WikiTree Browser Extension

The WikiTree Browser Extension (WBE), a collaborative effort from the WikiTree Apps Project, is a downloadable software component that plugs into your browser, enhancing your WikiTree browsing, reading, and editing experience.

Highly configurable, WBE offers one hundred and two distinct and switchable features, allowing you to fine-tune your viewing and editing preferences. Some of the key features include a sticky toolbar, access keys, Find->Apps and Find->What Links Here submenus, clipboard and notes management, an extra watchlist, link previews, Family Group & Family Timeline, distance & relationship calculations, category display controls, Auto Bio & Bio Check, Automatic GEDCOM Cleanup, date, location, and language helpers, a gender predictor, and Dark Mode. The extension also provides Reading Mode, a collection of readability options to further enhance your WikiTree experience.

To stay up-to-date on what's what, see WBE Stable and Preview Version Updates — the team's change log.

If you are interested in contributing to this project, please see Development, Communication and Testing and Feedback at the end of this document.

Installation — Configuration — Features — Settings

Global — Profile — Editing — Navigation — Community — Other

Development — Communication — Testing and Feedback — Known Issues

Contents 1 Installation 1.1 Choose a version 1.1.1 Stable version (updated monthly) 1.1.2 Preview version 1.1.3 Enable only one version 1.2 Grant Permissions 1.3 Safari Extensions — Allow Private Browsing 1.4 Enhanced by the WikiTree Browser Extension 1.5 Other WikiTree Extensions 1.6 Update Notifications 2 Configuration 3 Features 3.1 Global 3.1.1 Access Keys 3.1.2 Add Search Boxes 3.1.3 Clipboard and Notes 3.1.4 Extra Watchlist 3.1.5 Image Zoom and Magnifier 3.1.6 Links to New Tabs 3.1.7 Menu Hover 3.1.8 Show Search 3.1.9 Space Watchlist Sorter 3.1.10 Text Expander 3.1.11 Style 3.1.11.1 Custom Style 3.1.11.2 Dark Mode 3.1.11.3 Disable GIFs 3.1.11.4 Highlight WBE Features 3.1.11.5 Menu Style 3.1.11.6 Space Style 3.1.11.7 Sticky Header 3.1.11.8 Visited Links 3.2 Profile 3.2.1 Add FamilySearch ID 3.2.2 Category Display 3.2.3 Change Family Lists 3.2.4 Collapsible Descendants 3.2.5 Collapsible Profiles 3.2.6 Connector Image 3.2.7 Distance and Relationship 3.2.8 Family Group 3.2.9 Family Timeline 3.2.10 Featured Connections Tables 3.2.11 Image Table 3.2.12 Printer Friendly Bio 3.2.13 Readability Options 3.2.14 Reorder Names 3.2.15 Show Suggestions 3.2.16 Unconnected Branch Table 3.3 Editing 3.3.1 Add Person 3.3.1.1 Add Person Redesign 3.3.1.2 Dates and Locations on New Profile Page 3.3.1.3 Gender Predictor 3.3.1.4 Send to Merge 3.3.1.5 Suggested Matches Filters 3.3.1.6 Verify ID 3.3.2 Bio Check 3.3.3 Category Management 3.3.4 Change Summary Options 3.3.5 Childless 3.3.6 Copy Bio Changes 3.3.7 Date Fixer 3.3.8 Edit Profile 3.3.8.1 Auto Bio 3.3.8.2 Auto Categories 3.3.8.3 Automatic GEDCOM Cleanup (AGC) 3.3.8.4 Edit Profile Redesign 3.3.8.5 Family Dropdown 3.3.8.6 Family Lists 3.3.8.7 Save Buttons Style Options 3.3.8.8 Toggle Photo Column 3.3.9 Editor Expander 3.3.10 Enhanced Editor Style 3.3.11 Family Status Sync 3.3.12 Image Page Options 3.3.13 Language Setting 3.3.14 Locations Helper 3.3.15 Make Radio Buttons De-selectable 3.3.16 Migration Category Helper 3.3.17 Scissors 3.3.18 Shareable Sources 3.3.19 Show Edits 3.3.20 Space Drafts 3.3.21 Sticky Toolbar 3.3.22 Wikitable Wizard 3.3.23 WikiTree+ Edit Helper 3.4 Navigation 3.4.1 AKA Name Links 3.4.2 Category Finder Pins 3.4.3 Find Menu 3.4.3.1 CC7 Changes 3.4.3.2 Draft List 3.4.3.3 Submenus 3.4.3.4 Random Profile 3.4.4 My Menu 3.4.5 Preview Pages 3.4.6 Preview Sources 3.4.7 Redirect External Links 3.4.8 What Links Here 3.5 Community 3.5.1 Confirm Thank Yous 3.5.2 G2G Options 3.5.3 Hide My Contributions 3.5.4 Sort Badges 3.6 Other 3.6.1 Anniversaries Table 3.6.2 Category Filters 3.6.3 Category Table 3.6.4 Connection Finder Options 3.6.5 Countdown 3.6.6 DNA Connections Table 3.6.7 Enumerate Image Detail 3.6.8 Feed Helper 3.6.9 Find A Grave Memorial Extractor 3.6.10 Help 3.6.11 My Connections 3.6.12 Pending Merges Filters 3.6.13 Remove Profiles from Watchlist 3.6.14 Search and Watchlist Table Options 3.6.15 Table Filters and Sorting 3.6.16 Usability Tweaks 3.6.17 Watchlist Filter 3.6.18 WikiTree+ Query Builder 3.6.19 Wills and Estates 4 Settings 4.1 Default Features 4.2 Back Up Options 4.3 Restore Options 4.4 Reset Options 4.5 Back Up Data 4.6 Restore Data 5 Development 6 Communication 7 Testing and Feedback 8 Known Issues 8.1 Firefox problems with the pop-up 8.2 Open Dyslexic font family not on Safari 8.3 Safari file download quirks 8.4 Missing CC7 Menu Item 8.5 Contention Between Features 8.6 Disabling WikiTree Browser Extension (WBE) Without Uninstalling 8.6.1 Google Chrome 8.6.2 Firefox 8.6.3 Safari (macOS) 8.6.4 Microsoft Edge 8.6.5 Brave Browser 8.7 Using 'Improve with AI' 8.7.1 How to Set an AI API Key 8.7.2 How to Get an AI API Key 8.7.2.1 Option 1: OpenAI 8.7.2.2 Option 2: Google Gemini (AI Studio) 8.7.2.3 Option 3: Claude (Anthropic) 8.7.2.4 Option 4: Perplexity AI (Perplexity API) 9 Sources 10 Acknowledgments 10.1 To BEE, or to WBE by ChatGPT 10.2 Four Score and Seven Features Ago...

Installation

We recommend that you:

• save all of your editing sessions before you begin an update.
• refresh all of your WikiTree tabs/windows after an update is installed.

"Starting out with the WikiTree Browser Extension" with Greg Clarke & Murray Maloney

• • This video begins with Greg Clarke demonstrating how to install WBE on Chrome, Firefox, Safari on a Mac, and Safari on an iPad.

Choose a version

Stable version (updated monthly)

• For Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers, including Opera, Edge, Brave, and Vivaldi.

• For Firefox.

• For Safari.

Preview version

If you want to have the most up-to-date version of the extension and you don't mind the chance of encountering a bug or two, you can try the development 'Preview' version. See it and try it here first.

• For Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers, including Opera, Edge, Brave, and Vivaldi.

• For Firefox.

• For Safari — join the WikiTree Browser Extension Testers Team to stay current with the latest TestFlight edition of WBE, Stable and (Preview) versions for Mac and iOS.  

Enable only one version

You can have both versions installed, but never leave them enabled together. If both copies run, they load the same code twice and WBE will mis-behave.

Note: Your settings will be different in each version. To maintain the same settings, you can use the backup feature (see below).

Grant Permissions

When you first install WikiTree Browser Extension, you will be asked to grant it permission to run on your computer, to access wikitree.com (and maybe wikitreebee.com), to download backup files, and to read or write to your system clipboard. Each of these are legitimate requests. When a new permission is required for a new feature of the extension, the extension will be disabled until you accept the new permission. We apologize for the inconvenience.

• Access your data for sites in the wikitree.com domain.
• Access your data for sites in the findagrave.com domain. There's a feature that creates a list of all graves in a cemetery.
• Access your data for wikitreebee.com. This is to be able to easily import data into WBE without having to update the extension and send it to the stores and wait...
• Access your data for wikitree.sdms.si. This was to get data from WT+. It's not needed anymore as it's now using the `plus` subdomain.
• Get/set data in the clipboard. These are for various features, including the Clipboard and Notes feature.
• Access your data for AI support in Auto Bio. These are for the part of Auto Bio that lets you try to improve the the Auto Bio output with your chosen AI. The AI does nothing unless the user adds an AI API key to their settings.
  • Access your data for api.openai.com
  • Access your data for generativelanguage.googleapis.com
  • Access your data for api.anthropic.com
  • Access your data for api.perplexity.ai
• Access your data for sites in the raw.githubusercontent.com. This is a database for improved location suggestions from the Locations Helper feature.

You can disable individual permissions. Disabling the AI permissions will not affect your experience if you aren't using the 'Improve with AI' button in Auto Bio, and assuming that you don't expect to use any future features that may make use of AI.

No private information is sent anywhere. The wording – "access your data" – may sound a bit scary, but this is all just to let the extension do its job, which is not scary and is, hopefully, very useful. The code is all open: https://github.com/wikitree/wikitree-browser-extension. Feel free to search it to see how the various permissions are used.

Safari Extensions — Allow Private Browsing

Enable WikiTree Browser Extension while using Private Browsing mode in Safari.

Enhanced by the WikiTree Browser Extension

You can quickly see that the WikiTree Browser Extension is enabled by looking at the WikiTree logo in the upper-left corner of every WikiTree page header. If it has the tag line "Enhanced by the WikiTree Browser Extension", then WBE is installed and having the effect dictated by its feature, options, and settings.

There are two buttons to the right: a sparkle, and a question mark.

— The sparkle ✨ button will always be there, whether or not you've enabled Highlight WBE Features (enabling the feature will highlight the WBE features all the time). Clicking the button will toggle the WBE feature highlights — showing you which parts of the page have been added or changed by WBE. If you think you've found a bug in the system, switch the highlighting on and check to see if the bug may be in a WBE feature. It's good to have more information before reporting a bug.

— The question mark (?) is a link to this WBE help page. As a reminder, on the WBE options page, which pops up when you click the icon in your browser's toolbar, next to every feature, there is a question mark link which will take you to the corresponding section of this WBE help page.

Other WikiTree Extensions

• Numerous features that were formerly in the WikiTree BEE extension have migrated into the WikiTree Browser Extension (WBE). Others will follow. In order to avoid conflicts, features that are migrating from BEE to WBE will be disabled in BEE before they are enabled in WBE.
• You can remove the AGC extension, which has been wholly integrated into the WikiTree Browser Extension.
• Use WikiTree Sourcer together with the WikiTree Browser Extension to significantly enhance your effectiveness on WikiTree. WikiTree Sourcer is a Browser Extension —developed by Rob Pavey and other contributors— that not only helps you find sources at a wide array of genealogical sites... it helps create useful narratives with inline citations or block citations formatted to suit you, saving you a lot of time and manual typing. We cannot recommend this extension strongly enough.
• Use WikiTree BEE together with the WikiTree Browser Extension to significantly enhance your effectiveness on WikiTree. WikiTree BEE is a Browser Extension — developed by Ian Beacall and other contributors— it creates citations, helps with categories, enhances other genealogy sites, and much more.

Update Notifications

Feel free to subscribe to the Mastodon account @WikiTreeExtensions@genealysis.social to be notified as soon as a new version of WikiTree Browser Extension, WikiTree BEE or WikiTree Sourcer is released for Firefox, Chrome or Safari.

Installation — Configuration — Features — Settings

Configuration

WikiTree Browser Extension — On installation, you'll be greeted by the WikiTree Browser Extension features page. You can switch the features on or off, depending on your preferences. Many features are switched on by default. Flicking a switch is enough to switch a feature on or off (there's no save button).

The All switch at the top-right of the Options page will turn all features (apart from Dark Mode) on or off, by toggling to the left or right. The switch adopts a middle position if some features are disabled. Each category and sub-category of features has a similar three-position toggle switch, positioned before the feature heading.

The gear wheel icon leads to WBE Settings and Data Backup options.

Click on the (?) icon beside the feature heading to open a new tab with a description of the feature and its options, if any.

Enter text in the Search box to find a specific feature or set of features.

Several of the features have options or settings of their own. Just click the Show options button next to the feature's heading to reveal them.

After making changes or enabling/disabling any of the features in your Options, you'll need to refresh any WikiTree pages that you have open to see the effects of your changes. Any new pages that you open will take on the most recent Options settings.

Accessing WikiTree Browser Extension features page

To access the WikiTree Browser Extension features page and change any options in future, just click on the WikiTree icon in your browser toolbar.

• Chrome and Firefox: You'll probably need to pin the icon to the toolbar - click the browser's extension icon (a jigsaw puzzle piece, a cube, or something similar), and find the pin next to the orange WikiTree icon.

• Safari: Right-click on your Safari Toolbar and it will offer you a "Customize Toolbar..." option. You will then be able to arrange the position of the WBE icon wherever you choose on your toolbar.

• The Options page can also be accessed via your browser's extension manager.

Installation — Configuration — Features — Settings

Global — Profile — Editing — Navigation — Community — Other

Features

The features are grouped into six categories:

• Global: tools and features available on or affecting every page.
• Profile: presentation and layout of profile elements.
• Editing: features to facilitate profile creation and editing.
• Navigation: menus: apps, drafts, my menu, random profile; links and previews.
• Community: G2G pages, badges, contributions, and thank yous.
• Other: several table features and some usability tweaks.

Features marked with "(Preview)" are currently only in the Preview version.

On YouTube There are videos on YouTube that review many of the features of the WikiTree Browser Extension.

• The WikiTree Browser Extension Part I: Global Features
  

• The Power of the WikiTree Browser Extension
  

• "Starting out with the WikiTree Browser Extension" with Greg Clarke & Murray Maloney
  

• "WikiTree Browser Extension: Features Review" with Greg Clarke & Murray Maloney
  

• "Bio Check" with Kay Knight
  

• "A Tour of WikiTree BEE w/Flo Straub" with Greg Clarke
  

• • Flo Straub demonstrates WBE Category Management feature, starting at 34:00 minutes.

Global — Profile — Editing — Navigation — Community — Other

Global

Features available on or affecting every page.

Access Keys

Enable the Access Keys feature for quick keyboard shortcuts.^[2]

Access Key Combinations

• PC: Use [Shift][ALT] + letter (e.g., [Shift][ALT][G] for G2G Recent Activity)
• Mac: Use [^][⌥] + letter (e.g., [^][⌥][G] for G2G Recent Activity)
  • [Shift] key and [ALT] key on a PC.
  • [^] is the Control key on a Mac.
  • [⌥] is Option key on a Mac.

