News

We’re excited to share some new enhancements to the family map on Geni. For many years, we’ve had the family map to show you where your relatives are located around the world. Now we’ve made a few improvements that will help you better visualize the locations of your relatives on Geni. To find the Map, simply click on “Family” at the top of the page and select “Map.” Show Death and Burial Locations Previously, you… Read the full story

As the year comes to a close, we’re taking a look back at 2022. We introduced some great, long-awaited features and we finally had the chance to see people in person once again! This year our team worked hard on some big projects. We were thrilled to announce the return of Family Tree Charts to Geni! The previous version had been unavailable for some time as we worked on moving the charts off of Flash…. Read the full story

We’re excited to announce a new feature for Geni Pro users – Inbox Search.  Over the years, we have often been asked to add the ability to search your Geni inbox to quickly locate specific messages. Today we’re delighted to deliver this long awaited feature!  As your tree grows and you begin communicating with other members on Geni, you’ll soon find yourself with a full inbox. Now you no longer need to waste time scrolling… Read the full story

Today we are excited to announce the release of the Source Assistant – a quick and easy way to extract information from your confirmed Record Matches and Smart Matches™ from MyHeritage to the family tree on Geni.  Now when you confirm a Record Match or a Smart Match™, you can quickly add new or updated information from the MyHeritage match to your relatives’ Geni profiles with just a few clicks. The new Source Assistant We… Read the full story

Geni will be performing scheduled site maintenance starting at 7:00 am PDT on Tuesday, May 31, 2022 and lasting for approximately 2 hours. During this time the Geni website will be unavailable. We’ll do our best to complete the maintenance quickly and return to normal service as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience.

Today we are thrilled to announce that Family Tree Charts are back on Geni! The previous version was temporarily unavailable as we were working towards moving the chart feature off of Flash. With the Family Tree Chart, you can create your own custom, high-quality version of your family tree for downloading or printing.  The Family Tree Chart includes five generations of relatives, your family’s names, dates, and photos. You can customize the look of the… Read the full story

As the year comes to a close, we’re looking back at 2021 on Geni. We’re proud of the many new enhancements to Sources introduced to Geni and along the way, hit a new milestone in the World Family Tree. Although we are still in the midst of the pandemic, we are grateful that we were still able to connect with the genealogical community through virtual conferences throughout the year. Here’s a look back at our… Read the full story

Today we are excited to introduce the next step on our road to improving sources on Geni – Source Conflicts!  When a profile has information that differs from the source citation values provided, you will receive an alert to review the discrepancy and if needed, update the profile. This new enhancement provides a fast and easy way for you to ensure that the best information, backed by documentation, is included on your Geni profiles. Where… Read the full story

A few months ago, we released some major enhancements to sources on Geni. Today we are happy to announce new improvements to sources to make your citation experience on your mobile device even better.  Sources can now be added from the family tree interface quickly on your phone, making it even easier to document your ancestry while you are on the go. While visiting your local archive, courthouse, or library, you can use your mobile… Read the full story

Properly documenting your family tree is vital to practicing good genealogy. Sources are incredibly important to ensuring the quality and accuracy of Geni’s World Family Tree. Today we are very excited to announce major new improvements to sources on Geni! Our team has been hard at work to make sources even more powerful, easier to understand, and more helpful to your tree building. On Geni, when you add a document to a profile, you can… Read the full story

As we start off the new year, we’re excited to release a fun new addition to our virtual gifts – your own photos! Now when you send a greeting to a relative, you can add a photo of your own as a virtual gift. Enjoy using your imagination to personalize your birthday, anniversary, or “just because” greetings to those you care about most. Adding a Virtual Photo Gift When you receive an upcoming birthday or… Read the full story

This year has been unlike any other year we have ever experienced. Although it has brought new challenges and times of uncertainty, we are happy that we were able to make it through together. As we say goodbye to 2020, let’s take some time to reflect on this past year on Geni. With everyone staying home during the pandemic, genealogy has become more popular than ever. In a bright spot to this tumultuous year, Geni… Read the full story

Your account security is very important to us, which is why today we are introducing a new feature for you to review your recent Geni login history. Now you can easily see a list of your login activity in the last nine months to detect any unauthorized access to your Geni account.  To view your login history, go to your Account Settings by clicking on your name at the top right of the page and… Read the full story

