Questions
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Yes — your tree lives on your own device by default and is never sent to a server. The only two exceptions are things you explicitly choose to do yourself: sending a book to Mixam for printing, or using the optional paid Photo AI colorize/restore feature. Nothing else ever leaves your device.
It's an optional way to get research help from an AI tool, if you'd like one — look for it on any person's profile, under the ⋮ (three dots) menu in the top-right corner, labelled "Research with AI." Tapping it puts together a short summary of what's already known about that person — names, dates, places — which you can copy or share. That's as far as the app itself goes: nothing is sent to any AI company automatically, by us or by the app. It's entirely your choice whether to use this at all, and if you do, where that text ends up.
If you do want to try it, a good rule of thumb: use an AI tool you already know, rather than one you've never heard of that turns up in a search — and a well-known, paid plan (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or similar) is generally a safer, more private choice than a random free website, since reputable paid services are clearer about not using your conversations to train anything. And if you're ever unsure whether something is trustworthy, it's completely fine to skip this feature altogether — every other part of the app works exactly the same without it.
No. Both Basic and Pro are one-time purchases — pay once, keep it forever. There's no recurring fee to keep access to your own family's tree.
Lemon Squeezy (our payment provider) emails you a receipt with a license key on it. Open the app for the edition you bought — my-family-story-forever.github.io for Basic, my-family-story-forever.github.io/pro for Pro — paste that license key into the box on the first screen, and tap Activate. That's it, no account or sign-up involved; the key just needs to check in with Lemon Squeezy once, directly from your browser, and then stays unlocked on that device.
That's your own country's tax law, not an extra fee we add — the same tax you'd see buying a Netflix or Spotify subscription. Most countries now require digital purchases to include local sales tax/GST/VAT, based on where the buyer is, not where the seller is. The $39/$69 price shown on this page is before that tax; Lemon Squeezy, our payment provider, works out the right amount for your country automatically and adds it at checkout. A few examples: Australia (10% GST) and New Zealand (15% GST) have both taxed digital purchases like this since 2016–2017; the UK charges 20% VAT; EU countries charge their own country's VAT rate; Canada charges GST or HST depending on the province; many US states charge sales tax on digital goods too. Lemon Squeezy is responsible for calculating, collecting, and passing this on correctly for every country it supports — there's nothing you need to do differently, and the amount shown at checkout is the actual total you'll be charged.
Not unless you already have one. A GEDCOM file (it usually ends in .ged) is just a plain file that stores a family tree — names, dates, relationships — in a format almost every family tree website or program can read and write, a bit like how a .pdf opens in lots of different apps. If you've ever built a tree on Ancestry, MyHeritage, or a similar site, you can usually download your tree as one of these files from that site's settings — that's the file you'd bring into My Family Story, Forever. If you're starting completely fresh, you can ignore all of this and just start adding your family the normal way.
Step by step: on the site or app where your tree already lives, look for an "Export" or "Download my tree" option (usually in Settings) and save the .ged file it gives you somewhere you'll remember, like your Desktop or Downloads folder. Then, in My Family Story, Forever, look for the button that says "Import a GEDCOM" — it's on the very first Welcome screen, so you can't miss it when you're just getting started. Tap it, choose that saved file, and My Family Story, Forever will show you a quick preview of who it found before asking you to confirm. Nothing is overwritten — it's always added to what's already there, so it's safe to try even if you're not sure you did it right. One important habit: as soon as a big import finishes, save a backup file straight away (see "How do I make sure I never lose my tree?" below) — that import lives only in your browser until you do, and it's the single biggest thing you can bring in at once.
Almost certainly not — you still have the original GEDCOM file, and it's completely unaffected by anything that happens inside the app. What you're most likely seeing is your browser opening a different, older tree instead of the one you imported into (each tree in the app is its own separate space — see "What if I want more than one tree" below). Check Backup → "Switch or create a tree" first; if the tree you imported into is still listed there, tapping it brings you straight back, nothing lost. Either way, the fix is the same and takes a minute: just import that GEDCOM file again into a tree. This is exactly why we recommend saving a backup file immediately after any big import (see "How do I make sure I never lose my tree?" below) — once that backup file exists, everything is safe on your own computer no matter what your browser does.