• Navigational Keys

• 1: Nav Home Page — jumps to Nav Home
• 2–9: Jump Links — jumps to annotated links
• F: Find — jumps to the WikiTree person search page
• G: G2G Recent Activity — jumps to the G2G Recent Activity page
• H: Help Search — jumps to WikiTree Help search page
• R: Random Profile — jumps to a random profile
• W: Watchlist — jumps to your Watchlist

• Information Management Keys

• I: ID — copies the WikiTree ID of the current profile into the clipboard for pasting
• J: User — copies the WikiTree user number of the current profile into the clipboard for pasting
• L: Link — copies the WikiTree link for the current profile into the clipboard for pasting
• U: URL — copies the URL of the current profile into the clipboard for pasting

• N: Clipboard and Notes: Toggle Notes open/close
• V: Clipboard and Notes: Toggle Clipboard open/close
• X: Extra Watchlist: Toggle open/close (browse mode only)

Some access keys work differently depending on whether you are browsing or editing a profile.

While Browsing a Person Profile

• Profile Activity

• A: Ancestors — like pressing the Ancestors button  
• D: Descendants — like pressing the Descendants button
• E: Edit profile — opens an edit session in the current person profile
• T: Tree apps — opens the Tree Apps

• Image Handling Keys

• M: Magnifier — toggles Magnifier feature on/off
• Z: Zoom — toggles Zoom-in-Place feature on/off

While Editing a Person Profile

• Edit Session Keys

• C: Compare — compare draft with saved information  
• E: Enhanced Editor — toggles Enhanced Editor while in Editing session
• P: Preview — like pressing the Preview button in Edit mode
• Q: Quit — return to profile / delete draft
• S: Save — saves your current edit session

• Content Enhancement Keys

• A: AGC — run Auto Gedcom Cleanup (AGC)
• B: Bio — run Auto Bio
• K: Category — opens the Category helper box
• T: Template — Add any template
• Y: Family Dropdown — Open the Family Dropdown

Access Key Combinations

• PC: Use Shift-Alt + letter (e.g., Shift-Alt-G for G2G Recent Activity)
• Mac: Use Ctrl-Opt + letter (e.g., Ctrl-Opt-G for G2G Recent Activity)

See also:

• Find more access key combinations for different browsers and operating systems in the Wikipedia Access Keys article.

Also see: Betsy Ko's Tips of the Week

• Saving the WikiTree Browser Extension Access Keys where you can find them.

Add Search Boxes

Enable this feature and its options to add a Help Search box and/or a Google Search box to the bottom of every page.

Clipboard and Notes

Easily store and access frequently used text snippets in the clipboard and notes. Icons for clipboard and notes are located in the page header on profile pages and G2G, and beside the Edit Box in Edit Mode. (We recommend that you also enable the Sticky Header feature.)

Also see the Access Keys listed below.

• • Warning: These items are only stored in the browser's cache and to keep them long term you should use the Back Up Data button in case you clear your cache. See Settings.

You can also sort your clippings and notes into groups.  

Clipboard

A repository for multiple clippings that you can quickly paste into the current edit session. Very handy for storing collections of citations that you expect to use during an extended session or an event such as a Connect-a-Thon.

• With Enhanced Editor off: click the position in the editor where you want to insert a clipping, then click the clipping.

• With Enhanced Editor on: clicking a clipping copies it to your system's clipboard for pasting in the editor.

• Re-order notes or clippings by dragging the item up or down using the number on the left.

Notes

A handy scratchpad for genealogists to keep ephemeral notes. Stuff that you might need to check occasionally and want to keep handy, but you don't expect to paste into any profiles. Your to-do list(s), for example. Or maybe a short text passage that you are working on, and is not yet ready to move into your Clipboard. Notes are there for you to record and consult — they don't interact with the Clipboard.

Also see: Betsy Ko's Tips of the Week

• Saving the WikiTree Browser Extension Access Keys where you can find them.

Note: Clippings and notes are stored in your browser and can be backed up using the Back Up button. Note that they won't sync across browsers on different devices.

Keyboard shortcuts

There are some key controls to use with the Clipboard and Notes:

• Access Key N opens Notes
• Access Key V opens Clipboard
• Shift-left/right arrow moves between tabs
• Shift-up/down arrow selects the previous/next clipping on the active tab
• Shift-Enter copies the current selected clipping to the document and closes the clipboard
• Shift-PageUp: select the clipping 5 positions up, or the first one
• Shift-PageDown: select the clipping 5 positions down, or the last one
• Esc: close the Clipboard or Notes popup

The shortcuts are convenient to use together with the V and N Access Keys feature, which then allows you to paste or lookup items while editing a profile without having to use your mouse to reach up to the toolbar.

Extra Watchlist

Enable this feature to monitor profiles you're not on the Trusted List for with the Extra Watchlist.

• Use the '+' button to add or remove a profile,
• Use the star button to view your Extra Watchlist.

You can sort your watchlist by ID, Name, or Change Date by clicking on the column headings.

You can Export your list as a comma-separated txt file to preserve it when clearing your browser's cache, and use the Import feature to restore your list afterward. (You can also use the extension's back-up feature (see below).)  

The Extra Watchlist file format is quite simple, a comma-separated list of WikiTree IDs (E.g. "Hilton-1013,Mainwaring-42,Hilton-18,Hilton-52,"), where a trailing comma is expected. So, if it's easier for you, you can manually create your lists of profiles in .txt files to import anytime. You can keep different sets of profiles to import into your Extra Watchlist depending on where in your tree you are working. For example, keep different lists for ancestors from different parts of the world or in different time periods.

If a profile won't disappear from the list (usually if a LNAB was changed after the profile was added to your watchlist), you can export the watchlist, edit it to remove, and import again.

• • Warning: These items are only stored in the browser's cache and to keep them long term you should use the Back Up Data button in case you clear your cache. See Settings.

Image Zoom and Magnifier

This feature allows you to interact with images in the following ways:

• Zoom-in and Zoom-out: Click on the magnifying glass icon 🔍 at the bottom right corner of an image to get a closer look. Click or touch (if you're using a touch screen device) the magnifying glass 🔍 and the image will appear in a popup window. You can make it even bigger with your mouse (or with a touch gesture). A simple mouse click (or tap gesture) on the popup image will increase its size. To shrink it back, use the mouse wheel (or a pinch gesture). You can use the mouse wheel and/or pinch/expand gestures to manage the image size.

• Zoom in Place: Select this options and most images are also zoomable in place with a mouse wheel or with pinch/expand gestures. If you want to keep this feature in reserve, you can enable/disable this capability with your access keys:
  • • Mac: Ctrl-Opt-z  
    • Not Mac: Shift-Alt-z

• Exit Zoom: You can dismiss the Zoomed Image by clicking anywhere outside the image, or by pressing the Escape key. The image returns to its original size and is re-centered.

• Magnifier: As you hover over an image, a rectangular lens will appear, offering a close-up view of the part of the image under the cursor. This Magnifier feature provides you with a way to view details of the image without having to zoom in. The Magnifier lens moves with the cursor and disappears when the cursor leaves the image. If you want to keep this feature in reserve, you can enable/disable this capability with your access keys:
  • • Mac: Ctrl-Opt-m
    • Not Mac: Shift-Alt-m

When the cursor hovers over the magnifying glass icon 🔍 at the bottom right corner of the image, where the zoom control is located, the Magnifier lens will not be displayed. This is to ensure that the zoom control, the magnifying glass icon 🔍, remains visible and accessible to initiate a closer look at the image by clicking (tapping) on the 🔍.

Links to New Tabs

With this feature enabled, clicking on a link will open that link in a new tab. Use the options to make exceptions for special cases.

Note: This feature is not for everybody. If you know that you want this, good for you, you're in the right place. It's not that we got anything against ya or nothin', it's just that, some of us, ya know, we've found that one could end up with a heck of a lot of open tabs, while you're in the midst of an editing process. So be forewarned.

Menu Hover

Enable this feature to enable the menus to open when you hover over. Some people prefer to click on a menu and select; others like the ergonomic efficiency of hovering over the menu to open it and select.

Show Search

Enable this feature to always show the Search bar when a page is opened. You can subsequently close the Search bar by clicking on the Search icon.

Use at your own discretion. This feature can be convenient if you are spending your day(s) conducting a lot of searches of your watchlist and of WikiTree in general. However, it can become an inconvenience when your work pattern changes and you find yourself repeatedly hiding the Search bar.

Space Watchlist Sorter

This feature adds a button, beside the Clipboard and Notes buttons, that leads to a popup window that allows you to organize the free-space pages in your watchlist by assigning them to tabbed groups.

Initially, you will simply have a list of space pages, which may suit your needs at the moment. Eventually, you may wish to organize your space pages under named tab groups representing families, places, categories, topics, etc.

• You can add a 'tabbed group' by clicking + button.
• You can assign pages to a tabbed group in two ways:

1. Right-click on any page(s) and choose the group name.
2. Drag and drop the page(s) into any open tab.

• You can select one or more items by clicking on them and using Shift or Ctrl to select more.
• You can sort each list alphabetically by pressing the A–Z button.
• You can re-order the list items manually by using your mouse gestures to grab the line and move it to where you want it placed. (You will notice the example list is not in alphabetical order.)

The tabbed groups and their contents are kept in the indexedDB and the data is included in the data backup.

An example of a Space Watchlist that has been organized into a set of tabbed groups. The + button is to the right of all existing tabs, and you can close the popup window by click on the [x] at top right or by pressing the ESC key.

In this example, the user right-clicked on an entry in the list and has been offered a list of all of the other named tabbed groups from which to choose. If/when all the entries in any given tabbed group are moved to another tabbed group, then the original group will be deleted. Similarly, if you create a new tabbed group but never add any items to that group, then it will be deleted.

Text Expander

Enable this feature for text expansion. Simply type the abbreviation, followed by a space, and it will expand to the specified text.

Open the "Text Expander" dialog by selecting the horizontal arrow icon in the jump link bar. In the screenshot below, we are adding 'wbe' as an abbreviation that will become fully expanded text: 'WikiTree Browser Extension'

Style

Custom Style

Enabling this feature:

• adds font size adjustment buttons (A+ and A-) to the WikiTree Edit Toolbar.
• allows you to customize reading and editing font families and colours, link colours, as well as background colors in a number of typographic contexts. Also lets you shrink the page margins.

Note: Custom Style is incompatible with Dark Mode.

Press the A+ or A- button to increase/decrease the edit box text by 10% increments.

Note: When this feature is initially enabled, only the A+ and A- buttons are added. The feature has no other effect unless/until any of the settings have been changed from their default values, and then only those settings will apply. The default value of individual settings can be restored by pressing the corresponding circular arrow icon, and restore all of the default values by pressing the Reset all button. So, if all you want is to use a larger font in the edit box, you can adjust that setting and leave the others in their default values.

See Impact of Typography on Reading and Cognition for a discussion of how to choose the most suitable font families, colours, and background colours to meet your reading and editing needs.

See Text and Background Colours to learn about the colour picking interfaces you can use to select them. As a safeguard against creating unreadable pages, WBE will override a selected text color if the resulting contrast ratio between text and background color is less than 4.5:1.^[3][4]

— Select the switch beside "Expand content to fill window and reduce margins." Shrinks the side margins and holds their size steady as you resize the window. More reading area, less glaring white spaces, less jumpy resizing. Win, win, win!!!
— Global options allow you set the overall background colour, the font colour, and the font family. You can also set the Input Font Family for the Editor Box(es) and data input fields. (See Font Selection for further information.)
— Remove underline from links.

Dark Mode

Enable this feature to make WikiTree dark. An option allows WBE to follow your system preferences, turning on and off at set times of the day as set by your system.

Note: Custom Style is incompatible with Dark Mode.

Disable GIFs

Enable this feature to convert animated GIF images into static images.

In theory, this new feature should not be required. (See Animations for more details.) But occasionally, you may come across a profile with an animated GIF. If you would rather not see these animations, you can enable this feature.

Highlight WBE Features

When you enable this feature, WBE elements are normally highlighted when you load any profile or free-space page. When this feature is not enabled, WBE elements are normally not highlighted. In either case, you can toggle between "Highlight WBE Features" ✨ and "Hide WBE Feature Highlights" ✨ by clicking on the respective buttons.

Highlighting adds a cyan (195°) border and/or colourization to elements that have been added or significantly changed by the WikiTree Browser Extension (WBE). WBE Cyan (#006080) is used for borders and WBE Cyan Shadow (#0086b3) is used for box shadows.

Note: Unless you prefer to always see the highlights, we recommend that you leave this feature disabled. You can toggle the highlighting on at any time by clicking on the sparkle icon.

Menu Style

Enable this feature to remove underlines and visited-link colours.

Space Style

This feature enables full-width free-space pages.

There are two options:

• Always wide layout
• Wide for profiles with marker

The marker is:

• `<span class="wbe-wide"></span>`

Sticky Header

Enable this feature to keep the WikiTree header at the top of the page instead of letting it scroll off the screen. This gives you quick access to the menu and options in the header without having to scroll back to the top. To make sure it does not overlap the page content, it also compacts the header on narrow screens.

There is an option to enable or disable the Sticky Header feature while on G2G pages.

Visited Links

Enable this feature to see previously visited links in a distinguishing purple color.

Global — Profile — Editing — Navigation — Community — Other

Profile

Add FamilySearch ID

Enable this feature to add FamilySearch ID to the Research section of the profile.

In the Research section on the right, there is a button to add a matching profile on FamilySearch and two other links to easily search the FamilySearch tree and FamilySearch records.

When you press the "Add FamilySearch ID" button, it will lead you to the "FamilySearch Connections" page, where you can add a new connection.

Note: This feature was previously a part of WikiTree Bee

If you later discover that there is a better FamilySearch entry for the profile person, then you can subsequently edit the ID.

Category Display

Enable this feature to move the location of the profile's categories list to the top of the profile or the sidebar for better visibility, and quicker access.

Change Family Lists

Enable this feature and its options to exercise control of the position and arrangement of the Family List (parents, siblings, spouses, and children) on a profile.

Relationship Status

• — Confirmed with DNA
• — Confident
• — Uncertain
• — Non-Biological

When this feature is enabled, any children whose profiles have the DNA Confirmed radio button enabled to indicate that that parent is DNA Confirmed, will have a label appended to their name. This is helpful when trying to identify descendant paths to DNA testers.