Over the last few months, we have been hard at work on the latest enhancements to the HTML version of the family tree. Today we are happy to announce new customization options to help you work more comfortably in the family tree. Now you can change the font size and the color theme in the tree to better suit your needs. You may choose from a set of available themes or pick your own color… Read the full story

We’re excited to announce that Geni’s World Family Tree now connects over 150 million profiles!  This milestone was possible thanks to the collaboration of over 13 million users and over 200 volunteer Curators from all over the world. The World Family Tree has grown faster than ever with over 11 million profiles added in the last year.  The definitive family tree for the entire world, Geni’s World Family Tree allows millions of people to work… Read the full story

As COVID-19 increasingly impacts our day-to-day lives, we would like to update everyone that all is well at Geni and our Los Angeles-based team. Our top priority is the health and safety of our employees and as of March 12, the entire Geni team has been working from home. We are well suited to work remotely and will be able to continue serving our users without disruption.  We encourage our dedicated team of volunteer curators… Read the full story

As 2019 comes to a close, we take a look back at all the wonderful things we have been able to accomplish in the past year. Over 10 million profiles have been added to the World Family Tree this year, meaning we’ll close out 2019 with nearly 140 million profiles connected to the World Family Tree! This year our team worked hard to provide the Geni community with new and better tools to help build the family tree faster… Read the full story

Today we are excited to introduce the new Consistency Checker to Geni’s World Family Tree. The Consistency Checker will constantly monitor changes to profiles in the family tree to detect common errors or inconsistencies and bring them to your attention so that you can make the necessary changes to improve the quality and accuracy of the family tree. This helpful tool checks for 26 types of inconsistencies, ranging from obvious issues, such as a child… Read the full story

MyHeritage’s Chief Science Officer, Dr. Yaniv Erlich, recently gave a talk at TEDMED to share what he and his team have discovered analyzing data from Geni’s World Family Tree as well as other exciting developments in the world of biomedical research and genealogy. In his talk, Dr. Erlich explains the fascinating patterns that have emerged from his work, including new insights into the last couple of centuries of marriage and migration in Europe and North America, and the… Read the full story

Over the years, many users have requested the ability to add marriage and divorce dates and locations while adding new profiles to the family tree. Today we are excited to finally fulfill this request! New marriage and divorce sections in the add profile form Previously, a spouse had to be added to the tree first before marriage or divorce information could be entered. After the spouse was added, you were required to edit the profile again to update the marriage and/or… Read the full story

We are very excited to announce multiple relationship paths on Geni! Now when relationship paths are calculated between individuals, you will see a blood path and an in-law path, if either can be found. One of the most fun aspects of being connected to the World Family Tree is the ability to see how you are related to anyone else also connected to the tree. Before, Geni would calculate the shortest relationship between the profile… Read the full story

Today we are pleased to announce the return of the GEDCOM Import feature to Geni! This has been one of the most requested features on Geni and we’re excited to finally make it available to everyone. GEDCOM is a standard file format used to save, transfer, and transport family tree information. Long-time users may recall that Geni previously allowed users to start a tree using their GEDCOM files, however we disabled this feature in 2011… Read the full story

Since we first released the new HTML version of the family tree, we have made great progress bringing the important features of the Flash tree to the new version. Today, we are excited to announce another exciting update – a new and improved pedigree view is now available on the HTML tree! You can switch to the pedigree view by clicking on the pedigree icon at the bottom right corner of the tree page. The… Read the full story

As the year comes to close, we’re taking a look back at some of the amazing things that happened at Geni. This year an amazing 50,000 family trees connected to Geni’s World Family Tree, helping to bring the total number of profiles in the World Family Tree to nearly 130 million people! From new improvements to our long-awaited HTML version of the tree to the release of two-factor authentication to better secure your Geni accounts to the… Read the full story

Protecting your Geni accounts from unauthorized access is very important to us. Unfortunately, the difficulty of remembering several passwords often means that people will reuse the same password across multiple sites. This common practice can put the security of your account at serious risk should your email address and password fall into the wrong hands. Today we are pleased to announce an important update to help make your Geni account more secure – Two-Factor Authentication…. Read the full story

A few months ago, we introduced our new HTML tree on Geni, which made it possible for all users to finally view and edit their family trees on their mobile device or tablet. Since our announcement, we have continued to work hard to bring some of the Flash tree’s most powerful features to the HTML version of the tree. Today we’re excited to share that two very important tools are now available on the HTML tree – Move This Person… Read the full story

Geni will be performing scheduled site maintenance and making a number of improvements to our infrastructure starting at 1:30 AM EST on September 5, 2018 (10:30 PM PDT tonight) and lasting for approximately 2 hours. During this time the Geni website will be unavailable. We’ll do our best to complete the maintenance quickly and return to normal service as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience.

