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Gramps is a software program dedicated to genealogy and family history.
It can be installed and used on Windows, MacOs and Linux.
It has been developed in Open Source for over 20 years. It has a worldwide user base of several thousand, is free of charge and translated into some thirty languages.
There are several companion projects, such as Gramps Web or Betty, which aim to provide a tool for publishing your data on a website. The first, Gramps Web, is designed as a multi-user Web interface for viewing and entering genealogy data, while Gramps is single-user.
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✅ Among its many advantages, we can highlight its unrivalled place management, the numerous plug-ins developed by its users to add new functionalities, its compliance with the Gedcom standard - a format for genealogical data exchange used by everyone -, the flexibility of use of the independent objects on which it is based (locations, sources, events, ...), its powerful filters, ... and I forget its community of users always ready to answer any question or troubleshoot a blockage or that of its developers who listen to the ideas submitted to them.
❌ As for its limitations, there are probably only those of the user behind the keyboard to prevent you from doing anything with Gramps.
On the other hand, since the software is powerful, getting to grips with it may prove tedious or even too technical for some users, or its interface lacking in frills. But it's a step you have to take to get the most out of your muscle car, no matter how it looks.
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You don't need to register anywhere, just download Gramps from the project wiki, which also serves as a documentation base:
The result is a classic installation package adapted to each operating system, which installs as usual.
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After installation, the first window is fairly empty. This allows you to manage the various bases (trees) you can create from here.
To create a tree or import a GEDCOM from another program or site, you must first create a new family tree, then load the family tree:
Once this has been done, when you open this database, you arrive at the general Gramps interface:
Here, among the various views accessible via the browser , it's the Individuals view which is presented and on which we first arrive. In this image, it already has data displayed, but if you're creating a new database, it will of course be empty.
To add records to this empty view, you'll need to choose between:
Family Trees > Import menu to select the file in the file explorer and import a pre-existing tree.
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Gramps is written in the Python language. This is what is known in computing as an object language.
Gramps itself presents objects in its different views: Individuals, Families, Repositories, Sources and Citations, Events, Places, Media and Notes. All these objects can be created independently of each other and then linked together.
For example, you can create an Archive Repository, then a Source that refers to it, and finally a Citation from that Source. This can then be attached to an Event you've created, which can then be attached to one or more Individuals or Families. We can then specify a Role for this Individual in this Event, which may be different when sharing the same event with other Individuals, such as the Principal Individual, theOfficiant and the Witness of a birth event:
Some roles already exist, but you can create as many as you like, as can the type of event or place.
Are you a visual person? Once you've created your first individual, use the Graphic View to visualize and modify your tree.
You work with events. When you're in the family or individual editor, click on ➕️ in the Events tab to create a new event. You can also choose an existing one to reuse and share using the 👆 icon.
You work through sources. As explained above, create your sources and quotations, then events, then attach them to individuals or families with the chosen roles.
Places. Places in Gramps can be managed both hierarchically and chronologically. For example, you can differentiate between a commune in Alsace that belonged to France before 1871 and to Germany between 1871 and 1918, and give it a name in German during this period, and in French outside it. This will be represented in your events according to their date, with the correct spelling and hierarchy.
Following this principle, the example on the left shows a commune that changed name during the French Revolution, and in the individual record on the right, the events, depending on their date, use one or other of the names:
Your preferences. Review the various Gramps settings accessible from the Edit > Preferences menu, including :
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Description of Gramps made on August 21, 2025 for its presentation on the Discord server *Le Centre de Généalogie.*