Witness
Sign in Try it with your tree

Family history, in your browser

The tree you already built, finally readable.

Witness reads from your GEDCOM file, or connects with FamilySearch Family Tree, and gives back the thing a tree cannot show you on its own — who these people were, where they stood, and what the record actually says about them.

Try it with your own tree See pricing

Free sneak peek, no account needed. Also available on the App Store.

app.witnesslives.com
The Witness home page in a browser

How it works

Your tree software

Ancestry, FamilySearch, MyHeritage, Findmypast, or desktop software

Export

A GEDCOM file

.ged file

Upload

Witness

Reads it — never writes back

Fix what is wrong where you built it, export again, and bring the new file back through Update from a newer file. Witness merges it and shows you what changed.

Walk me through it

Inside Witness

Their story

A life told from the record

Witness writes the story of a line down the generations — where they were born, what ocean they crossed, what the census found them doing. Every sentence is drawn from your own record. Where the record is silent, the story says so rather than filling the gap.

A generational story, the Sargent Line

Sections

Your family's history, every way in

One index that opens onto everything: World & Nation, the moments your family actually lived through with a live count beside each; Family Structure and Where They Lived; the Library’s 45 questions; and, for the tree’s owner, the upkeep under Tree Hygiene. Search reads the words you type in any order.

The Sections index: World & Nation, Family Structure, Where They Lived, the Library, Tree Hygiene

The Map

Every place the record names

Every town, parish and county your family was recorded in, placed on a map you can move through by century. Coordinates are worked out after the import, so a large tree fills in over a couple of hours.

The map of recorded places

Family

One household, drawn as a length of time

A family drawn as the years it held: every life a bar, marriages marked, children ranked beneath their parents. Sweep the years and read everyone's age at any moment in the household's life.

The Family tab: one household drawn as a length of time

Tree health

Twenty-four checks, and what they found

The standard tests a serious genealogist runs on a tree — twenty-four of them, over every person, family and date in your file. They catch what is impossible rather than merely unlikely: a death before a birth, a marriage before a spouse turned thirteen, a parent too young to be one.

Beside them sit the loose threads: the people a small piece of work would finish.

Loose threads

507 people carry a year but no place.

841 surnames appear exactly once.

From one real tree of 5,636 people.

The Library

Ask your tree a question, instead of scrolling it.

45 ready-made questions you can ask of your own family data — who was alive during the Revolution, who lived through the Depression, who went furthest from where they started — alongside 48 historical events to check your family against.

Every question shows a real count from your own tree before you open it. The library grows without waiting for an app update, so there are more of both by the time you read this.

See it on your own family first.

Drop your GEDCOM in and Witness reads it in your own browser — no account, no upload, nothing sent anywhere. You see your own counts, the moments your family lived through, and what contradicts itself, before you decide anything.

Start the sneak peek

Keep your tree in FamilySearch? Witness reads your branch of Family Tree where it lives, no file needed. Witness and FamilySearch →

From readers

Witness is a game changer for me! I learn new things every day.
I’m totally obsessed with Witness. I had no idea that all these things happened to my family. Looking at a tree alone doesn’t bring it all together for me.
I’m a stickler for facts. The storytelling doesn’t use filler that isn’t true, and the historical context adds so much to what my ancestors dealt with.

New in 2.0 · iPad and web

Hearth

Stand in the room your family lived in, on a day the census found them at home — the hour, the weather, the fire, the furniture of that place and period — while a narrator tells the household’s story from the record, stop by stop, in a recorded voice. Today brings you one household at a time across the year.

The rooms are built from the record and furnished from a catalogue of the period; the people in them are stand-in figures, not portraits. The Hearth is early work, and it says so: a feedback link sits under it, and we read every note. It opens on iPad and in the browser; an iPhone screen is too small for a room.

The Hearth in the browser: the kitchen of John Death and Mary Peabody in 1669, the fire lit, the furnishings named, the year rail along the foot
The household of John Death and Mary Peabody, 1669, as the browser draws it. Every piece in the room is named when you look.
The Hearth on an iPad: the same kitchen with a figure of the household forming from points of light beside the fire
On iPad. The people arrive as points of light and take their places as the story introduces them.

Pricing

Witness

$19.99

a year, one account

  • Everything in Witness, on every device you sign in to
  • The browser app, and the iPhone and iPad apps
  • One month free, then $19.99 a year
Start with your own tree

Started here in your browser, or in the app.