This feature has the following options:

• Move the lists to the right-hand column
  • Position before Manager or above/below Photos
• One spouse per line
• Add heading when displayed on the right
• Display vertical lists with:
  • Dates for each person
  • Color-coded genders
  • Color-coded indicators for child-parent relationships:
    • multiple spouses
    • half-siblings
  • Profile person in sibling list in correct position
• Re-order: Born, Died, Family Relationships
• Highlight the active profile when listed vertically
• Highlight ancestors
• Change the headings* of the lists from:
  • "Son/Daughter of" to "Parents:"
  • "Brother/Sister of" to "Siblings:"
  • "Husband/Wife of" to "Spouse(s):"
  • "Father/Mother of" to "Children:"
• Parent age (yrs) when subject was born
• Age difference (𝚫t yrs) between subject and siblings/children
• Add ages at marriage
• Add sibling and child counts
• Add prefixes in family lists
• Make [+] links go directly to 'Create a new profile'
  • skips the page with option to 'Connect an existing profile'.

Note: * While this feature is enabled, the list headings can be toggled at-will, between the two variations, by simply clicking on any of them.

Collapsible Descendants

Enable this feature to make the descendants tree (on profile pages) collapsible for easier navigation and to allow you to conveniently focus on specific descendant lines.

Collapsible Profiles

Enabling this feature will place an Activate Collapsible Profile button on the Jump Links bar. Press this button to transform your view of the page so that all the section headings are collapsed and can thereafter can be expanded or contracted at will.

When "Collapsible Profiles" has been enabled, all headings are prefixed with a (+)' or (–) toggle button to expand or collapse the contents of the corresponding section.

Manual Collapsible Profile

If you choose to use the Activate Collapsible Profile button, you can always get back to the standard view of the page by refreshing your browser.

Automatic Collapsible Profiles
This feature also has a set of options to activate the Collapsible Profiles function automatically on profiles and on space pages, by first selecting the Add all toggle buttons option, and then specifying that all or some sections should be collapsed when the page first opens. If you choose to enable this option, getting back to the standard view will require you to come back to disable it, and then refresh the browser window containing your page of interest.

Note: Expanding and contracting the page can be fairly quick on regular profiles with only three or four major headings: Biography, Research Notes, Sources, and Acknowledgments. Processing a Space page may take a bit longer, especially with many headings at multiple levels.

Profiles

The subject of this profile is Nathaniel Salsbury (1794-1876). The page title is presented at the top of the profile or space page.

Note: These screenshots will be updated soon-ish.

• When you click on the (+), all sections will expand in the page.
• When you click on the (–), all sections will collapse in the page.

• When you click on the (+), that section will expand.
• When you click on the (–), that section will collapse.

Space Pages

Similarly, in a Space page example, the subject is Rhoda, Charity, and Joel Cornish Probate Notices and the title is presented at the top of the page.

The page title is presented at the top of the profile or space page.

• When you click on the (+), all sections will expand in the page.
• When you click on the (–), all sections will collapse in the page.

• When you click on the (+), that section will expand.
• When you click on the (–), that section will collapse.

Connector Image

This feature gives you a Connector jigsaw puzzle symbol (as used by the Connectors Project) in the header of a profile page if the person is not connected to the big tree.

See also: Unconnected Branch Table

Distance and Relationship

Enable this feature for a display of the distance (in degrees) and any relationship between you and the profile person. The relationship description will be placed "Below the birth and death detail" by default, unless you exercise the option to position it "Above the birth and death detail".

These are the results of the Connection Finder and Relationship Finder pages. This feature fetches those results for you the first time you visit a profile and displays them with the heading. The results are then stored for future display. This means that the distance/degree number may be out of date due to recent additions to the database bringing you and the profile person closer together. To refresh the information, click the degree number or the relationship text box.

In this example, the distance (20 degrees) and relationship (10th cousin) are listed, along with the names of their Most Recent Common Ancestors (MRCA).

In the next example, the people in the relationship have multiple shared ancestors. Click on the "MORE" button to expand the listing to expose the entire list, which reveals that they share a dozen MRCAs.

Family Group

Enable this feature to add a "Family Group" button to the profile submenu.

• Select "Family Group" to display dates and locations of all family members.

Family Timeline

Enable this feature to add a "Family Timeline" button to the profile submenu.

• Select "Family Timeline" to display a table of events in the life of the profile person and their immediate family, including births, marriages, and deaths, as well as some information from stickers in profiles.

• Notes:

• • Entries in parentheses are approximate dates.
  • Bold entries represent events for the profile person.
  • The ribbon shows the person's death. Events after the death are shown as 'Ribbon (death) + [x]' (number of years).

Featured Connections Tables

Formerly Sort Theme People.

A popular feature on WikiTree is the Theme of the Week, where WikiTree selects a group of profiles to represent a given theme, such as Star Wars, On the Farm, or Veterans. At the very end of every WikiTree profile, that list featured connections is presented, annotated by the number of degrees distance between the theme person and the subject of the current profile. That list is normally presented as a single, unsorted paragraph-style listing.

Enable this feature to see those theme people listed in a titled tabular form, sorted by closeness (degrees). Click on the distance (degrees) to jump to a Connection Finder result between the profile person and the theme person.

Press the All Degrees Table button to see a popup display of each of the featured connections in a table that shows the number of steps between each of them.

Image Table

Enable this feature to add a "Image Table" button to profiles and space pages so that you can access a sortable and searchable table of the images that have been uploaded. On person profiles, the button appears in the tabbed submenu; on other pages it appears in the WikiTree Jump Links bar.

The following image demonstrates the Image Table for a member's image archive free-space page, with over 500 images that are used in a variety of profiles and space pages. In this example, we have restricted the list with a search for the text string "prince" which also matches "Princess", and we have reverse sorted the image's title field. Just click on the image of "Princess Lillibet on Time Magazine cover" and it will appear, centered and in its full size,

Sorting of columns generally works as expected.

The Dimensions column cycles through four sorting modes: Ascending and descending on the horizontal dimension, and then on the vertical dimension.

Printer Friendly Bio

With this feature enabled, WBE will optimize the display of pages for printing to PDF or paper.

With the first two options provided, you can make the Printer Friendly Bio your default Print... option if you like, or you can leave the default Print... option the way that it was and use a new Profile menu item when you would prefer to use the Printer Friendly Bio. Mix and match, as you like. (The Profile menu is the one with the person's WikiTree-ID at the top.)

You can choose to not include an assortment of profile page elements:

• Vitals and Family Relationships
• DNA Confirmations
• Research Notes
• Sources

You can also set the font size of the profile text, between 8 pt and 22 pt.

Note: If you choose to include vitals and family relationships, the family relationships list will either appear near the top of the first page (horizontal), or at the end of the last page (vertical), depending on your Readability Options settings.

Readability Options

Enable this feature to take greater control over many aspects of WikiTree profile presentation. You can enable Reading Mode to hide various elements of a WikiTree page.

The following overview provides a brief insight. For a comprehensive description of the feature and its settings please see WikiTree Readability Options.

Note: Many/most Readability Options are working. Some aspects of the Readability Options are inoperable while the main WikiTree site is undergoing modifications, and the specifics of which options are working at any given time is in flux. We expect full functionality to be restored in due course, plus some new options will be added to take advantage of the new WikiTree design.

When you select "Show options", a popup box presents your options list.

• The top half of the Readability Options concerns Reading Mode, Line Spacing, the Sources Section, and Inline Citations. You can apply standard formatting and line spacing rules to lists, sources, and citations, to make them easier to read.

• • Accessibility Options lets you manage the overall font size and text line leading, as well as the contrast around data entry fields and the line spacing between those fields.

• The bottom half of the Readability Options lets you choose to hide various profile elements from four sections (right, top, biography, bottom) of the profile, while in Readability Mode and/or conditionally (always, never, on demand, when empty). There's even some G2G features to make that site easier to use.

Note: It's a lot to take in, so take your time picking and choosing which options you like to have on/off under different conditions. You can select whichever options make the most sense to you, but bear in mind that you could later regret collapsing/hiding the table of contents, sources, and research notes.

Note: If you choose to hide PPP and research boxes, you will be missing the following types of status notification. Column 1 lists the most critical states, Column 2 lists states of profile uncertainty. In Column 1, the Closed Account and Hold Request indicate that these notifications are the most critical to communicate, and will not be hidden by Readability Options. The 3rd column are known types of RNBs that are not among the approved RNBs listed in Research Note Boxes, but are included here for logical completeness.

See Using the Research Note Boxes for more information.

The dark glasses icon indicates that Readability Mode is on. So, if you're suddenly wonder where everything went, just look to see whether the WBE dark glasses are on the WikiTree toolbar.

In the following example:

• The WikiTree Tab bar is gone until you switch out of Reading Mode.
• The biography is the full width of the page, and all of the features that you would normally see in the right column are gone.
• The table of contents, categories, family list, Comments, and Memories are gone.
• References to sources have been reformatted slightly smaller, as well as losing the underline and square brackets.
• We could have chosen to hide the Sources section and all references too.

Reorder Names

Enable this feature to reorder the non-Latin-alphabet names of profile person. This is used to arrange names correctly for reading of right-to-left languages.

Show Suggestions

Enable this feature to add a Suggestions button to the tabbed submenu. It shows the number of suggestions and you can click to show those suggestions.

When there are no suggestions, a checkmark is displayed on the Suggestions button.

Unconnected Branch Table

Enable this feature to add an "Unconnected Branch" button to the profile's tabbed submenu on the unconnected profiles. Click this to see a table of all the people in the unconnected branch.

Note: The following example will be updated in due course.

In the screenshot presented below, we consider the profile of Mary Bennet Lever (Dawson) Robinson, whose ancestral lines are disconnected from the main tree, and whose only line of descent recorded here is her matrilineal line. Her line of descent, her unconnected branch, to Hazel Prime is reported in the background table. By clicking on any of the house symbols beside a name in the background table, a smaller foreground table lists the person's household—in this case, the household of Florence Read,

• Double-click on table to dismiss.

Global — Profile — Editing — Navigation — Community — Other

Editing

Add Person

• This small collection of features are found only while adding a person profile.

• See also:
  • Add Person Choreography describes the process of adding a person profile as a relative from an existing profile. It also contains, in its final section, a listing of the full complement of  WBE Features to set for Add Person Process.

Add Person Redesign

Enabling this feature introduces a redesigned Add Person page for the convenience of WikiTree's more advanced members; it displays the "Text with Sources" box all the way through the process, which has become one screen shorter. It also plays nicely with Rob Pavey's WikiTree Sourcer extension.

Advanced members tend to have been through the profile creation process many times and are ready to add citations in their first steps. They tend to need less guidance and more of an opportunity to use the WikiTree toolkit to get the job done and move on to the next.

This feature has seven options:

• Add additional fields (Prefix, Nicknames, Other Last Names, and Suffix). Once again, the advanced users are ready to fill in those fields, or not, at initial data entry. The browser extensions, WikiTree Sourcer and WikiTree BEE, can fill in those fields if it has gleaned the information from a record and has its rules set to discern them.
• Shorten some boxes. This option adjusts the data input fields to reflect the expected maximum length of that data type. Prefix, suffix, sex at birth, and dates are represented by shortened input fields. Note: When enabled, this option also applies to the data fields in the Edit Profile screen.
• Add a category picker (keyboard shortcut k). Advanced users may wish to include categories when creating a new profile. A category picker is immediately above the Biography. As you enter a text string, the category picker will show you available categories from which you may select. (See below.)
• Remove source hints. More advanced users may wish to hide the new WikiTree section that is intended to guide new users who are, as yet, unfamiliar with creating sources.
• Add a Research Notes section. (In Advanced Mode.)
• Show minimal tabbing toggle. Makes tab key skip less common input fields. Note: When enabled, this option also applies to the data fields in the Edit Profile screen.
• Get full Find a Grave citation. If your sources include a minimal reference to a Find a Grave memorial, this will fetch the full citation from Find a Grave for you to use instead.

Category Picker

• When using the Advanced Sourcing mode, your selection will appear at the top of the field Text with Source(s).

• In Basic Sourcing mode (with separated Biography and Sources fields), it will be inserted in the Sources field, in order to prevent duplication of the Biography headline. After creating the profile from there, the category will be automatically moved to the top of the biography, once the profile has reached edit mode. It will also add a pre-filled summary "Moving Categories" in this case.

Source Hints

WikiTree introduced Source Hints as a component of the Add Person process in the new design. Experience guides us to have this information handy during WikiTree's fairly steep learning curve. If you haven't started using Rob Pavey's WikiTree Sourcer extension yet, we encourage you to begin there. When you have learned techniques and developed confidence in your abilities to provide good source citations, you will probably want to take off the 'training wheels' and get on with the job. The Add Person Redesign feature's fourth option lets you remove that source hints component.

Add a Research Notes section when adding a new person.

Enable this option if you intend for all of the profiles that you create to have a Research Notes section. This will save you a few keystrokes.

Dates and Locations on New Profile Page

When this feature is enabled, creating a profile for a person as a family member of an another, you will see the starting person's birth and death dates and locations along with their name at the top of the page, in case you need a reminder of place names or are estimating a birthdate when you are adding data to the new profile.

This feature has an option to "Add links to copy locations into location fields" that places a button beside the starting person's birthplace and deathplace so that you can transfer that location information into the birthplace and/or deathplace field(s) of the new person's data. This can be convenient when you are entering family members who were born and/or died in the same place.

This feature has an option: "Add correct Welsh patronymic as the last name at birth". If you are in need of this service, please select the option toggle. Implementation of other culture-specific patronymic naming rules is not imminent. Here is the reference for the Welsh patronymic naming rules that were implemented.^[5]

Gender Predictor

Enable this feature to set the gender on a new profile page based on the name and its gender frequency in the WikiTree database.

Send to Merge

Enable this feature to add a SEND TO MERGE button, during the Add Person process, when the suggestion buttons appear saying "SET AS ...", the new SEND TO MERGE button takes the data from the form (data fields, biography, and sources) and sends it to a MergeEdit page.

On the MergeEdit page, you can choose work your way through each of the data fields to determine whether to keep the existing values or to update them. You will also have an opportunity to copy and paste content from the Biography and Sources sections.

CAUTION: Please exercise care. You are about to modify an existing profile by merging in data fields, biography content, and sources.

Suggested Matches Filters

Enable this feature to add location, name, date, and text filters to the Possible Matches Found list that is in the final step in the new Add Person process.

The goal of this step is to help prevent duplicates before they happen. This tool will help you to determine whether the person you are about to add is already in the system. Remediating duplicates is taxing on the WikiTree system, so please try to avoid creating them.

Highlight and Sort
In this example, we tried to create a new profile for Marie Curie, born 1867 in Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland and died in 1934. The Highlight and Sort option has found the real Maria Curie for us. The real Maria Curie's profile gives her birthplace as "Warszawa, Warszawskie, Polska", which is not matching with "Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland". However, it found the birth and death year matches, and it detected that the birth place "Poland" matches with the local name "Polska".  

Search Filters
These search filters allow you to narrow down the list of matches based on refinement criteria described here.