Exporting and printing your own Family Book or Ancestor Report PDF is free on both editions — print it yourself anywhere, any time. There's also an optional paid add-on, one-click "Send to print," which ships a bound, professionally printed copy to your door (coming soon) — available on both Basic and Pro, not just Pro.
Basic is the complete app — full tree, GEDCOM, all reports, PDF exports — with room for up to 10 photos/documents and one short video per person. Pro raises those limits and adds full home movies. The one-click print-and-ship add-on is available on either edition.
It runs as a web app in your browser today — no install required. The same underlying app is planned to become a mobile app later.
Because everything stays on your own device, backing up is genuinely worth doing — think of it the same way you'd back up precious photos. In the app, look for the backup icon on your Dashboard (the main screen). Tap it, then choose "Save a backup file" — this downloads one single file with everything in it: people, photos, stories, all of it. Save that file somewhere safe, like a folder in Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud, or even a USB stick — anywhere that isn't only on the one device. If anything ever happens to your computer, you open the app again, tap "Load a backup file", choose that saved file, and everything comes back exactly as it was. There's also an "Automatic backup" option, so you only have to set the saving-folder up once and it quietly keeps itself up to date from then on.
Yes, though it works a little differently than cloud apps you may be used to — since your tree lives on one device rather than the internet, it doesn't automatically appear on a second device by itself. To move it across, use "Save a backup file" on the first device, copy that file to the second (a USB stick or a cloud drive folder both work fine), then open the app on the new device (the same address — Basic and Pro are separate editions at separate addresses, so use whichever one you actually bought) and use "Load a backup file" there. It's an extra step compared to a cloud app, but it's the same thing that keeps your family's information private in the first place. There's nothing to install either way — it's a website, not a program, so opening that address is the whole setup. And your purchase itself isn't locked to one device either — it's fine to activate your license key on, say, your laptop and your phone or tablet as well.
There's no shared live version that several people edit at once — but there are two easy ways to bring family in: export a Family Book or Ancestor Report as a PDF and send it to them the normal way (email, print, however you like), or give a relative your backup or GEDCOM file so they can bring the whole tree into their own copy of the app. Either way, nothing about sharing requires either of you to be online or signed in to anything.
There's no login or account system, and there are two ways to handle this, whichever suits you better. In-app: open the app and tap "Switch or create a tree" on the Backup screen — one browser can hold several separate trees, and switching just reopens the app on a different one. Or, separate browser profiles: in Chrome or Edge, click your profile icon and "Add profile" — each one gets its own completely private storage, invisible to the other, if you'd rather keep things separated at the browser level too. Either way works the same for two different people, or two different family lines, never mixing up — and no need to buy a second copy.
A common version of this: building one side of the family (say, your mum's) and the other side (your dad's) as two separate trees, meaning to join them into one later. That works, with one honest caveat — there's no automatic "merge two trees into one" button today. The way to actually combine them: finish each tree, export one as a GEDCOM file from its Backup screen, then import that file into the other tree (importing always adds to what's there, it never overwrites or replaces anything). If the same person ends up listed twice afterward — most often whichever couple actually connects the two sides — open either of their two entries and use "Merge with a duplicate record" to combine them into one, then link them as partners if that's not already shown. A bit more hands-on than a single click, but nothing from either tree gets lost along the way.
Yes — DNA test result files can be attached to a person's profile alongside their photos and documents (they share the same per-person attachment limit, which is higher on Pro).
Nothing happens to it — that's really the whole point of keeping everything on your own device instead of a company's servers. Even in the unlikely event this app stopped being sold or supported one day, the copy already on your device keeps working exactly as it does now, and you'd still have your backup files and GEDCOM exports besides. Unlike a cloud-only genealogy site, there's no server that can be switched off to take your family's history with it.
No — your tree itself can hold as many people as you like on both editions. The only limits are on attachments (photos, documents, videos) per individual person, which are higher on Pro than Basic.
Day-to-day edits (fixing a name, a date, a detail) can simply be edited again at any time. The couple of actions that can't be undone — merging two duplicate people into one, or resetting all your data to start over — say so clearly and ask you to confirm first, so you're never caught out by surprise.
Yes — email help@myfamilystoryforever.com with your order confirmation from Lemon Squeezy (our payment provider) and we'll action it from our end. Billing questions that don't need a refund can go straight to Lemon Squeezy using the same confirmation email.
Email help@myfamilystoryforever.com any time — a real person reads and replies to it, not an automated system.
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