We’re proud to announce a long awaited improvement for Geni users – our new HTML tree is now available on all tablet and mobile devices! The new HTML tree replaces our HTML5 version of the tree, which was previously available for devices that do not support Flash. In the past, the HTML5 tree presented users with a very limited version of the family tree, which did not provide users with the best experience for working… Read the full story

It recently came to our attention that the privacy policy page on Geni omitted an important detail. The description of who can edit the public profiles you manage failed to include users within the maximum Family Group range of the managed profile, as well as limited access to all Geni users. These are explained in detail below. Maximum Family Group Public profiles can be edited by users that are near the profile in the family… Read the full story

We’ve made some new enhancements on how to share content from Geni. Now when you want to share a page on Geni, whether it’s a profile, a project or even a discussion, you can simply click on the new Share icon at the top of every page to quickly copy the URL or share it on social media. In the heading of a page, you will now see a new Share icon between your notification count and your profile picture. When… Read the full story

We’re excited to share that the science team at Geni’s parent company, MyHeritage, led by MyHeritage’s Chief Science Officer, Dr. Yaniv Erlich, has had a groundbreaking paper published today in Science, one of the most influential academic journals in the world. The research was conducted with scientists at Columbia University, the New York Genome Center, MIT and Harvard, and provides fresh insights into the last couple of centuries of marriage and migration in Europe and… Read the full story

Have you ever met someone at a conference and wanted to quickly see if you’re related? Now you can use the Geni Pathfinder, our new handy tool on your mobile device to easily discover how you’re related to the people you meet at genealogy conferences, family reunions, or anywhere else! Begin by navigating to this url on your mobile device: https://www.geni.com/pathfinder (you will be prompted to login, if you have not already). A QR code and… Read the full story

As 2017 comes to a close, we’re taking some time to reflect on this past year on Geni. We celebrated an exciting milestone, introduced new enhancements, met genealogists all around the country, and heard some wonderful stories from our users. Here are our highlights: This year, Geni celebrated our 10th anniversary! Geni first launched in January 2007 with one goal in mind – to create a single family tree of the entire world. Today, Geni’s World Family Tree… Read the full story

We’re excited to announce a new feature to help you create an unconnected family tree branch on Geni. If you want to build the family tree for a person not yet on Geni and you don’t know how the person is related, you can now easily start an unconnected branch of the tree and work towards finding its connection to the World Family Tree. There are many times when you may have information about a person or family, but do not yet know… Read the full story

We’re excited to announce some recent enhancements to our DNA features on Geni. These new improvements will make it easier for you to find your connection to relatives based on your shared DNA. Shared DNA Matches   Your DNA matches will now display shared DNA matches between you and your match. By seeing the DNA matches you have in common, you can start narrowing down your connection in the family tree. For example, if your… Read the full story

As we come to the end of the year, we take a look back at what we have accomplished in 2016. We are proud the milestones we’ve hit as well as the fantastic new features we’ve introduced this year to make Geni’s World Family Tree even better. Here are our highlights from 2016 on Geni: Geni hit a huge milestone in January when the World Family Tree surpassed 100 million profiles. Thanks to the collaborative efforts of the… Read the full story

We’re excited to announce big news – Geni and Family Tree DNA, a global leader in genetic genealogy, have partnered to integrate Family Tree DNA test results into Geni’s World Family Tree. Today we are releasing a project that has been one and a half years in the making! As of today, Geni supports three major DNA technologies to enhance the World Family Tree – Y-DNA, mitochondrial DNA and autosomal DNA. Users can now link their… Read the full story

Genealogy reports are an important part of family history research. Today, we’re happy to introduce Ancestor and Descendant Reports for your family tree on Geni. Ancestor and Descendant reports will enable you to view a compact list of a profile’s ancestors or descendants up to 20 generations. You may also export the report as a PDF to save to your computer, print it or share it with a friend or relative. To view a profile’s Ancestor and Descendant report, navigate… Read the full story