Witness Family

$29.99

a year, up to five accounts

  • Everything in Witness, for you and four people you invite
  • Each with their own place in the family, so relationships answer from where they stand
  • They read; only you can change anything, and a seat costs the member nothing
  • One month free, then $29.99 a year
Start the free month

Started here in your browser, or in the app.

A card is required to start the free month. Nothing is charged until the month ends, and you can cancel from your account settings at any time.

One subscription

Also on iPhone and iPad, at no extra cost.

Subscribe here and the apps are yours too. Download Witness free from the App Store, sign in with the same email, and you are already a subscriber — there is nothing more to pay and nothing to restore.

The iPhone and iPad apps add what a phone can do that a browser cannot: read a headstone at the graveside, and keep your original file in an encrypted vault.

See it on the App Store

On your phone

  1. Download Witness from the App Store — the app is free
  2. Sign in with the email you subscribed with
  3. Your tree is already there
I spent my career building expert systems for healthcare — messy records and missing data weren't exceptions, they were most of the job. Genealogy software never seemed to catch up to that. So I built the thing I wanted to use.

Rufus Howe, who built Witness

Your tree, and where it lives

Witness is read-only. Your GEDCOM file, and your tree on Ancestry, FamilySearch or anywhere else, are never altered. What you record here — a stone read at the graveside, a note, a confirmed crossing — stays in your Witness copy alone.

The tree's structured facts — names, dates, places, sources — are held in your account so the app can query them. Nothing about a living person is ever included in anything shareable.

On iPhone and iPad

Your original file is sealed with an AES-256 key generated on your iPhone and held in the iOS Keychain, then uploaded as an unreadable blob. We store it and cannot open it. You are shown a recovery code once, to save: it restores your file on another device, and it is the only thing that can. We do not hold a copy, which is the whole point, and also the risk — lose your device and your recovery code, and the stored file is unrecoverable ciphertext.

One honest limit: that vault relies on the iOS Keychain, which has no browser equivalent. There is no vault at all in the browser version, rather than a weaker one pretending to be the same thing. Your tree still imports and works; the original file is simply not kept for you.

Questions

Does Witness work with Ancestry, MyHeritage, or my desktop software?
Yes, through the GEDCOM file each of them exports. Witness reads it from Ancestry, MyHeritage, Findmypast, RootsMagic, Family Tree Maker, Legacy Family Tree, Gramps, or anything else that produces one. FamilySearch needs no file: Witness signs in with your FamilySearch account and reads your branch of Family Tree where it lives. See witnesslives.com/familysearch.
Will Witness ever change my tree?
Never the tree where it lives. Your GEDCOM file and your tree on Ancestry, FamilySearch, or anywhere else are untouched. What you record in Witness — a stone read at the graveside, a note, a confirmed crossing — stays in your Witness copy alone. When your research grows, you export again and update from the newer file, or read your branch of Family Tree again.
Does Witness use AI, and what does it see?
Yes, for the writing. A language model is given the documented facts of a deceased person from your own file — names, dates, places, events, relationships, citations — and puts them into sentences; the record outranks the story, and the page says so. It never sees a living person, another reader’s tree, or the notes you write for yourself. For a branch read from FamilySearch Family Tree, three things are composed this way with FamilySearch’s written permission — the written story, the paragraph of its time, and the Hearth’s narration — and nothing else from it reaches a model. Nothing is sold, pooled, or used to train anything. The full account, surface by surface, is at witnesslives.com/ai.
Where is my data stored, and can you read it?
The tree’s structured facts — names, dates, places, sources — are held in your account so the app can query them. On iPhone and iPad your original file is also sealed with an AES-256 key generated on the device and held in the iOS Keychain, then uploaded as an unreadable blob. We store it and cannot open it.
What does it cost?
Two plans, each with a one-month free trial for new subscribers: $19.99 a year for your own account, or $29.99 a year for the Family plan, which seats up to four family members alongside you. Beyond that there is no free tier, no per-feature upgrade, and no add-on. Cancel during the trial and you are not charged.
Can my family read the tree with me?
Yes, on the Family plan at $29.99 a year. It seats up to four family members alongside you, each with their own account and their own place in the family, so relationships, Nearby, and the daily edition answer from where they stand. Address an invitation to a name or email and it costs the member nothing. They read the tree; only you can change it.
Is there an Android version?
Not as a native app. Witness runs in any browser at app.witnesslives.com — Android, Windows, Mac — including sign-up and billing, so you never need an iPhone to subscribe. The one difference is the encrypted vault for your original file, which depends on the iOS Keychain and has no browser equivalent.