1. Your 1st click on a filter button refines the search criteria a little.
2. Your 2nd click refines the search criteria even further.
3. Your 3rd click on any of the buttons removes the applied filter, restoring the original list of suggested matches.

Location:

• 1st click: Same country. Exclude individuals based on their country of birth or their family members' birth country. This applies if the new person and the suggested matches have different countries of birth.
• 2nd click: Same place. Further refine the filter to only include individuals born in the same place with the same name within the same country.

Name:

• 1st click: Middle name. Filter based on the middle name status. If the new person has 'no middle name' selected, exclude individuals with a middle name. If 'no middle name' is not selected and the new person has a different middle name, exclude those individuals as well.
• 2nd click: Given and family names. Narrow the filter to exclude individuals with different given or family names.

Date:

• 1st click: Birth year is +/-2 years. Exclude individuals born 2 years or more before or after the new person.
• 2nd click: Same birth year. Further refine the filter to only include individuals born in the same year as the new person.

Also, if a suggested match lacks location details but their family members have such information, the system will automatically include and display the family members' locations alongside the suggested match, providing you with a more complete picture of the suggested matches, considering both individual and family-related location data.

In this example, we can see that there is already a WikiTree profile for Albert Einstein, and there seems to also be a second profile for Albert Einstein. (Which, as it happens, has already been flagged for a merge. Early detection of duplicates, in action.)

Syntax Help for Text Filter:

• Multiple words (e.g. wales 1901) → rows containing both “wales” and “1901”.
• OR / || (e.g. wales OR 1901 or wales || 1901) → rows containing “wales” or “1901”.
• Quoted phrases (e.g. "New South") → match the exact substring “new south”.
• Negation ! (e.g. !"New South" or !1901) → hide any row containing that phrase or number.
• Birth‐only (e.g. b<1902 or birth>1850) → match rows whose birth‐year is <1902 or >1850.
• Death‐only (e.g. d<1900 or death>1950) → match rows whose death‐year is <1900 or >1950.
• Generic year (e.g. <1900 or >1850) → match if any four‐digit year (in Birth or Death) * satisfies that comparison.
• Combine these in clauses with OR (or ||) to create alternate clauses. Negations always apply globally.

There is an option to save default text. If you're only interested in people born in England, for example, you can save 'England', and only people with England in their data will be shown when the suggestions appear (others will be quickly hidden).

Verify ID

Enable this feature to preview some details and ensure the correct ID is entered when adding a person by their WikiTree ID.

Sometimes, you need to attach a family member to someone by using their ID as this person already has a WikiTree profile. You may paste or type the ID into the box... But what if you type or paste the wrong ID by mistake? Trouble. Now, when you put an ID in the box, you will see the name and dates of the person whose ID you've added. You can take a quick glance at this just to make sure it's the right person.

Bio Check

Enable this feature to examine the profile biography for sources and style issues as you Add or Edit a profile. This feature will also add a Bio Check button for your Watchlist. Click the ? icon on the Bio Check results for more information. The checks and reports for sources, required sections, and style issues are the same as those in the Bio Check app, described in detail in the Bio Check Help. The results will be updated periodically, and whenever you move the mouse over the Save Draft or Add Person button.

When you edit a profile, the Bio Check results are after the Save Draft button:

When you add a profile, the Bio Check results are after the Sources box:

"Bio Check" with Kay Knight

• Kay Knight describes Bio Check in this YouTube video.

Category Management

When enabled, this feature will

• add links, at the bottom of a category listing, depending on the options that have been selected.
  • [batch categorize] — Leads to a pre-filled edit view, also reachable via keyboard shortcut k
  • [delete]
  • [rename]
  • [copy & rename]

• add [batch categorize] link at the top of search results (currently not in surname listings).

• add small links in the category section. Lead to a pre-filled edit view, like batch categorize.
  • (–) — delete the previously-named category from this profile
  • (±) — replace the previously-named category
  • (+) — add a category to this profile (at end of category list, keyboard shortcut k)

Categorize with Care
The Category Management tools offered by this WBE feature should be exercised with care. These tools are intended for advanced users. If you are experienced and comfortable editing categories by hand, then you will appreciate these tools. — If you are not familiar, comfortable, and experienced with categories, then please err on the side of caution. (You can always ask for advice on G2G and on Discord.)

[batch categorize]
[batch categorize] is available on Category pages, on search results pages and, optionally, on WikiTree+ search results. When selected, it will add check-boxes beside all of the listed profiles, so you can select which profiles should be used for batch categorization.

• On Category pages, if adding or moving categories is selected, enter the destination category.
• In search results, only adding categories is possible.
• Push the now-visible "cat-a-lot" button to cause each and every one of the checked profiles to open (in a new tab) in edit mode with the selected operation already performed, a filled-in summary, and an enabled save button, ready to be clicked or triggered via keyboard shortcut S (for save).
• You now have to save each profile so that the category changes can be recorded by WikiTree. Note: Make sure you always leave two seconds between two saving operations, else you might end up blocked by WikiTree.

[delete] and [rename]
Use [delete] and [rename] to automatically insert Delete Category or Rename Category into the category and save it to be processed by EditBot. Optionally, they also insert <nowiki>, in order to disable the category until it's deleted. Like this it already doesn't show up in the parent category anymore.

[rename] and [copy & rename]
Both [rename] and [copy & rename] will ask for the name of the new category, which will be opened in a new tab and populated with the content of the current one. [copy & rename] doesn't invoke any EditBot actions.

enable category change in profile
When this option is enabled, the category section of the profile view, (–) will remove the category from the profile, (±) will allow you to change the category to another one, and the final (+) will allow you to add another category. These also lead to a pre-filled edit view, like batch categorize.

The text box for the target category as well as the one to add a category to an individual profile suggest auto-complete matches and are reachable with the shortcut K (like the traditional category picker when editing a profile).

add missing categories via Cemetery Report and Partial Cemeteries
On cemetery reports (the ones linked from CategoryInfoBox Cemetery) and partial cemetery reports (example) it will also show "(add)" links on profiles that link to a memorial on the cemetery, but are not in the category of the cemetery.

add profile directly from category
When this option is enabled, an ADD PROFILE button is added to the category header, which leads to a dialog where you can enter a profile ID or URL.

• "A Tour of WikiTree BEE w/Flo Straub" with Greg Clarke
  

• • Flo Straub demonstrates WBE Category Management feature, starting at 34:00 minutes.

See also:  Help:WikiTree Plus

Change Summary Options

Enable this feature so that you can add your own change summary phrases to the standard set.

• Preview There are options to apply change summary options on space pages and category pages. There are now three different lists of options - one for each type of page. Initially, your previously stored profile options will be shown on the profile edit page and the space edit page. Unneeded options can then be deleted from each page.
• Note: There was previously (WBE v1.27) an option to display the box with the save buttons and summary options in the right-hand column (sidebar) next to the editor.

• • Warning: These items are only stored in the browser's cache and to keep them long term you should use the Back Up Data button in case you clear your cache. See Settings.

Childless

Note: Formerly named "Unnamed Infant"   When this feature is enabled, WBE recognizes those who died young (based on birth and death date), and it also recognizes profiles without attached spouses and children. Choose one or more of these options:

• set the First Name and Preferred Name to 'Unnamed Infant'.
• add a 'Died Young' sticker (optional).
• automatically set 'No spouses' and 'No children' boxes for children who died before 13 years of age.
• automatically prompt to set the 'No spouses' and 'No children' boxes.

If a profile is over six months old and the person has no spouses or children, WBE can suggest checking 'No spouses' and 'No children' boxes.

Copy Bio Changes

Enable this feature to add Copy buttons to the profile's Change Details page.

The Change Details page shows you the differences between a) how the profile was before the recorded change (on the left), and b) how the profile is after the change (on the right). It uses colored highlighting to distinguish added, deleted, and changed text.

Sometimes, maybe having just used AutoBio or AGC, you may want some things to revert to the way they were, but you're not sure that you want to wind back all the changes. You can visit the Change Details page, find the edit that you want to recover from, and select the Copy button. Then you can switch to edit mode and paste that content where you need it.

Note: Screenshot forthcoming. The person who asked for this knows how to use it.

Date Fixer

Enabling this feature provides a robust way to handle dates in different formats and languages, correct common typos, and standardize dates to a common format, improving data consistency and user experience.

• When you enter (or paste) a mixed numeric/alpha value into the date field, the software will scan for and correct typos, converting "1 Avr 1960" to "1 Apr 1960", for example, and removing double hyphens and extra spaces. WBE accepts English, French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Slovenian, Italian, and Swedish month names. WBE also accepts extra spaces, special characters, extra hyphens and dashes. WBE even tries to correct for typos in the entry. So, if the text and numeric characters you entered can be interpreted as a date, WBE will make its best effort to do so.
• The feature has an option to convert dates from DD-MM-YYYY format(s) into the standard 'DD Mon YYYY' format. With this option enabled, after you enter (or paste) a numeric value into a date field, the software will convert DD/MM/YYY, DD-MM-YYYY, or DD.MM.YYYY to DD Mon YYYY.
• Date Fixer can also interpret locations that accompany dates, like "12 Dec 1927 in New York" or "1723<tab>Toronto". It will then put the location in the corresponding location field.

• • <tab> represents the keyboard Tab character as it might occur in a string that is copied from two columns of a table, for example.

Note: This feature applies while

• • adding a new person
  • editing a person profile.
  • editing a free-space page
  • uploading an image

WikiTree date fields (on forms) normally accept only a small variety of input date formats. (See Help:Date Fields.)

• MM-DD-YYYY (e.g. 12-11-2023)

• • Normally, MM-DD-YYYY is WikiTree's accepted numeric date format. The DD-MM-YYYY is the convention used outside of the United States. One option of this feature then, accepts non-US date entry and converts it to DD Mon YYYY. (e.g. "12-11-2023" becomes "12 Nov 2023".

• Month DD, YYYY (e.g. December 11, 2023)
• Mon DD YYYY (e.g. Dec 11 2023)
• Mon. DD, YYYY (e.g. Dec. 11, 2023)
• DD Month YYYY (e.g. 11 December 2023)
• DD Mon YYYY (e.g. 11 Dec 2023)
• Month YYYY (e.g. December 2023)
• YYYY (e.g. 2023)
• YYYY-MM-DD (e.g. 2023-12-11)

• Here is what Date Fixer does:

• Checks the input date against a series of valid date patterns. If the date matches one of these patterns, it's considered valid and returned as is. If the date doesn't match any of the patterns but matches certain other patterns, the date is reformatted into a DD Mon YYYY format.
• Reads a date string and normalizes it by performing several replacements. These include replacing multiple spaces with a single space, removing special characters, replacing multiple hyphens with a single hyphen, replacing multiple slashes with a single slash, and ensuring spaces exist between digits and alphabetical characters.
• Interprets non-English month names, employing a comprehensive mapping of month names to their English equivalents, covering multiple languages including French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Slovenian, Italian, and Swedish.
• Tries to correct typos in the month names. It uses the Fuse.js library for fuzzy searching and typo correction. If a match is found within a certain similarity threshold, the typo is corrected.

Dates are stored in the database as an eight-digit number (e.g. 18690414), but when you go to the edit page, they're displayed in this kind of format: '14 Apr 1869'. One needs to ensure that dates are entered in an acceptable/accepted format. After that, the system converts them into YYYYMMDD date format.

Edit Profile

This small collection of features is available only while editing a person profile page.

Auto Bio

When this feature is enabled, the Edit Toolbar will contain an Auto Bio button that creates an automated biography from existing data in the form, text editor, and database. Find the Auto Bio button under 'Biography' in the toolbar above the biography editor (see below for more details).

Auto Bio is designed to transform a simple biography that may be just a small collection of simple sentences and a list of sources and turn it into a biographical narrative with inline citations. The more clear citations you include in the biography, the better the result. Auto Bio has lots of options to allow you to fine tune the result, making it more or less verbose, deciding which family members are listed and what details are included about them. It manages date formats, location names, punctuation, and a host of other details.

Note: v2.9.2.0 introduced an "Improve with AI" button. For further information, see Using 'Improve with AI'

There are many options for the Auto Bio. Please click the WikiTree/WBE icon in the toolbar of your browser to see the WBE options and then go to Editing > Auto Bio > Show options.

Features (mostly optional):

• Add an {{Unsourced}} template if Bio Check judges the biography to have no sources.
• Automatically add categories (Location, Occupation, Needs Profiles Created, Unsourced)

• Automatically add Died Young sticker and optionally choose the accompanying image.
• Automatically add One Name Study stickers.
• Automatically fetch a full citation for a Find A Grave page if the profile has a Find A Grave memorial number without a citation.
• Interpret census tables and citations, converting them into a narrative with inline citations.
• Customize wording options, such as 'died' or 'passed away', date format, and sentence structure.
• Fix locations in the form fields.
  • Change 'USA' to 'United States'; OK to Oklahoma; or UK to United Kingdom.
  • Remove 'United Kingdom' from locations before 1801 or 'United States' from Louisiana before '1812-04-30' (for example) (or add these when they're missing).
  • Change country names from English to their native name (e.g. Germany to Deutschland).
• Timeline: A table of events in the life of the profile person and their family with source citations where available.
• Use only the South Africa Project style.

Caution: Starting with a biography that has plenty of narrative text requires a little more forethought and preparation. You are hoping for the best, but what will happen to all of your carefully crafted paragraphs, and your notes? And where did all those categories come from? You'll quickly learn which option settings you prefer, which starter biographies will benefit the most, and which ones require a bit too much cleanup afterwards.

How to use Auto Bio

1. Hover over the Biography heading below the Edit Toolbar to find the Auto Bio button.

2. Click the Auto Bio button. It may take a short while to generate the bio. (The code is long and complicated, and it may need to fetch data from outside sources like Find a Grave or WikiTree+, which can take time.)

3. The newly-generated bio is placed at the top of the profile, followed by a set of instructions, and then the old bio.

• <!--
• --- WikiTree Browser Extension Auto Bio ---
• NEXT:
• 1. Edit the new biography (above), checking the output carefully and adding any useful information which Auto Bio may have missed from the old biography.
• 2. Delete this message and the old biography (below) by clicking the 'Delete Old Bio' button (above).
• Thank you.
• -->

Caution: Please don't just hit the Auto Bio button and do a full save. If you do that, you'll be saving the new bio, the message, and the old bio. No-one wants that.

4. Carefully consider the contents of the newly-generated biography to determine whether it is an improvement on the old biography.

5. Carefully consider the contents of the old biography. Move any useful text from the old biography, that is not already included in the generated biography, and insert it in the right place in the generated biography.

6. After you've edited the new biography, merged in useful information from the old biography, and you're happy with the result, click the 'Delete Old Bio' button.

Notes:

1. If you're cleaning up profiles that were created through the import of a GEDCOM file, use the Automatic GEDCOM Cleanup (AGC) button (see below).

2. Every effort is made to iron out any bugs in the Auto Bio, but if you do come across one, please report it by clicking the 'Report Bug' button.

