Anceslio Family Tree & GEDCOM

Family history usually lives on a computer at home – and when the family actually gets together, it is not there. Anceslio puts your family tree on the phone: to look things up, to show people, to add what you learn. The app runs fully offline: no account, no internet, no advertising.

ALREADY HAVE A FILE?

Almost every family history or genealogy program can write your family out as a GEDCOM file – the common exchange format of genealogy, recognisable by the ending .ged. Open that file in Anceslio and everything is there. Files from older programs are read correctly too, accented letters included. When the file is written back, everything is kept, including what the app does not show, such as links to images.

NO FILE YET?

Then start in the app. Add a person, then parents, partners and children – anyone named who is not there yet is created along the way. Whatever you build here can be written out as a GEDCOM file at any time and carried on in any of the big programs.

WHO BELONGS TO WHOM

One person in the middle, around them parents, siblings, partners and children. Further generations can be switched on, upwards and downwards, along with nephews, nieces, uncles and aunts. Each person holds birth and death with places, occupation and lineage; several marriages are provided for.

WHERE DOES THAT COME FROM?

Notes and sources can be kept for every person – "Parish register St Mary, baptisms 1823, p. 14" is enough. Both go into the GEDCOM file, and every major program reads them.

HOW ARE WE RELATED AGAIN?

The question that comes up at every family gathering. Pick two people and the app answers: second cousin, great-aunt, great-great-uncle – together with the common ancestor and the path through the generations. Half-siblings are named as such.

A CHART TO PUT ON THE WALL

The descendant chart shows one person with everything that came after them, in the form of a printed family book: black on white, made for printing. As PDF in A4, A3 or A2, and as an image file. Branches can be hidden, single lines overwritten by hand, and the settings saved. A welcome present for a big birthday.

ORDER IN DATA THAT HAS GROWN

After years of collecting, some people end up in the file twice, once as Mueller and once as Müller. Anceslio finds such pairs and says for each what the suspicion rests on. A second check goes through the file by twenty-five rules and reports what cannot fit together – a death before a birth, a mother of twelve, a date that only looks like a date.

A FILE FROM A RELATIVE

Someone sends you their research? Anceslio compares it with yours and tells you who you already have, who is new, and where the other file knows something you do not. That report changes nothing in your data. Only if you want it are the two joined into one new file – and your own stays untouched.

YOU STAY IN CONTROL

Only what you confirm is changed. The last ten steps can be undone, and every list of findings can be saved as a text file, to work through calmly at the computer later.

YOUR DATA STAYS WITH YOU

The app asks for no permission at all. There is no server, no advertising and no tracking. Everything stays on the device – which is why the app counts what has not been backed up yet and reminds you. Backing up takes one tap: a .ged file in your Downloads folder.

WHAT THE APP CANNOT DO

It is not a replacement for a full genealogy program. It does not sync between devices, does not search online archives, and does not manage images or documents – what your file says about them is kept, but not shown. Sources shared by several people are shown, but edited in the program they come from. There is no printed pedigree chart of ancestors; what prints is the descendant chart. The way between two devices is the file.

German and English, light and dark, free and without in-app purchases, with a sample family to try out and a guide inside the app.

Recent changes:
New: Statistics. Data → Statistics gives an overview of the open file: people, families, generations and years of birth, living and deceased, men and women, and the people in each lineage. Tap a lineage to see its people in the list.