Using Chronicler

A short guide to everything the app does.

Installation

Chronicler comes in two variants for Windows 10 and 11 (64-bit). You can download both on the app page.

Installer

1. Download Chronicler-win-Setup.exe and run it.
2. The app installs into your user folder; administrator rights aren't needed. A Chronicler shortcut appears on the desktop and in the Start menu.
3. Chronicler starts by itself right after installation.

Portable version

Extract Chronicler-win-Portable.zip to any folder, for example on a USB stick, and run Chronicler.exe. The portable version also updates itself.

SmartScreen warning

The app isn't signed with a paid certificate yet, so on the first start Windows may show "Windows protected your PC". Click More info, then Run anyway. To make sure the file wasn't tampered with, compare its SHA-256 checksum with the one on the download page. In PowerShell, you can get it with Get-FileHash Chronicler-win-Setup.exe.

Linux

The Linux version is in the works. Once it's released, you'll be able to download it on the same page.

The main window

The window has three parts:

• The people list on the left. At the top is a search by name and note text.
• The canvas in the middle is the tree itself: person cards, couples, and kinship lines.
• The person panel on the right. It opens when you select someone in the list or on the tree. Under the portrait are the dates, the places of birth, death, and burial, and the age. Below are two tabs: Info has the note and all relatives by group (parents, spouses, children, siblings, grandparents, grandchildren, and beyond); Events has the life timeline.

At the bottom is the status bar. It shows what the app has just done, and that's also where the update offer appears.

People

Add a person

Right-click an empty spot on the canvas and choose New person. In the window that opens, fill in the fields:

If the circumstances of death are "Killed in war" or "Missing in action", a red star appears in the corner of the card on the tree.

Portrait

In the person card, click Insert image and pick a file (PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP, BMP), or click From clipboard if you've already copied a photo, for example from a browser or a scanner. Then choose the frame: drag it, and pull an edge or a corner to resize it. The portrait is stored inside the project file, so you can delete the original.

To see a photo up close, right-click the card and choose Open photo.

Photo gallery

Besides the portrait, a person can have any number of photos. Right-click the card and choose Gallery…. Add photos from disk or from the clipboard and give each one a caption: for example, where and when it was taken.

If a person has photos, the panel on the right shows a Gallery button. It opens a viewer with a large photo, its caption, and a strip of thumbnails. Use the arrow keys to browse. The photos are stored inside the project file.

Photo tags

You can mark who appears in a photo. The marks are visible only in tag mode.

1. In the gallery viewer, click the person-silhouette button in the bottom-left corner.
2. Click the photo where the person is standing. A frame appears: drag it onto the face and pull a corner to adjust its size.
3. Click the label button on the frame and choose Person from the tree. If the person isn't in the tree, choose Comment and write who it is.
4. Click the check mark on the frame to lock it, or the cross to delete it. To move a locked frame again, double-click it.

The marks are saved when you leave tag mode or close the viewer. A frame with neither a person nor a comment isn't saved.

Edit or delete

Right-click a card on the canvas to open its menu: Edit, Edit note, Add relation, Add event…, Gallery…, and Delete. Deleting a person also removes all of their relations.

Relations

A relation always links two people and is defined from both sides: who the first person is to the second and who the second is to the first.

1. Right-click a person's card and choose Add relation.
2. In Who this person is to the selected one, choose the role: husband, wife, father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, parent, or child.
3. If the reverse role can vary (for example, a son's parent can be a father or a mother), the Who the selected one is to this person field appears. Choose the right role there.
4. Choose the second person from the list and click Add.

Enter only direct kinship: parents, children, spouses, and siblings. Grandparents, grandchildren, great-grandparents, and great-grandchildren are worked out from these links and shown in the person panel.

The app won't let the tree become contradictory: a person can't have two fathers, two mothers, or two spouses at once, and can't be linked to themselves.

Wedding date

Spouses on the canvas stand side by side with a two-rings icon between them. Right-click it and choose Wedding date…; the date or year appears between the rings. In the same window you can enter a place and a note: they'll appear on both spouses' events timelines. To delete the date, choose Remove date.

Second and third marriages

If a child was born in another marriage, right-click the line from the parent to the child and choose 2nd marriage or 3rd marriage. A mark appears on the line. To remove it, choose the same item again.

Life events

Besides birth, marriage, and death, a person can have other events: service, education, a move, work, an award — anything that happened on a particular day or in a particular year.

Add an event

1. Right-click the person's card and choose Add event…. Their event list opens.
2. Click Add, then enter a title and a date or just the year. Place and note are optional.
3. Click Save in the list window to write the changes.

To change or delete an event, select it in the same list and click Edit or Delete.