Auto Categories

Enable this feature to add an Auto Categories button under 'Categories' in the Editing Toolbar.

Click the "Auto Categories" button to automatically add appropriate categories to the profile, based on all the available data. It works in almost the same way as the category options in the Auto Bio (see above), but it only includes options to add location, occupation, and unsourced categories, and a Died Young sticker.

Auto Categories will also re-arrange the categories, research note boxes, and project boxes according to the order dictated by WikiTree style guidelines:

• Categories
• Research Note boxes
• Project boxes

Automatic GEDCOM Cleanup (AGC)

Enable this feature to add an "AGC" button to the WikiTree Editing Toolbar.

The Automatic GEDCOM Cleanup (AGC) reformats a biography and updates the data fields in a profile that was created from a GEDCOM. It is considered best practice to use this tool immediately after importing the GEDCOM data, and before any other changes are made to the profile.

Note: Please do not make duplicate profiles in which to perform your work.

The AGC button only appears in the toolbar if AGC detects that the profile contains GEDCOM data. Press it to activate the transformation. Upon completion, the button will morph and if you press it again, it will undo the transformation.

See the WikiTree AGC page for details on how to use AGC and its settings.

Edit Profile Redesign

When you enable this feature, you gain control of the Family section while you are in Edit Profile mode, with a button that will show/hide the Family section on demand. Additionally, you can set an option so that the Family section will be hidden whenever you edit a profile.

When you enable this feature, you gain control of the Photo Column while you are in Edit Profile mode, with a button that will show/hide the Photo Column on demand. Additionally, you can set an option so that the Photo Column will be hidden whenever you edit a profile. The net effect of hiding the Photo Column is that the editbox expands to fill the available space.

Formerly known as "Toggle Photo Column".

Family Dropdown

Enable this feature to add a dropdown box above the editor to easily copy family members' wikilinks.  

The dropdown contains a labelled list of the current profile person's closest relations, including parents, spouses, and children. Selecting 'Other' in the dropdown lets you input the WikiTree ID of any other person (perhaps a grandmother, for example) to see their source citations. As a bonus, your own wikilink is also listed in the dropdown.

The dropdown can be opened with Access Key+y, if enabled. You can move up and down the list by holding the Shift key + the up arrow or down arrow keys.

When the Shareable Sources feature is enabled, the dropdown doubles up as the selector for that. Choosing a family member from the dropdown will display the sources from that person's profile for you to copy into the current biography where appropriate.  

There are two different kinds of buttons: Add and Copy. Which buttons appear depends on whether or not the Enhanced Editor is enabled.  

Enhanced Editor Off:

• Add to Sources: The source, preceded by an asterisk, is added at the bottom of the page.  
• Add Inline Citation: Place the cursor where you want the source added, and click.  

Enhanced Editor On:

• Add to Sources: As above.*  
• Copy Inline Citation: An inline citation will be added to your system's clipboard for you to paste into the bio.

* This should (without you seeing it) switch off the Enhanced Editor, paste the source, preceded by an asterisk, at the bottom of the page, and switch the Enhanced Editor back on.

Family Lists

Enable this feature to add new buttons to the Biography menu:

• Birth and Parent Details
• Death Details
• Sibling List
• Spouse and Child Details

Click a button to generate narrative text and/or a list of siblings and/or children.

Enhanced Editor On: You'll see a 'Copied ~' message as the text is copied to your system clipboard for you to paste where you need it.

Enhanced Editor Off: Place your cursor where you want your new content added, then click the button. The generated text will appear where you want it.    

Save Buttons Style Options

Enable this feature to change how the "Save", "Compare", and "Return" ("Delete Draft") buttons/links look on profile and space edit pages.

• Make the Compare and Return (Delete Draft) links look like buttons.
• Choose the size of these buttons
  • All buttons small
  • Only "Compare" and "Return" to be small
  • All buttons large.

Note: When comparing, the most recently saved version is compared to the most recently saved draft. To be sure that you are comparing all of your recent work, be sure to press the "SAVE DRAFT" button before pressing the "COMPARE DRAFT WITH SAVED INFORMATION" button.

Note: This feature has been restored in WBE v2.0.7.2.

Toggle Photo Column

Note: This feature was originally added in v2.0.9.1. It was updated and renamed in v2.1.2. Formerly "Toggle Photo Column", this feature has been updated with additional options to manage the Edit Profile page—hence, it has been renamed "Edit Profile Redesign", in harmony with the "Add Person Redesign" feature.

Editor Expander

Enable this option to add an Expand Editor button to the editor toolbar so that you can expand the editor text area.

Enhanced Editor Style

Add colors to the Enhanced Editor to help you distinguish the main text from references, etc.

See also: Firefox problems with the pop-up.

Family Status Sync

While this feature is enabled, when you click the 'No more siblings' box or the 'No more children' box to check or uncheck it, then all corresponding sibling/children status are also checked or unchecked.

Clicking 'No more siblings' on any profile will update each of their siblings' 'No more siblings' boxes, and also update the parents' 'No more children' box. Clicking a 'No more children' box will give you a box to ask if you want to update the spouse and all the children, too.

This works by getting the profile person's sibling/children data from the API and then finding which of them have the same parents (usually all, but not always). Then we load each page (one by one) in a hidden iframe, sync the checkbox, add a change summary, save, and close/remove the iframe.

Image Page Options

Enable this feature so that the image pages will offer a [Copy] button beside the sample image templates. You can also set the image's caption and label parameters to be the assigned image title.

Language Setting

This feature allows you to establish a default language context to determine the right form of location suggestions. By default, the default language will be updated automatically each time you select a different language on an Add Person page. You can modify this behavior in the settings.

Locations Helper

Enable this feature to Improve location suggestions by highlighting likely correct locations based on family members' locations and demoting likely incorrect locations based on dates.

(Preview): Experimental Location Suggestions

If there's a location suggestion with dates that don't match the relevant date on the form, it will be sent to the bottom of the list and highlighted in pink. Locations which match family members' locations will be highlighted in green and taken to the top of the list.

In this example, 'Fayette, Pennsylvania, United States' matched a family member's location (green):

Many 'Fayette' suggestions have been sent to the bottom of the list as the dates don't match this birthdate of 1820.

Options: Sometimes, there are issues with some of the locations in the dropdowns. These two options can help.

• Correct Locations: Make various corrections:
  • Automatically correct the names of US states before they joined the Union. e.g. 'Massachusetts Bay Colony' to 'Province of Massachusetts Bay'.
  • Remove the phrase 'Regional District' from Canadian locations.
  • Brisbane City → Brisbane
  • Durham, England → County Durham, England
  • Add the correct name of Germany for the time period
  • Add 'Steyning, Stogursey, Somerset, England'
  • Correct South African regional names based on the time period
• Add 'County' to US Locations: US Locations can be confusing without the word 'County' (or 'Parish' in Louisiana). This option fixes that.
• Use native names for locations: Country name in language of the country.

Make Radio Buttons De-selectable

When this feature is enabled, you can de-select radio buttons like data status options ('certain', 'uncertain', etc.). Without this feature, you can only select an alternative, not de-select all options.

Exceptions:

• Death Status cannot be de-selected, you can only select an alternative, so as to prevent accidentally discarding a person's death status.
• Middle Name status cannot be de-selected, you can only select an alternative.

Migration Category Helper

When enabled, this feature will automatically fill in {{CategoryInfoBox Migration}} when creating/editing new categories that match the naming convention of Migration Category Structure. Currently only some country-entity relationships are guessed correctly, for the others one has to manually delete the country or the entity from the template. Feel free to request additional countries by providing a page/list of valid entities for it to Florian Straub.

Starting with v1.15.1 this feature will also react when creating a category containing the word ship or a year with four digits in brackets. It will then assume that you're about to create a category for a ship and will insert some potential parent categories. False positives can't be excluded on the year pattern. Please reach out to  Florian Straub in case you have repeating problems with it.

Probably v1.16 will also insert CategoryInfoBox Migrant Ship if the category name contains the word "Arrived".

Scissors

Enable the Scissors feature, along with its ID, Link, and URL buttons, on all Category, Help, Project, Template, Changes, and Change details pages. Also adds a 'Reference' button to the Change Details page.

The old Scissors feature was a very popular feature on profile and free-space pages. The scissors icon represented the "Cut" side of Cut & Paste. The new WikiTree design has adopted a different symbol to represent the "Copy" side of Copy/Paste.

• Click on the name of the type of link you want and it will be copied into your system clipboard so that you can paste it in anywhere.

Alternatively, you can use your Access Keys to access the ID, Link, or URL values:

• • I: ID — copies the WikiTree ID of the current profile into the clipboard for pasting
  • L: Link — copies the WikiTree link for the current profile into the clipboard for pasting
  • U: URL — copies the URL of the current profile into the clipboard for pasting

There are three options that control the form of the link that will be copied:

• Profile Link: Remove Dates

• • Example: [[Wray-688|Vina Fay Wray]] vs. [[Wray-688|Vina Fay Wray (1907-2004)]]
  • Result: Vina Fay Wray vs. Vina Fay Wray (1907-2004)

• Category Link Format: [[:Category:X|X category]] (not [[:Category:X]])

• • Example: [[:Category:Notables|Notables category]] vs. [[:Category:Notables]]
  • Result: Notables category vs. Category:Notables

• Space Link Format:[[Space: X| X ]] vs. [[:Space: X]]

• • Example: [[Space: X| X ]] vs. [[:Space: X]]
  • Result: X vs. Space: X

Shareable Sources

Enable this feature to easily copy sources from another family member's profile to paste into the current profile. You can also easily see the whole biography to copy relevant parts from it.  

• On an Add Relative page, it appears at the bottom of the page.
• On the profile edit page, this connects to Family Dropdown.

When you create a new profile, the Shareable Sources feature presents a list of citations from the originating family member — the one to whom you're attaching the new profile person. The source citations of the originating person's profile are listed on the new profile page to easily click to add to the Sources box.

When you are editing an existing profile, use the Family Dropdown to select a close relative, or a profile that you specify, and the citations from that profile will be shown. (Selecting 'Me' will just copy a wikilink to your profile).

The dropdown can be opened with Access Key+y, if enabled. You can move up and down the list by holding the Shift key + the up arrow or down arrow keys.

Show Edits

Enable this feature to add a "SHOW EDITS" button, at the bottom of the Edit Box, so that you can see all of the differences between the saved version of a current profile (or Space page) and the edited version.

Space Drafts

Automatically saves local drafts of space pages in case of unexpected page closure.

When this feature is enabled, WBE will save a copy of a free-space page that you are editing if/when you leave the page without saving it. When you return to that same free-space page, your saved draft(s) will be available to you to check the differences between the system-stored version of the page and your local copy, at which point you may choose to replace the original text with your local copy.

Select Draft 1 to see a comparison of the saved space page and the locally-stored draft. You may choose to replace the existing text with the draft text, delete the draft, or simply exit the popup by clicking on the x in the top right corner or hitting the ESC key.

Note that the saved draft is stored in the browser's local storage. To help you manage your drafts, you can use the "Find>Drafts" menu item to see a list of locally-saved space drafts, and to delete them as needed.

Sticky Toolbar

Enable this feature to ensure that the WikiTree Editing Toolbar remains on the screen and doesn't scroll out of sight.

Note: This screenshots will be updated soon-ish.

Wikitable Wizard

This feature helps you to create and edit wikitables. Go to the editor toolbar: Biography > Wikitable Wizard to open the editor.

You can create a new table or edit an existing table or a family census list (created by Sourcer). Just copy the table/list and hit the 'Paste Table or List' button.  

You can paste the contents of your recently copied clipboard.

• It will read a wikitable, so people who are afraid of editing tables can paste one in, edit it, and then generate a new version.
• It will also accept a census list that Sourcer produces, and turn that list into a table.
• it will also accept a regular Excel or Sheets table
• It will also accept a delimited-data representation of a table, like this:

• • • A,B,C,D,E
    • F,G,H,I,J
    • K,M,N,O,P
    • Q,R,S,T,U
    • V,W,X,Y,Z
  • where the delimiter can be a comma (,), a tab, or four spaces.

In the following screenshot, we have pasted in the CSV alphabetic lists, added a caption, and specified the details of the cell padding and table border.

For anyone reading this text who happens to also have the Table Filters and Sorting feature enabled, the columns will be sortable whether the Sortable option has been enabled or not. A wikitable that has been marked as Sortable will always be presented with sorting capability enabled. A wikitable that has not been marked as Sortable will only be presented with sorting enabled when WBE's Table Filters and Sorting feature is enabled.

Other points to note:

• The rows and columns are draggable/moveable.
• Right-clicking in a cell will give you a menu of actions: Copy, Paste, Delete Row, Delete Column, Insert Row Above, Insert Row Below, Insert Column Left, Insert Column Right, Merge Right, and Merge Down.
• The 'sortable' class will make the table sortable.
• The 'wikitable' class will make the table look like a wikitable. It will also make it available to the WBE's Table Filters and Sorting feature.

Known issue: The effect when moving a column looks strange on Chrome on a Mac. (Any developers with a Mac are welcome to help us fix this issue.)

WikiTree+ Edit Helper

Enable this feature to access multiple editing features that will be found in a special menu below the standard WikiTree Edit Toolbar.

The menu adapts itself to profiles, category pages, template pages, and other pages, offering slightly different tools to suit each purpose.

• On profile pages: Sources, Templates, Categories, Biography, and Misc.
• On category pages: Templates, CIB, Categories, Content, EDITBOT, and Misc.
• On free-space pages: Templates, Categories, Content, and Misc.
• On template pages: Templates and Misc.
• On other pages: Templates, Categories, Content, and Misc.

The Sources menu contains a Paste Sources tool. This tool is mostly for formatting Find a Grave citations.  

The Categories menu group

The WikiTree+ Edit Helper can be especially helpful when you are adding categories, notably those for locations and cemeteries.

Category Finder

See also: Category Finder Pins

The Templates menu group

The WikiTree+ Edit Helper can be especially helpful when you are adding project boxes, research notes, stickers, and any other kind of template to a WikiTree profile.

Template Finder

Edit Template

When you enter a template, or when you choose to edit a template, the WikiTree+ Edit helper provides a convenient interface to edit the individual fields. In this example, the Puritan Great Migration Project template accepts several parameters. (See WikiTree+ Edit Template for details.)

The Biography menu contains these features:

• Auto Bio feature takes a basic profile with even a few sources listed or as inline citations, and it turns it into a well-crafted biography with citations and additional sources.

• Automated Cleanup
  • performs rudimentary cleanup of a messy file.
  • corrects some commonly misspelled place names in location fields.
  • asks you to verify changes before they occur.  
• Family Lists feature offers three text generators borrowed from Auto Bio
  • 'Birth and Parent Details' — generates a narrative sentence
  • 'Sibling List' — generates a list
  • 'Spouse and Child Details' — generates a list

The Misc menu includes a listing of WikiTree Apps and Help.

