Frequently Asked Questions

FamRoot is The Living Family Graph: a private network built around your family. It brings together your family tree, how everyone is related, friends, pets, and a private Vault for last messages and future messages.

Not in the traditional sense. Genealogy services focus on researching ancestry. FamRoot focuses on the family you have today: a living tree that relatives keep current together, and relationships that are useful in everyday life, like knowing who's calling.

Social networks are built around followers and posting to an audience. FamRoot is built around the people you're actually related to. Your tree is private, and there's no public link to it.

Famroot Private Limited, a company incorporated in India and a DPIIT recognised startup. More on the About page.

Yes. FamRoot is completely free today, with every feature included. We may introduce paid subscriptions in future. If we do, we'll give reasonable notice in advance, and nobody will be charged without agreeing to it.

Fill in the short Sign up for free form on any page with your name, email, mobile number and country. We review your sign-up, then email you an invite link to join. When you join, we verify your mobile number by SMS OTP.

Our team reviews and approves each sign-up by hand before sending the invite email. FamRoot is a private network built around real families, and this review is part of keeping it that way.

We review sign-ups by hand, so it varies. Your invite email arrives as soon as you're approved; if it's been a while, write to support@famroot.com.

When a family member invites you, you receive an SMS with an invite link to join their tree. The invite link lets you register directly, with no separate sign-up or review.

Yes. You must be 18 or older to create a FamRoot account.

Multiple generations: grandparents, great-grandparents and beyond, as well as children and grandchildren.

Yes. The family tree supports spouses, adoptions and multiple marriages, so it can reflect your real family.

Not yet. GEDCOM import is in the pipeline. For now, relatives are added in FamRoot directly, and inviting family to add their own branches is the quickest way to grow the tree.

Not yet. Export is in the pipeline.

Yes. When you add someone, Invite is selected by default, so they get an invite link. If you untick it, they're added to the tree but not notified.

Invite a family member from the tree and they'll receive an SMS with an invite link to join. WhatsApp invites are planned.

No single person. Every member of the tree is a moderator. Existing members approve who joins next, so the tree stays in the family's hands, not one person's. The creator lets another moderator in, those two let the next one in, and so on.

Any user of the tree can request to edit or remove a relationship. If the tree has more than one user, at least one other user must approve the request before it takes effect.

The tree becomes an orphan tree. If it holds phone numbers, a person whose number is in the tree joins it on sign-up without needing approval. An orphan tree with no contact numbers is removed by a scheduled clean-up.

Yes. FamRoot shows the relationship and the full path that connects you. For example: You, Mother, her sister, her son, his wife. That's your cousin's wife, five relationship levels away.

Each step along a relationship path is one level. Your mother is one level away; your cousin's wife is five. Family content is visible to relatives connected within seven relationship levels.

Yes. You can add a location by typing an address or pinning it on a map, and people search uses it to find relatives by place or distance. A location is only as precise as the details entered.

Address visibility settings are planned.

Yes. When you add someone, you choose one of three labels: Close friend, Friend or Just know. The fourth label, Knows me, is not one you pick. It lists the people who have added you to their network.

No. A friend sees only your profile, not your family tree. Sharing your immediate family with friends, and an expiring read-only tree link, are planned.

Yes. Pets sit on your family tree alongside everyone else, with a pet profile of their own. A pet profile holds a name, gender, description, date of birth, date of death if your pet has passed away, and up to 3 profile pictures.

Your relatives keep their own numbers current in FamRoot. When one of them calls, the number is matched to their place in your family network, and you see their name and the relationship, such as "Aunt" or "Cousin's wife". Tap to see the full relationship path.

Yes, as long as the caller is in your FamRoot network with that number, up to seven relationship levels away. You never saved her number, but your family did.

No. Smart Caller ID is Android only. iOS is being evaluated.

No. Your call logs never leave your device and are not stored on our server. Only phone numbers are sent to our server, to look up the relationship.

Not today. Smart Caller ID identifies family and relatives in your network. Letting people outside your network see your profile picture, if you choose to make it public, is planned.

Three, which Android asks you to allow when you turn it on: access to your call log, permission to make and manage phone calls, and permission to display over other apps (so the caller card can appear on the incoming call screen). You can withdraw them in your phone's settings at any time.

Two things today: Last Message and Future Messages. Each user gets 1 GB of storage, free. A documents space and a private diary are planned.

A message for one or more people in your circle, delivered after you pass away. It can be text, a voice note, a photo, a video clip or a document. You can edit or delete it at any time.

Through a verified death report. Someone in the person's first circle (parents, children, siblings) reports the death. Two people from that circle must acknowledge it, and everyone in the circle is notified. Once verified, the family is informed and the last messages are delivered.

Everyone in the first circle is notified of the report, and two of them must acknowledge it before anything happens. If anyone in that circle marks the report as declined or spam, one more approval from the circle is needed. Last messages are only sent once the report is verified.

Yes. Future messages can be edited or deleted at any time before delivery.

Yes, for example "On his 18th birthday". Messages are attached to the recipient's family-member profile and delivered only once that profile becomes a FamRoot user. For someone not yet born, the message waits until their profile is added and they join.

Yes. Future self is one of the options, along with a date, a birthday, a wedding day, an anniversary or another milestone.

All your future messages and last messages are deleted when you delete your account. They won't be delivered.

Images: JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP. Audio: MP3, WAV, OGG, M4A, AAC. Video: MP4, MOV, WebM, 3GP. Up to 100 MB per file; PDFs and documents aren't supported yet.

Not yet. A documents space for family papers and a private diary are planned. See the Vault page for what's available today.

Notes and last messages are encrypted with AES-256, and the Vault has its own password as an extra layer of protection. See Data & Security for the full picture.

Relatives connected to you within seven relationship levels. Friends see your profile only. There is no public link to your tree.

No. We use your details to run FamRoot. Your family data is not sold.

On Amazon Web Services (AWS) servers in India, in the Mumbai region.

Technically, it's possible. By process and policy, FamRoot staff do not view this content, except where the law requires it. We'd rather tell you that plainly than claim it's impossible.

Not yet. We haven't completed any security certifications or external audits so far.

Email support@famroot.com or grievances@famroot.com. We verify the request using your mobile number, remove your details, and make sure they aren't added again.

Email support@famroot.com with the details. Please don't access other people's data while testing.

With your mobile number at the login page. The first time, you sign in with an OTP sent by SMS and then set a password. After that, use your mobile number and password.

Go to Settings, then Delete account. Review the summary, tap Delete my account, and confirm with the OTP sent to your registered mobile (and your Vault password, if you've set up a Vault). You can also email grievances@famroot.com. Deletion can't be undone.

Your account becomes inaccessible immediately, and your personal data is removed from our servers within 90 days. Where you connect other people in the tree, a minimal "Deleted user" placeholder remains. The full details are on Data Retention & Deletion.

Not yet. Data export is in the pipeline.

By SMS and with pop-ups inside the app. If you'd prefer not to receive product updates, write to support@famroot.com.

Write to our Grievance Officer, Vivekananthan, at grievances@famroot.com. Grievances are acknowledged within 24 hours and resolved within 7 days.

Yes. FamRoot is a web app today. Log in here.

The FamRoot Android app is launching shortly.

Not yet. The iOS app is in development.