Events timeline

The Events tab in the person panel shows their whole life in order: birth and place of birth, weddings, children's births, events you added, and death with the circumstances and place of burial. Each event shows the age. If the person is alive, the timeline ends with the line "Present".

Weddings and children's births appear on the timeline by themselves if they have dates. Events without a date aren't shown on the timeline.

The tree canvas

The tree is laid out automatically: generations line up in rows, spouses stand side by side, and children go below their parents. You can adjust the layout by hand, and it's saved with the project.

You can turn off the canvas grid, the coloring of cards by sex, and the dimming of deceased people's cards in the settings.

Notes

Each person can have a note: a biography, memories, or where the information came from. To open it, right-click the card and choose Edit note. The B, I, and U buttons make the selected text bold, italic, or underlined. Search covers note text.

Project files

The whole tree — people, relations, events, portraits, photo galleries with their marks, and the card layout — is stored in one file with the .chronicle extension. The File menu has these commands for it:

• New starts a new empty tree.
• Open… opens a .chronicle file.
• Save and Save as… write the tree to a file.

.chronicle files have the Chronicler icon and open in it on double-click. If the app is already running, the file opens in the same window, and if the current project has unsaved changes, Chronicler first offers to save them.

You can copy the project file, email it, or keep it in the cloud: all the photos are already inside. On start, Chronicler opens the last project.

Protection against lost changes

Every change is written to a working copy right away. If the app closed with an error or the power went out, unsaved changes are restored on the next start, and a message about it appears in the status bar. After that, remember to save the project to a file.

Printing and pictures

Printing on A4 sheets

1. Choose File → Print….
2. Pick the sheet orientation: landscape or portrait. The app shows how many sheets the tree takes and how they'll be arranged.
3. Click Print. The sheets go to the default printer.

The edges of neighboring sheets overlap slightly, and each sheet's corner shows its row and column numbers, so the sheets are easy to glue together. If sending them to the printer fails, Chronicler opens the ready PDF file so you can print it yourself.

Picture

File → Save picture… saves the whole tree as a JPEG file — to send in a messenger, put in a presentation, or print at a photo shop.

GEDCOM import

GEDCOM is a standard format that most genealogy apps and websites understand. If the tree is already collected in another program, save it from there as a .ged file and open it in Chronicler. Versions 5.5, 5.5.1, and 7.0 are supported.

1. Choose File → Import….
2. Under Source, select GEDCOM.
3. Choose a mode: Replace everything or Merge. They work the same way as for import from Close Circle.
4. Click Import and pick the .ged file.

If the day in the file is missing or approximate ("about 1890", "before 1900"), only the year is kept. Sources, media files, and other information that Chronicler has no fields for aren't transferred.

Exchange with Close Circle

Close Circle is an Android app that reminds you about birthdays. It stores the same people and relations, so data can move both ways through a .closecircle backup file.

From the phone to Chronicler

1. In Close Circle, open Settings → Backup → Save to file or Share file. You can set a password or leave it empty.
2. Move the backup-YYYY-MM-DD.closecircle file to your computer.
3. In Chronicler, choose File → Import…. Under Source, leave Close Circle.
4. Choose the import mode, click Import, and pick the file.
5. If the backup is password-protected, Chronicler asks for the password. If the password is wrong, you can try again.

Backups from earlier versions of the app with the .json extension open too.

After the import, the status bar shows how many people were added, updated, and skipped and how many new relations were created.

From Chronicler to the phone

1. Choose File → Export….
2. Enter the password twice, or leave both fields empty so the file opens without one. Send the password separately from the file.
3. Choose where to save the .closecircle file.
4. Move the file to your phone and import it in the app: Settings → Backup → Import file.

The file contains people, portraits, and relations; the photo gallery stays in Chronicler only. Close Circle accepts only exact dates, so people without a full date of birth or with only a year of death aren't exported; the status bar shows how many were skipped. Keep in mind that importing on the phone replaces the whole list of people.

Settings

The Settings menu has:

• Language: English or Russian. It changes after the app restarts.
• Theme: system, light, or dark.
• Canvas: show the grid, color cards by sex, and dim cards of deceased people.
• Updates: check for a new version on start.

Updates

If checking on start is on, Chronicler checks vegafab.com for a new version. When one is out, the status bar shows "Version … is available" and an Update button. The update downloads in the background. Then you can click Restart now, or keep working and the new version installs on the next start.

A copy set up with the installer or extracted from the portable archive updates itself. If you built the app from source, download new versions from the website.

Where data is stored

If the app reports an unexpected error, the details are written to the logs folder inside the settings folder. Attach that file when you report the problem.

Uninstalling

Open Windows Settings → Apps → Installed apps, find Chronicler, and click Uninstall. Your .chronicle files stay where they are. For the portable version, just delete its folder.