See the help page of the former WikiTree+ extension for more details.

Global — Profile — Editing — Navigation — Community — Other

Navigation

AKA Name Links

Enable this feature to add links to surname index pages from the "aka" names on a profile page.

On: The other last names have links to the surname index page.

Off: Only last name at birth and current last name have links to the surname index page.

Category Finder Pins

With this feature enabled, the results of a Category Finder search (edit toolbar) will each have an embeded link. These links allow you to preview the corresponding category page, affording you an opportunity to ensure that the correct category is selected.

Whether or not you have enabled previews on category page links, hovering over these links should provide a preview of the corresponding category.

We should point out that there are two category finders, and while you may be a fan of the one that you know, you might grow fond of the other one.

• There is a Category Finder that is part of the standard WikiTree Edit Toolbar. Beside the "C" (for Citation) button, to the left, there is this button:

When you click on it, a text completion box appears below and you can just type in a few characters to begin seeing matches for your category. This feature adds Category Finder pins to this Category Finder.

WikiTree+ Category Finder Pins

• There is a second Category Finder that is part of the WikiTree+ Edit Helper feature. When that feature is enabled, an extra set of menus appears below the standard WikiTree Edit Toolbar. One of them is labelled "Categories", and under that menu is the option "Add Any Category" which then presents a convenient popup window with search filter box and button to make your selection. In the accompanying example, the user has hovered over the Category Pin for "Paris, France" and a popup preview of the Category is presented for review. (Other aspects of WikiTree+ Edit Helper are discussed elsewhere.)

WikiTree+ Template Finder Pins

• There is a Template Finder that is part of the WikiTree+ Edit Helper feature. When that feature is enabled, an extra set of menus appears below the standard WikiTree Edit Toolbar. One of them is labelled "Templates", and under that menu is the option "Add Any Template" which then presents a convenient popup window with search filter box and button to make your selection. In the accompanying example, the user has hovered over the Template Pin for "Adopted Child" and a popup preview of the Template is presented for review.

Find Menu

CC7 Changes

Enable this feature to add CC7 Changes to the Find menu.

NOTICE: WBE should ask you to Login to the App Server (if you are not already) so that it can use your login credentials to request information about any profiles in your CC7 list who are living non-members and for which you are on the Trusted List and/or are a Profile Manager.   The first time that you click the CC7 Changes button in the Find menu, WBE will collect a baseline list of IDs from your current CC7. Subsequently, when you click CC7 Changes it will use that list to compare against your most recent CC7, generating a list of differences.

Click the CC7 Changes button in the Find menu to see additions to and removals from your CC7 since the last time you clicked the CC7 Changes button.  

Draft List

When you enable this feature, the extension will build and thenceforward maintain a list of your uncommitted profile drafts and locally-saved space drafts. This feature adds a Drafts button to the Find menu to show your uncommitted drafts.

• Press Find->Drafts to display your list of uncommitted drafts in a small window.

Note: This extension has no knowledge or access to any drafts created before this feature was activated.

Submenus

This feature adds submenus under Find (« Apps, « Categories, « Projects) and under Help ( « Help).

Note: This screenshot will be updated soon-ish.

For example, an Apps submenu in the Find pull-down menu when you hover your mouse over « Apps. As you can see, there are also submenus on « Categories and « Projects.

Random Profile

Enable this feature to add a Random Profile link and a Random Space Page link to the Find menu.

Select the "Constrain to Watchlist" option to limit the selection criteria.

Have you ever wanted to jump to a random profile? Now, you can.

• Left-click (standard click on Macs) to get any random profile.

• Right-click (control-click on Macs) on Random Profile to:
  • specify a location constraint for your random person. This location is then used to limit the selection of all Random Profile calls until it is changed. Use double quotation marks for locations with a space in them or to specify certain text, like a city and a country (e.g. "City, Country").
  • specify a Watchlist constraint

My Menu

Enable this feature to create a custom menu for quick access to your most-used links.

You can create your own custom menu, populated with your choice of WikiTree menu item links and/or links to sites that you specify.

Warning: These items are only stored in the browser's cache; and, to keep them long term you should use the Back Up Data button in case you clear your cache. See Settings.

• Click the gear icon beside 'My Menu' heading to access the settings, where you can start selecting links to include in 'My Menu'.
• Click any WikiTree menu link to copy it under the "My Menu" column heading (see the top right of settings panel).

• To add any link, simply enter its URI and its link text
• To remove something from under "My Menu" column heading, just click on it.
• Re-order the links by dragging them up or down the list.
• Save and close the My Menu settings panel by clicking the 'x' in the top-right.

Preview Pages

With this feature enabled, you'll see a preview of what's at the end of a link when you hover over the link, similar in concept to source previews, but slightly different in practice. The popup display will be scrollable if the content is long enough.

Segment Preview

When you write a URI, sometimes you use a segment, like '...#Sources' or '...#Research_Notes', to refer to a specific section within a target profile, or to a named section within a Space page. WBE supports having the Page Preview scan to the Segment ID, so that you can get to the part that the author intended for you to see. This feature will save you from having to open a new tab to get to the right place in the target document.

Page Types

This feature is designed to work with different kinds of WikiTree pages. Here are some examples:

• Category: Category:WikiTree Tools and Apps
• Free-space: Space:Snap_and_Me_and_the_Marshalls
• Help: Help:Writing Help Pages
• Project: Project:WikiTree Apps
• Special: Special:Honor_Code
• Template: Template:French and Indian War pages

For explanations of the types of WikiTree pages and how to use them, see these Help topics: Help:Categorization, Help:Free-Space Profile, Help:Writing Help Pages, Help:Project FAQ, and Help:Template Guidelines.

See also: Category Finder Pins

Preview Sources

Enable this feature to display a popup containing the full text of a source while hovering over inline references. There may be a slight delay, less than a second, when you move your mouse over the reference before the popup arrives. You can also mouse into the source box and copy text or even follow a link. (There are no previews from within previews.) The popup will disappear when you move your mouse away.

Redirect External Links

With this feature enabled,

• old Ancestry link formats will be redirected to the new link format.
• links to any Ancestry site will be redirected to your selected Ancestry domain.
• links to any Find My Past site will be redirected to your selected Find My Past domain.

There are now over 1 million WikiTree members from all over the world, many of whom have contributed to WikiTree profiles with links to Ancestry and Find My Past resources. Depending on each person's membership, they may have posted from "ancestry.com" or from "ancestry.ca" or "ancestry.com.au", etc. Meanwhile, you may have your subscription with "ancestry.co.uk" or even "ancestrylibraryedition.co.uk". Some of the links in those older profiles may also be dead.

What Links Here

• This feature adds a 'What Links Here' button to the Find menu.

• • Click to visit the What Links Here page.
  • Right-click to copy wiki markdown for links to the page.

The report generated by the 'What Links Here' button presents a listing of all the WikiTree IDs of all pages that are linked to the current WikiTree page. Among these you may see a '(redirect page)' mentioned for pages that have been previously merged into the current page and now require a redirect.

In the accompanying example, you can see that there have been early, multiple, and disjoint attempts to replicate Hilton-406, such that there are now five other Hilton IDs that will lead back to Hilton-406.

When you select the "What Links Here Tables" button, a more comprehensive report is presented in a pop-up window.

• This feature also includes an option to add a 'What Links Here' section to profiles and edit pages.

The What Links Here section appears between the Biography and Comments sections. Click the button to expand the contents.

The 'What Links Here' section includes a list of WikiTree profiles and other pages that have a link to the current WikiTree page, regardless of whether they are profiles (sorted by last name), Space pages, or even Help pages. (Redirect pages are not listed here, use the Find->What Links Here menu.)

Global — Profile — Editing — Navigation — Community — Other

Community

Confirm Thank Yous

Enable this feature to add a confirmation dialog to 'Thank you' links in case you hit one by mistake.

G2G Options

Enable this feature and its options to add some usability features to your G2G experience.

• Checkmarks indicating visited questions
• Plus signs highlighting favorited questions
• A 'WikiTree ID Go' box
• More tab buttons: Recent Activity, My Activity, + (Favorited)
• Copy ID / URL / Question links (Scissors)
• 'Back to Top' links at the bottom of each G2G page
• Filter: Checkboxes to hide questions in certain categories
• Big Comment and Reply buttons
• Page links (Page: [1], [2], [3]) at the top of a page
• Turn WikiTree IDs into links to the profiles

• • When you enter a WikiTree ID into a G2G post, it will be converted into a link to the profile.

• Make links to answers and comments show preview when shared on Discord

• • When you copy a link to an answer or a comment, the URL is modified so that when you include it into a Discord or Facebook post, it will generate a preview of the answer or comment

• Remove ads. Advertisements, that might otherwise appear on G2G pages, can be removed.

Hide My Contributions

Enable this feature to remember your preference to hide or show your contributions on Activity Feed pages. The setting can be changed on the options page, or simply by clicking the 'hide/show my contributions' link on the Activity Feed pages.

Sort Badges

Enable this feature to add new buttons to manage your Club 100/1000 badges.

On your own profile page, when you click on "[hide Club badges]", the software will take you to the Badges page, check all the 'hide from profile' boxes for Club badges, and save the page.

On your Badges page, there are two new buttons:

• "HIDE CLUB BADGES": the software will check all the 'hide from profile' boxes for Club badges, and save the page.
• "MOVE CLUB BADGES DOWN": the software will move all of your Club badges to the end of the list of badges.

Global — Profile — Editing — Navigation — Community — Other

Other

Anniversaries Table

Enable this feature to transform the Family Anniversaries list into a sortable table with filter.

There are two options:

• Show the table automatically (as opposed to just putting a button there to produce the table)
• Pagination (to show the table 10, 25, or 50 rows at a time). There is also a choice to show all.

Features of the table:

• Readability
• Event colour coding
• Last Name at Birth is included where applicable
• A filter box
• Sortable columns
• Distance and Relationship columns (see Note)

• Select the Switch Format button to toggle between tabular and list presentation.
• Choose how many entries to show.
• Click on a column heading to sort the table on that column.
• Enter any text string in the Filter box.

Note: The data for the Distance and Relationship columns comes from the indexedDB(s) where they are stored in the Distance and Relationship feature when you visit a profile. If you haven't visited a profile since you've been using WBE, there will be no data for that person.

Category Filters

Enable this feature to add filter buttons to Category pages (in the Person Profiles heading).

• Predefined Filters: On Category Pages, you can now limit the listed person profiles with predefined filter buttons to:
  • Show only Unconnected profiles.
    • Press again to show only Connected profiles.
    • Press a third time to disable the filter.
  • Show Orphaned profiles.
  • Show profiles Missing a Parent.
  • Show profiles that share DNA test results with a specified user.

• Advanced Text Filters: Alongside the predefined filter buttons, two advanced text filters has been added to the Category Pages. One filter can be used to include key words, and the other can be used to exclude keywords. These advanced filter supports:
  • Year-based Filtering: Use '<', '>', and '=' followed by a year (e.g., <1900, >1950, =2000) to sort profiles by their birth years.
  • OR Logic: Combine multiple filters using the pipe '|' symbol. For example, USA|UK will filter profiles containing either "USA" or "UK".

• and — Selects profiles that match all of the selected Filters, including the text filter
• or — Selects profiles that match any of the selected Filters, including the text filter
• only — Only one filter applies at any one time—most recently selected clears any other.

Note: There are some limitations that apply for Private and Unlisted profiles. Private profiles belong to members who choose to keep their profile Private. Unlisted profiles are profiles of Living people who are not members, whose profiles are managed by someone else, and those profiles are required by WikiTree and by Law to remain Private.

• The only effective text searches to include private/unlisted pages are a) the string "Living" and b) a family name, or part of a family name. ("Smith" matches "Smith" and "Smithfield". )
• Normally, WBE would not be able to determine whether such a profile is Unconnected or Missing a Parent, which means that private/unlisted profiles will not be reported when you use any of the predefined filters.  
• However, if you login to the app server, then any profiles for which you happen to be the profile manager or on the Trusted List, will be included in the results of Unconnected and Missing Parent filters.

Category Table

Enable this feature to add a Table button to category pages with person profiles to generate a sortable and filterable table with the profiles shown on the page. This also includes a button to show only unconnected profiles.

Connection Finder Options

Adds features/options to the Connection Finder page.

• Detailed Table: Clicking the 'Table' button next to the 'Connection Finder' heading generates a detailed vertical table. This table contains information about all the people listed in the Connection Finder results and their relationships. Details for each person include Family Timeline and Family Group tables (click the buttons to see these). The color coding in this table signifies two things:
  • Colors in the relationship column change at each connection by marriage.
  • Colors in the birth date column signify 50-year periods.

• Downloadable Table: Once the table loads, a download button appears next to the 'Connection Finder' heading, allowing you to download the table as an Excel file.

• Branch Information: The extension now includes branch information in the header. A branch represents a unique bloodline in the connection chain, marked by marriage events. For instance, "George Harrison is 27 Degrees from Charles Darwin: 5 branches (8-4-8-6-2)" suggests the connection spans five unique branches, with the respective number of people in each branch.

• Text Relationship Explanation: The table footer provides a text-based explanation of the relationship between the two individuals (e.g., "Great-grandaunt's husband's niece's husband's 3rd cousin once removed").

• Surname Lists: The 'Surname summaries' button allows you to see surname lists related to the connection.

• Support for Heritage & Lineage Organizations Applications: For direct descendants/ancestors, an additional text box is provided to assist with applications to heritage and lineage organizations, such as the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Countdown

Enable this feature so that you can see live countdown timers on space pages. Perfect for project anniversaries, special events, and important dates.

<span class="wbe-countdown" style="display:none">Event Name @ 2026-07-04T15:00:00 EST</span>

Event Name @ 2026-07-04T15:00:00 EST

• Simple Format

<span class="wbe-countdown" style="display:none">Label @ Date</span>

• With Time and Timezone

<span class="wbe-countdown" style="display:none">Event @ 2026-07-04T15:00:00 EST</span>

• With Theme and Centering

<span class="wbe-countdown" style="display:none">Event | theme=gold | center @ 2026-07-04</span>

• Advanced Format

<span class="wbe-countdown" style="display:none" >target=2026-07-04T15:00:00 EST;label=Event Name;theme=red;complete=It's time!</span >

Parameters

• Date Formats

• • `2026-07-04` - Date only (midnight local time)
  • `2026-07-04T15:00:00` - Date with time (local time)
  • `2026-07-04T15:00:00 EST` - Date with timezone

• Themes

• • `red`, `blue`, `green`, `purple`, `gold`, `silver`, `rainbow`, `dark`, `minimal`

• Custom Colors

• • `color=white` - Text color
  • `bgcolor=#FF0000` - Background color

• Layout Options

• • `center` or `centre` - Centers the countdown on the page

• Other Options

• • `complete=Custom message` - Text shown when countdown reaches zero
  • `happening=Custom text` - Text shown while the event is in progress. You can include the placeholder `{event}` which will be replaced with the event label.

