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About PastPaths

What is PastPaths?

PastPaths is a genealogy program built to be local-first. That means your genealogy research lives on your computer, not in the cloud — and you have full control over the data.

Why does PastPaths exist?

There are plenty of genealogy programs in the world. Each with its own pros and cons. PastPaths was made based on the idea that:

  • Genealogical data is personal data. It shouldn't sit on a server owned by a company that might still be around in ten years — or might not.

  • Tools should be simple. A genealogist shouldn't need to learn database management or a programming language to take care of their own research.

  • It should be possible to move your data. Import, export, backup — all of it should be easy. Your data should never be trapped.

  • It should be easy to write notes, stories, and more. Persons and places should be linkable and viewable at a glance.

  • It should be possible to see who was present at important events. Which of my relatives went on the Wasa Run with Gustav?

  • Maximize the information about persons, places, events. Media (images, audio, film, etc.) should be able to show which people were present, whether there's a story attached, and whether an image was taken on a particular occasion.

Who's behind it?

PastPaths is developed by Maria Tingvall, who has a burning interest in history, people, and the places they lived. She's tried many different genealogy programs over the last few decades, and while most of them have some good features, they've all been missing something — so she decided to build her own. The combination of a blog and genealogy is unique. The design is flexible enough that the blog can be used as a notebook, or to link stories to people and places.

Maria has been programming as a hobby since the 1980s, and has picked up many different programming languages along the way. She's also been building websites since the late 1990s, and was one of the early Swedish voices writing about pregnancy and childbirth around the turn of the millennium, at 9månader (in Swedish).

Maria works as an IT consultant in clinical systems, and besides programming and history she's interested in crafts, photography, gardening, and much more.

Technology

PastPaths is built with:

  • Vue 3 / Quasar — for the user interface
  • Flask / SQLite — for data storage and logic
  • pywebview / PyInstaller — for packaging as a Windows application

All code runs locally on your computer. No cloud services, no telemetry, no "anonymous usage statistics" agreements.

License and open source

PastPaths is not open source. The program is distributed free of charge for personal use, but the source code is not publicly available.

What that means in practice, and the full terms, are covered here:

PastPaths is built on a number of open source libraries. A complete list of these, with their respective licenses, is included in THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.md, which ships with the installation.

Roadmap

Here's roughly where we're headed:

Currently in focus:

  • Improvements based on beta test feedback
  • More stable exe packaging for Windows distribution

Next big step:

  • Linux support
  • A mobile app for Android (focused on taking photos in the field)

Further ahead:

  • A platform for exchanging genealogy research between individuals — without needing to upload to a commercial service

Verify and update

Adapt the roadmap to match your actual plans.

Contact

Thanks

Thanks to everyone who's helped out — beta testers, relatives who've helped verify features, and everyone who's reported bugs. PastPaths gets better with every report.