Today we’re excited to announce that Geni’s World Family Tree now connects over 100 million profiles! Thanks to the collaborative efforts of the entire Geni community, the World Family Tree has quickly become the largest, highest-quality family tree of the world. This significant milestone is the product of the hard work and research done by our dedicated community of users and our trusted team of volunteer Curators. The World Family Tree is the definitive family… Read the full story

As the new year approaches, we take a look back at some of the great things we accomplished in 2015. Many of our amazing feats could not have been done without the collaborative efforts of our amazing users and volunteer Curators, who work everyday on making Geni’s World Family Tree the largest and most accurate single family tree in the world. The year got off to an exciting start as we headed to Salt Lake City,… Read the full story

Today we’re excited to announce that Geni has reached an amazing milestone – 150 million profiles! From the very beginning, our goal has been to create the definitive family tree of the entire world. Our collection of profiles has grown steadily over the years, with millions of lineages intersecting, overlapping and culminating into a World Family Tree of over 89 million people and their ancestors. Nowhere else will you find such a large, high-quality single… Read the full story

Today we are delighted to announce a long awaited new feature on Geni – adoption! We are releasing a great enhancement to the family tree that will allow you to show adoptive, foster and biological parent relationships when viewing your family on Geni. There are three changes you will notice in the tree view: You can now add parents to a profile that already has parents. A profile with multiple sets of parents will now… Read the full story

The Geni team will be heading to RootsTech this week from February 11-14. We will be joining the MyHeritage team in Salt Lake City, Utah to share with everyone the latest developments in the World Family Tree. RootsTech is one of the largest family history events in the entire world! This unique genealogy conference brings techies and genealogists of all skill levels together to discover new technologies for researching your family history. Many hands-on presentations and… Read the full story

As we prepare to welcome in the new year, now is the perfect time to reflect on some of the amazing things we have accomplished in 2014. And what a year it’s been! Take a walk down memory lane with us as we reflect on the highlights from 2014. The year got off to an exciting start when we teamed up with best-selling author AJ Jacobs on his journey to hold the world’s largest family reunion in… Read the full story

Today we are excited to announce an easier and faster way to upload family photos on Geni! Whether you want to upload a few photos or hundreds at once, you can drag and drop photos from anywhere on your computer to share with your relatives on Geni. Image credit: U.S. National Archives Just in time for the holidays, we’ve simplified the process of uploading your family photos to make it easier than ever to share… Read the full story

Geni’s World Family Tree, now almost 80 million profiles strong, enables people of all nationalities and cultures to work together to discover their shared ancestry. One of the greatest challenges of creating a single family tree of the world is accommodating the many languages spoken by our international community. Today we’re excited to announce that Geni’s World Family Tree now supports multilingual profiles. This means you can enter names and biographies in multiple languages, and… Read the full story

Last week, MyHeritage founder and CEO Gilad Japhet gave a very inspirational interview with Israel’s leading primetime news program. In the video, subtitled in English, Gilad discusses some of MyHeritage’s wonderful pro bono projects. For those unfamiliar, these projects include discovering heirs for unclaimed assets confiscated in WWII, returning looted art to its rightful owners and our global crowdsourcing project with BillionGraves to digitally preserve the world’s cemeteries. The story is truly amazing and heart-warming and we wanted to share it… Read the full story

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I. On July 28, 1914, the Austro-Hungarian Empire invaded Serbia, beginning a war unlike any others. The devastating war would last 4 years and see the deaths of more than 9 million soldiers. Do you have ancestors who served in the Great War? From now until the end of July, MyHeritage is offering free access to the following military record collections: Silver War Badge… Read the full story

We’d like to inform you of some important upcoming changes to Geni’s privacy rules. These changes are intended to enhance the privacy of profiles you want kept private, while at the same time move Geni closer to the widely-accepted genealogical practice of collaborating by sharing information about deceased persons. Changes to private profiles The privacy of private profiles will be increased. Private profiles will now display less information to non-family members: The name will be… Read the full story

Each year the U.S. celebrates Memorial Day in honor of the men and women who have given their lives while serving in the U.S. military. In celebration of the holiday, MyHeritage is providing free access to millions of military records all weekend, from May 23 – 26. Celebrate this Memorial Day by learning more about your military ancestors. Journey back in time to some of the most important conflicts in world history that not only impacted… Read the full story