• Event Duration Options

• • `endDate=2026-07-05` - When the event ends (creates "happening now" phase)
  • `hideAfter=24h` or `hideAfter=7d` - Hide countdown after event ends (hours or days)

Examples

• Sandy's 1776 Project - Centered Gold Theme

<span class="wbe-countdown" style="display:none" >American Revolution • 250th Anniversary | theme=gold | center @ 2026-07-04</span >

American Revolution • 250th Anniversary | theme=gold | center @ 2026-07-04

• Basic Anniversary Countdown

<span class="wbe-countdown" style="display:none">American Revolution 250th Anniversary @ 2026-07-04</span>

American Revolution 250th Anniversary @ 2026-07-04

• Centered with Time

<span class="wbe-countdown" style="display:none" >Independence Day Ceremony | theme=gold | center @ 2026-07-04T14:00:00 EST</span >

Independence Day Ceremony | theme=gold | center @ 2026-07-04T14:00:00 EST

• Christmas Countdown

<span class="wbe-countdown" style="display:none">Christmas 2025 | theme=red @ 2025-12-25</span>

Christmas 2025 | theme=red @ 2025-12-25

• Centered with Custom Colors

<span class="wbe-countdown" style="display:none">2026 | color=white | bgcolor=#333 | centre @ 2026-01-01</span>

2026 | color=white | bgcolor=#333 | centre @ 2026-01-01

• Happening

<span class="wbe-countdown" style="display:none" >2025 | theme=blue | centre | endDate=2025-12-31 | hideAfter=24h | complete={event} is over. | happening={event} is in progress! @ 2025-01-01</span >

2025 | theme=blue | centre | endDate=2025-12-31 | hideAfter=24h | complete={event} is over. | happening={event} is in progress! @ 2025-01-01

<span class="wbe-countdown" style="display:none" >Conference 2026 | theme=blue | endDate=2026-03-17 | happening={event} is in progress! @ 2026-03-15</span >

<span class="wbe-countdown" style="display:none" >Anniversary | theme=gold | happening=Happy Anniversary! | endDate=2026-06-17 @ 2026-06-15</span >

• Complete

<span class="wbe-countdown" style="display:none" >20th Century | theme=blue | centre | endDate=1999-12-31 | complete={event} is over. | happening={event} is in progress! @ 1900-01-01</span >

20th Century | theme=blue | centre | endDate=1999-12-31 | complete={event} is over. | happening={event} is in progress! @ 1900-01-01

• Hidden After

<span class="wbe-countdown" style="display:none" >17th Century | theme=blue | centre | endDate=1699-12-31 | hideAfter=24h | complete={event} is over. | happening={event} is in progress! @ 1600-01-01</span >

17th Century | theme=blue | centre | endDate=1699-12-31 | hideAfter=24h | complete={event} is over. | happening={event} is in progress! @ 1600-01-01

DNA Connections Table

Enable this feature to add an ADD BIRTHPLACES button to the DNA Connections table page.

The are at least two ways to find the DNA Connections table. 1. Start with a surname Genealogy page, like the Hilton family in our example, and you will note that the WikiTree menu list reflects the Hilton name. Under the Hilton menu, in our example, you can choose DNA Connections. 2. Profile Menu > DNA > [Hilton] DNA (on the right at the top)

Note: These screenshots will be updated soon-ish.

Enumerate Image Detail

Enable this feature to sort and number the "In this image: ..." list of people/pages attached to an image. This is intended for use where there are many people/items in an image and one wants to make sure everything has been linked, such as a census record or a will. You can also copy the list to your clipboard with the convenient [COPY LIST] button.

Feed Helper

Feed Helper assists you by highlighting potential issues and interesting activity across WikiTree's various feeds. It automatically analyzes profiles and activities to help you focus on what matters most.

Pro tip: Start with the "Full Check" button - it runs everything in sequence and gives you a complete picture of the current feed activity.

⚡ Rapid Activity Monitoring

• Helps identify potential bot activity or mistakes
• Detects when someone performs 3+ merges/edits within 5 minutes
• Shows friendly warnings for review (with whitelist options for trusted users)

Bio Check Integration

• Automatic bio check results (shows which profiles need sources)
• One-click bio viewing with source highlighting
• Visual markup of headings, references, and source sections

New–Member Highlighting

• Helps mentors spot newcomers who might need guidance
• Highlights activity by members who joined in the last 6 months
• Special highlighting for newly-badged Pre-1700/Pre-1500 members

Smart Filtering

• Hide routine activity to focus on what needs attention
• "Only show new member activity" buttons
• "Only show newly-badged people" options
• Hide profiles, profiles that you don't manage, space pages, and/or G2G activity

Find A Grave Memorial Extractor

Note: This feature only works after you have granted WBE permission to access the Find a Grave site.

Enable this feature to add an "Extract to CSV" button to Find a Grave cemetery pages. When you press the button, the browser scrolls down to add the next bunch of people, then the next, and so on, until they're all visible. It then exports their names and dates to a CSV file. It also gets data from WT+ to find if each person has a WT profile and it adds the WT profile IDs to the CSV file.

When imported into your favourite spreadsheet or table-maker, the columns will be arranged as illustrated here.

• FG ID
• Person Name
• Birth Date
• Death Date
• Has Photo (Y/N)
• Has Grave Photo (Y/N)
• Memorial Link
• WikiTree ID

Note: Find a Grave has a limit of 10,000 for the total number of memorials it will load on a single page. A workaround is to extract memorials in batches.

This WBE feature originated as Find a Grave Memorial Extractor Browser Extension.

Help

Enable this feature to have your WikiTree Browser Extension option settings within this WBE Help page. You can adjust the settings of any WBE feature while you are reading the feature description in this WBE page.

If the feature is not yet enabled, the display of the feature setting toggle is a merely a screenshot image of the feature setting in the WikiTree Browser Extension popup features and options menu. You will have to use the popup menu in the browser toolbar.

My Connections

Enable this feature to add a button on the "My Connections" page. The button can reveal brick walls and highlight anomalously missing marriages and children. It is a research tool and an overview tool, depending on how recently you acknowledged this particular brick wall. Either way, it can be helpful if you are in process of documenting a family group's relationships.  

• Press the "Missing Connections Table" button to create a table of people in each degree showing missing parents, possible missing spouses, and the number of children.

• Continues finding more connections in a degree after the maximum 1000 has been reached.

• Click on column headings of "missing connections table" to sort.
• Click the small house icon on the left of each row to see the selected person's family connections table including their parents, siblings, spouses, and children.

To help you see which connections are missing, the columns on the left show the following:

• • F: Missing father is indicated by a blue wall.
  • M: Missing mother is indicated by a pink wall.
  • Sp: Number of spouses is listed.
  • Ch: Number of children is listed.

• Some cells may be highlighted to suggest a missing spouse or child(ren).
• If the person was over a certain age and has no spouse listed (and the no spouse flag hasn't been set), they get a "?" in a highlighted box as a possible missing spouse.
• If they were over a certain age and they have no children listed, the blank child box may be highlighted to show that there are possibly missing children.

• When you subsequently press "Hide Table", color-coded dots remain to remind you of missing male/female connections.

Note: The results will be empty for unlisted people unless you log in to the apps server. To log in, look for the button in the top right of the screen, next to the CC7 number.

Pending Merges Filters

Adds buttons to the Pending Merges page to filter out profiles that are pre-1500, pre-1700, and/or Not Open.

Remove Profiles from Watchlist

On your Watchlist page, select profiles by clicking the checkbox to the left of the name. Remove the profiles from your watchlist by clicking the Remove Selected from Watchlist button.  

If you receive an error message stating "We're sorry, we have had an internal error" when trying to remove non-open profiles, you might want to try again after performing API login using your normal WikiTree credentials at https://api.wikitree.com/api.php.

Note: We recommend that you also enable the Table Filters and Sorting feature.  

Search and Watchlist Table Options

The feature adds columns and functionality to Search result pages and to Watchlist pages.

This feature has an option to add Distance and Relationship columns to the Watchlist table. If enabled, it will also show an additional column containing suggestions to improve or correct the profile.

Table Filters and Sorting

Enable this feature to add filters and sortability to wikitables (any table that has class="wikitable") and tables on Watchlist and Surname Genealogy pages.

Usability Tweaks

Enable this feature for a small collection of mini-features that may not warrant their own space on the options list.

• Global
  • Remove the "turn off preview" and "turn off temporarily" buttons from profile previews so that you don't accidentally click them and lose the profile previews.
  • Add link to create non-existent categories in error messages.
  • Bigger checkboxes and radio buttons.

• • Add a 🏠 link (to Nav Home page), beside the "My WikiTree" menu.
  • Add an "Apps Login" button. Some WBE features (Change Family Lists, Family Timeline, Missing Connections Tables on the My Connections page) will give you better results if you are logged into the WikiTree apps server. This is different from being logged into the site itself.

The new "Apps Login" button can be shown on the Nav Home page, on profiles, and on other pages. (The button will only show up if you are not already logged in.)

To logout of the apps server, click here.

• Profile
  • Remove Me Button: Adds an X on profiles for which you are the manager. Double-click the X to remove yourself as manager and from the Trusted List. (A requested tweak that may be useful for people doing challenges.)
  • Accessed Count: Adds the accessed count to the profile manager box.

• Add Person
  • Put the focus in the First Name field (Add Person page, First Name at Birth).

• Profile Edit Page
  • Open Add/Remove/Replace links in the same tab.
  • Replace Add/Remove/Replace links with Add, Remove, Connect links.
  • Remember the height of the editor on the edit page.

• Free Space Pages
  • Leave edit view after saving: same behavior as it is for profiles by default.

• Navigation Home Page
  • Add an Edit/Save button above the Scratch Pad.
  • Scratch Pad position: WikiTree default, top left/right, 2nd in left column.
  • Add a "Download Scratchpad" button so you can export the contents of scratchpad.

• Search Page
  • Add a button to the search page to save the form data to populate fields on the Add Person page.
  • Add a link to show only active members.

• Other
  • Show differences and normalized stats on Thon pages.

Watchlist Filter

Enable the Watchlist Filter to add options above your watchlist to control which profiles are displayed. You can filter by management, gender, or Content Rank and each filter can be used alone or in combination with the others (e.g., show only managed profiles of females with a CR 0-5).

Note: The filters apply only to the profiles currently visible on the page. View the full watchlist to apply filters to all profiles.

WikiTree+ Query Builder

WikiTree+ Query Builder (q.v. Find menu) makes it easy to search WikiTree+ without memorizing complex variable names or query syntax. Instead of typing searches like `LastNameAtBirth=Darwin 1850s BirthLocation=England sql="([Bio].[Created Year].AsNumber = 2025)"`, you simply:

• Select fields from dropdown menus (like LastNameAtBirth, FirstName, Location, etc.)
• Enter the values you want to search for
• Let the tool build the query with proper AND, OR, and NOT logic automatically placed correctly
• Hit the "Open in WT+" button

AND and OR groups:

• You start with one AND group containing conditions that must all match
• If needed (to add a NOT group, for example), click "Add AND Group" to add a new group of conditions
• Click "Add OR group" to create alternative search criteria. The two groups will be connected with OR. So you can search for, for example, `LastNameAtBirth=Jekyll BirthLocation=London OR AllLastNames=Hyde BirthLocation=London`.

The builder also includes:

• Magic Words and Suggestions you can select from lists
• An SQL Wizard with templates for advanced database searches
• Saving of your queries for reuse
• Buttons to copy the the generated query or the URL to use in WikiTree+

Wills and Estates

Enable the Wills and Estates feature to see a sortable table. Sorts on Name, Date, and Place columns.

See the Gloucestershire Wills and Estates category page, for example. (Obviously, you'll need to have WBE installed and this feature enabled.)

Installation — Configuration — Features — Settings

Settings

The Settings dialog can be accessed by clicking the gear button at the top of the page. This contains buttons to reset, back up, and restore your extension settings as well as the data associated with certain features such as "My Menu", "Change Summary Options", "Clipboard and Notes", and "Extra Watchlist."

Default Features

Select this button to reset the main toggle switches to only enable the default features. This replaces the "Default" button that was located in the header in previous versions of the extension. This does not change any of the options that were set for the features (see Reset Options below).

Back Up Options

Select this button to generate a text file recording all of your settings for the features on the options page. Once the file is ready, a "Download" button appears so that you can save it to your local device.

The download process will, most likely, present you with a dialog offering you the option of where you want to save it, and potentially even afford the opportunity to assign a filename of your choice, or (depending on your browser) the file may simply download to your system-default downloads folder, in which case you may want to find it, rename it, and save it somewhere memorable.

When you are running different instances of WikiTree and the WikiTree Browser Extension, your settings on one browser/OS will not be automatically transferred to another browser/OS. These backup files are therefore useful not only for recording your settings over time, but also for transferring settings from one browser to a different PC or even a different browser on the same PC.

Restore Options

This will pop up a dialog box to select the file downloaded from your previous options backup (see above). It will overwrite all of your current options, so make a second backup if you want to be able to return to your current settings.

Reset Options

This will reset all of the features and options to the defaults as if you had installed the extension from scratch. This will wipe out all of your current options, so make a backup (see above) if you want to be able to return to your current settings.

This option does NOT affect the data stored by individual features in your browser (see below).

Back Up Data

The WikiTree Browser Extension stores some data within your browser's memory that is relevant to certain features:

• My Menu
• Change Summary Options
• Extra Watchlist
• Clipboard and Notes

Select the "Back Up Data" button* to create a backup of this data. This will generate a text file containing all of your data. Once the file is ready, a "Download" button will appear so that you can save it to your local device.

* There are also backup and restore buttons on your Nav Home page, labeled "DOWNLOAD WBE FEATURE DATA" and "IMPORT WBE FEATURE DATA".

The download process will, most likely, present you with a dialog offering you the option of where you want to save it, and potentially even afford the opportunity to assign a filename of your choice, or (depending on your browser) the file may simply download to your system-default downloads folder, in which case you may want to find it, rename it, and save it somewhere memorable.

When you are running different instances of WikiTree and the WikiTree Browser Extensions, the settings in the features named above on one browser/OS will not be automatically transferred to another browser/OS. These backup files are therefore useful not only for recording your settings over time, but also for transferring settings from one browser to a different PC or even a different browser on the same PC.

Restore Data

This will pop up a dialog box to select the file downloaded from your previous data backup (see above). This only updates your feature data and does not affect any of the extension options.

If your current browser tab is not a WikiTree page, the backup and restore options for feature data will not be available.

Note: Safari is quirky. See  [known issues] below.

Installation — Configuration — Features — Settings

Development — Communication — Testing and Feedback — Known Issues

Development

The collaboration is hosted on GitHub. For more details on how to contribute, see 'Communication' below and/or contact Jamie Nelson.

