tree redraws around them.

My GEDCOM import was refused or incomplete

Files must be under 10 MB and hold fewer than 5,000 people. People with no family connection to the root person you chose are left out; pick a different root to include them. The summary before import lists anything else that couldn't come across.

The page looks broken after an update

Reload the page. If it still looks wrong, clear your browser's cache for the site and reload.

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