Gedview

A browser-based genealogy tree viewer with full support for FamilySearch GEDCOM 7.0 (and reading GEDCOM 5.5.1).

Files are opened and parsed entirely in the browser: Gedview never uploads your tree and uses no analytics. The only other hosts it contacts are the address you asked it to load a file from and, unless switched off in the settings, hosts of images your file links to (requested without a referrer).

Work in progress.

Features (target)

• GEDCOM 7.0: calendars (JULIAN, FRENCH_R, HEBREW), dates with PHRASE, FAMC.STAT (disputed links drawn dashed), PEDI, ASSO with roles (godparents, witnesses), sources with QUAY and DATA/TEXT, EXID links (FamilySearch, Find a Grave, WikiTree), SNOTE, HTML notes, media with CROP and FILE.TRAN, places with MAP and TRAN, NO, SDATE, RESN.
• GEDZIP (.gdz): a tree bundled with its photos.
• Julian dates in the traditional Russian notation, "6 (18) April 1889": the recorded date, the new style in brackets (or either style alone).
• Russian and English UI, light and dark themes, full keyboard and screen reader support.

Build

Requires Node.js 22 or newer.

npm install
npm run dev          # http://localhost:5173
npm run build        # static files in dist/

All checks (same as CI):

npx playwright install chromium   # once
npm run check:all

npm run fixtures downloads the official FamilySearch test files into tests/fixtures/gedcom70/ (they are not stored in the repository: their source repository carries no license). Files are pinned to a commit and verified by SHA-256.

Visual snapshots are per platform. To regenerate the Linux ones, run the CI workflow manually with update_snapshots enabled and commit the linux-snapshots artifact.

UI

• /?demo opens a built-in, fictional Sokolov family (no file needed).
• UI languages: each src/i18n/<code>.json file is a language (its name and button label are the meta.name and meta.short keys); missing keys fall back to English. en.json and ru.json must have the same keys (checked by npm test).
• Theme (light, dark, system), language and chart settings are stored in localStorage; the URL hash holds only person ids and what the chart shows (#id=I5&root=I1&level=siblings&up=3&down=2): the selected person, the person the chart counts from, the level of kinship and the generations up and down.
• Keys: / — find a person, Esc — close a panel or the card. On the chart: arrows move between relatives (Up/Down parents and children, Left/Right spouse and siblings), Enter or Space selects; the mouse wheel or a pinch zooms, dragging pans.

Deploy

Live: https://device25.github.io/gedview/ (try ?demo).

Every push to main that passes CI is deployed to GitHub Pages by .github/workflows/pages.yml. dist/ is a static site with no server side, so it can also be served from any static host or locally with npm run preview.

Personal data

Never add real trees with living people to the repository, tests, screenshots or issues. For manual testing, put files in private/ or name them *.private.ged — both are git-ignored.

Development

Trunk-based: short-lived branches, small pull requests, main always green (protected: linear history, CI required for pull requests). Commits and pull request titles follow Conventional Commits. Commits, pull requests, docs and code comments are in English. Dependabot proposes weekly dependency updates.

License

Apache License 2.0, see LICENSE. Third-party components are listed in THIRD_PARTY.md. Relationship charts are drawn with the topola library © Przemek Więch (Apache-2.0).