You will find a version log at WikiTree Browser Extension Update.

A development ('Preview') version of the extension can be found in the Chrome Web Store (for Chrome, Opera, Edge, and many Chromium-based browsers) and in the Firefox Add-ons Store.

Communication

Developers can communicate with others in these places:

• WikiTree Apps Google Group: Any question you ask here will go out to the members of the WikiTree Apps Project.
• G2G: Ask WikiTreers for feedback on what you are working on.
• GitHub: The Issues section of the repository has a few discussions going on.
• Discord is another popular place for discussion. Join the WT Apps project and join us in the wikitree-apps and wikitree-browser-extension channels on the WikiTree Discord server.

Is there some feature you wish were added to the WikiTree site, or do you wish the layout of some page were different? You could probably add it as a feature to the browser extension.

You can also check the issues pages on GitHub to see what needs to be worked on.

Testing and Feedback

Testers are greatly appreciated. You can check the 2022 and 2023 Hacktoberfest testing and feedback requests posts on G2G or contact developers directly via Discord or email.

Any feedback, including suggestions for changes/improvements or feature requests, is welcome. The options page of the extension (click the icon in the toolbar) shows the developer(s) who worked on each feature. If you have a bug report or a suggestion for improvement, you can contact the developer directly.

Hacktoberfest 2024 You are welcome to help out by checking out Jamie Nelson's G2G post "Can you help test the new "Hello World!"-style tutorials for Tree Apps and WBE?" and, if you are handy with Javascript, HTML, and CSS, you could give it a try yourself.

Known Issues

Firefox problems with the pop-up

Open a modal window (like the colour picker or file selector) from the extension pop-up and the extension pop-up closes. The easiest way around this is to go to the options page (Right-click on icon > Manage extension > ... > Options). This will give you the same page (WBE options) in its own tab and you won't have Firefox's bug.

Open Dyslexic font family not on Safari

The Custom Style feature provides a mechanism to select your preferred font. One of the font families listed in the pull-down is the Open Dyslexic font family. Unfortunately, we have not figured out how to load that font family into Safari. We have tried loading the Open Dyslexic directly onto the host computer, but Safari still does not recognize that the font is there and available.As a result, if you happen to choose Open Dyslexic, the system will choose its most convenient fallback font family. Therefore, instead of Open Dyslexic, we suggest that you use Comic Sans as an alternative.

We hope to resolve this incompatibility. Keep an eye in this space.

Safari file download quirks

It has ever been the case that web browsers behave differently, and that the same brand browser may behave differently on a different operating system (OS). There are two features of WikiTree Browser Extension that offer you the opportunity to Back Up Options and Back Up Data. Each of these features rely upon the browser and the operating system to cooperate in the process. Luckily, the Chrome and Firefox browsers do cooperate enough that WBE can offer the services of a file dialog when you are downloading these data collections.

Unfortunately, the Safari browser running on Mac OS X has some security restrictions and data management limitations that makes it less cooperative with WBE's efforts. In result, when you use these features, instead of a file dialog, your browser will open a new tab and issue a warning, asking for permission to allow downloads. After you grant permission, it will download the data into your system-default download folder. It is up to you to immediately go find that file, give it a suitable name, and store it somewhere memorable. The developers hope to offer a more satisfying solution in the future.

Missing CC7 Menu Item

See this G2G post from Riël Smit: Is your CC7 Changes menu item missing?

Contention Between Features

WikiTree Browser Extension is a collection of features; as such, it turns out that some of those features conflict with each other, and with features in other extensions.

The Custom Style feature includes an option to format visited links and the Visited Links feature also offers the ability to control the formatting of visited links. We encourage you to choose one or neither, and not both.

The Custom Style settings on WBE contends with the Style dropdown on WikiTree BEE. Ensure that BEE's Style option is set to None so that it doesn't override your Custom Style settings on WBE.

The Collapsible Profiles feature includes options to automatically add a (+) or (–) prefix on headings to expand or collapse sections of a profile and/or a space page. The Readability Options offers options to add a toggle suffix on headings to expand or collapse Research Notes and/or Sources sections in profiles and space pages. We encourage you to choose one or neither, and not both. Here's what it looks like if you use both:

The What Links Here feature adds a generated section at the end of a profile or space page. Due to WikiTree system constraints, the contents of that section are not retrieved until you ask for them by flipping a toggle that is appended to the section title. Meanwhile, the Collapsible Profiles feature places a (+) or (–) prefix on section headings. So, if you have both engaged, it looks like this:

In this situation, simply push the heading toggle switch to the right—a list will be retrieved and the toggle button will disappear. If the What Links Here section is not already expanded, press the (+) prefix.

The What Links Here may report that there are no links to this profile or space page. Failing that, if it is not reporting at all, it may be that the system is not responding to those requests, today. You could try Find>What Links Here instead—its report is in a different format and actually contains more information than the one that is generated on a profile or space page..

Disabling WikiTree Browser Extension (WBE) Without Uninstalling

You can temporarily disable WBE without uninstalling it.

Warning: Do not toggle the All button at the top of the feature menu, that will turn off all of your selected features and you would then have to reselect them again later.

Following are instructions to disable WBE quickly in various browsers. (You can easily re-enable WBE later by reversing these steps.)

Google Chrome

1. Click the puzzle-piece icon 🧩 near the top-right corner.
2. Select Manage extensions.
3. Find WikiTree Browser Extension (WBE).
4. Click the blue toggle switch to disable it (grey means disabled).

Firefox

1. Click the puzzle-piece icon 🧩 in the toolbar (top-right corner).
2. Select Manage extensions.
3. Locate WikiTree Browser Extension (WBE).
4. Click the blue toggle switch next to it to disable (grey means disabled).

Alternatively, Richard Barton suggests that for FireFox you can just...

1. Go to Tools (top menu if you have it turned on)
2. Select Add-ons and Themes.
3. Find the Web Browser Extension and disable it at the browser level.

Safari (macOS)

1. Open Safari, then from the top menu bar, choose Safari → Settings (Preferences).
2. Select the Extensions tab.
3. Find WikiTree Browser Extension (WBE).
4. Uncheck the box next to the extension to disable it.

In this example, both the Stable and Preview editions of WBE are installed in this browser; the Preview edition is enabled and the Stable edition is disabled. To disable the Preview edition, just uncheck the box.

Microsoft Edge

1. Click the puzzle-piece icon 🧩 or the three-dot menu (•••) at the top-right.
2. Choose Extensions.
3. Find WikiTree Browser Extension (WBE).
4. Click the blue toggle switch to disable it (grey means disabled).

Brave Browser

1. Click the puzzle-piece icon 🧩 at the top-right.
2. Click Manage extensions.
3. Locate WikiTree Browser Extension (WBE).
4. Click the blue toggle switch to turn it off (grey means disabled).

Installation — Configuration — Features — Settings

Global — Profile — Editing — Navigation — Community — Other

Development — Communication — Testing and Feedback — Known Issues

Using 'Improve with AI'

For anyone who has an AI API key (OpenAI, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity) or would like to get one, WBE's 'Auto Bio' feature now offers an 'Improve with AI' button. After running 'Auto Bio', there is sometimes (often?) some information in the old bio that it doesn't pick up. 'Improve with AI' is for gleaning information from the old bio that was missed by the 'Auto Bio' code.

'Auto Bio' is about as good as I can get it (maybe), but people complain that information from the old bio was missed. 'Improve with AI' aims to solve that problem.

If you have set an API key to the 'Auto Bio' settings, after running 'Auto Bio' you'll see an "Improve with AI" button — it gives you the option to have AI review the 'Auto Bio' output and suggest additional changes.

Pressing the button will feed the old bio and the new bio to the AI, which will/should (hopefully) add and/or restore information to the new version of the bio. It is completely optional, just as accepting the 'Auto Bio' output is optional.

Click the gear wheel to set "Custom AI Instructions". In this example, the instruction — "Match child sources to children by year where possible; otherwise leave them in ‘Sources' — would place sources for the children as inline references for entries in the child list.^[6]

When the results come in, you can see a side-by-side highlighted diff of the 'Auto Bio' results and the AI-enhanced results. You see what's been added/changed.

Even after accepting the AI-enhanced version to replace the regular 'Auto Bio' results, you still have the 'Auto Bio' message asking you to check everything and the old bio below that. You can delete those and save, or you can hit "Undo Auto Bio" to go back to where you were. You could also edit the results to improve it further, which is probably the best thing to do. The AI is instructed to only take information from the old bio and add/restore it to the new bio (the 'Auto Bio' results).

Testing results have been been good so far. More testing is needed. I'm sure it can be improved. Moreover, as AI continues improving, 'Improve with AI' will keep getting better. (Ian Beacall, 17 Dec 2025)

We have observed that results will vary depending upon several factors:

• the specific AI API used
• the browser in which the API is running
• the size and/or complexity of the profile

How to Set an AI API Key

To use 'Improve with AI', you need to set an API key and choose a model.
 An API key is just a long password that lets the AI work for you. Each of the APIs offers several models from which you can choose. Choosing which API and model to use is entirely up to you.

Enter your API Key into the appropriate field.

• OpenAI API Key
• Gemini API Key
• Claude API Key
• Perplexity API Key

See below for instructions on getting an API Key.

How to Get an AI API Key

Important

• Do not share your API key with anyone.
• Do not post it on WikiTree.
• If you think your key has leaked, you can delete it and make a new one.

Option 1: OpenAI

• 1. Go to this page:
https://platform.openai.com/
• 2. Sign in
  • If you already use ChatGPT, use the same email and password.
  • If not, follow the steps to create an account.
• 3. Once logged in, open this page:
https://platform.openai.com/api-keys
• 4. Click “Create new secret key”
• 5. Copy the key (it starts with sk-)
  • Save it somewhere safe (Notes, a text file, etc.)
• 6. Paste this key into the AI Assistance box in WBE 'Auto Bio' settings.

Important

• You must add a payment method (credit card).
• Actual cost is usually very small (often pennies).
• ChatGPT Plus is not required.

Option 2: Google Gemini (AI Studio)

• 1. Go to:
https://aistudio.google.com/
• 2. Sign in with your Google account.
• 3. Click “Get API key” (top-right).
• 4. Click “Create API key”.
• 5. Copy the key.
  • Save it somewhere safe (Notes, a text file, etc.)
• 6. Paste it into the AI Assistance box in WBE 'Auto Bio' settings.

Notes

• Google may ask you to choose or create a project — just accept the default.
• Free usage is available, with limits.

Option 3: Claude (Anthropic)

• 1. Go to:
https://console.anthropic.com/
• 2. Create an account or sign in.
• 3. Open API Keys.
• 4. Click Create key.
• 5. Copy the key.
  • Save it somewhere safe (Notes, a text file, etc.)
• 6. Paste it into the AI Assistance box in WBE 'Auto Bio' settings.

Option 4: Perplexity AI (Perplexity API)

• 1. Go to https://www.perplexity.ai/settings/api and sign in.
• 2. Create an API Group (required before you can make keys):
  • Go to https://www.perplexity.ai/account/api/group
  • Fill in the group details and save.
• 3. Add billing or credits if prompted in the API area.
• 4. Create an API key:
  • Go to the API Keys tab and click + Create key.
• 5. Copy the key
  • Save it somewhere safe (Notes, a text file, etc.)
• 6. Paste it into the AI Assistance box in WBE 'Auto Bio' settings.

Sources

1. ↑ Chrome: ⋮ menu → Extensions → Manage extensions. Edge: … → Extensions → Manage extensions.
2. ↑ Wikipedia contributors. "Access Key" (Accessed 6 Dec 2023) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_key .
3. ↑ W3C. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) (Accessed 13 Aug 2023) https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/
4. ↑ WebAIM Contrast Checker. (Accessed 13 Aug 2023)  https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/
5. ↑ Wikipedia. "Patronymic" Welsh and Cornish naming rules (Accessed 10 May 2023) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronymic#Welsh_and_Cornish
6. ↑ Example created by Danita (Burkett-1190) Zanrè, as presented on WikiTree Discord #tech_chat channel on 1 Jan 2026.

Acknowledgments

In March 2022, Chris Whitten proposed a vision for the future of WikiTree in a post to G2G: Would you collaborate on a browser extension?.

The following people have collaborated on implementing that vision:

WBE: Przemek Więch, Ian Beacall, Jonathan Duke, Florian Straub, Riël Smit, Jamie Nelson, Aleš Trtnik, Steve Harris, Rob Pavey, Kay Knight, Eric Stamper, Coen Dijkgraaf, David Weinberg, Douglas Kohn, Miyako Jones, Elaine Martzen.

Borrowed Code: Julian Laffey, Magnus Manske.

BEE:Ian Beacall, Florian Straub, Geoff Crew.

Testers/Ideas: Murray Maloney, Tommy Buch, Patty LaPlante, Sandy Patak, Linda Peterson, Eric Weddington, Debi Hoag, and probably many others.

Technical Author/Editor: Murray Maloney

To BEE, or to WBE by ChatGPT

• To BEE, or to WBE: that is the query—
• Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to bear
• The slings and arrows of outrageous errors,
• Or to take arms against a sea of glitches,
• And by opposing, end them. To code—to sleep,
• No more; and by a sleep to say we end
• The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
• The code is heir to: 'tis a consummation
• Devoutly to be wished. To code, to dream—
• To dream! Perchance to code! Ay, there's the script,
• For in that dream of code, what dreams may come,
• When we have shuffled off this mortal loop,
• Must give us pause—there's the respect
• That makes calamity of so long life.

• For who would bear the bugs and patches of time,
• Th' extension's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
• The pangs of despised code, the system's delay,
• The insolence of bugs, and the spurns
• That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
• When he himself might his quietus make
• With a bare script? Who would these fardels bear,
• To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
• But that the dread of something after deletion,
• The undiscovered bug, from whose bourn
• No coder returns, puzzles the will,
• And makes us rather bear those bugs we have
• Than fly to others that we know not of?

• Thus conscience does make coders of us all,
• And thus the native resolution
• Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
• And enterprises of great pitch and moment
• With this regard their currents turn awry,
• And lose the name of action. Soft you now,
• The fair WikiTree! Nymph, in thy orisons
• Be all my sins remembered.

With apologies to William Shakespeare.

Four Score and Seven Features Ago...

Four score and seven features ago, our team brought forth on this platform the WikiTree Browser Extension, conceived in collaboration and dedicated to the proposition that genealogical research should be accessible, intuitive, and powerful.

Now we are engaged in a great task of refinement, testing whether this tool, enhanced by the hands of many contributors, can continue to grow and improve. It is for us, the developers and volunteers, to dedicate ourselves to the unfinished work, ensuring that WikiTree Browser Extension, of the community, by the community, and for the community, shall not perish from this tree.

With apologies to Abraham Lincoln.