Set up your family space and invite your first relative

Step 1: Create your account

1. Install Kunbaa from the App Store or Google Play, or open kunbaa.com in a browser, and tap Start your family tree for free.
2. Type your email address. Kunbaa emails you a six-digit code; type it in. There is no password to invent or remember. You can use Continue with Google instead, or Continue with Facebook on kunbaa.com, or Continue with Apple in the iPhone app.
3. Kunbaa asks for your date of birth once. Accounts are for adults, 18 and over, so a grandparent is exactly who this is for, and children appear in the tree without an account.

Step 2: Check your own card

The first screen is Let’s start with you. You are already on your family tree: check your name, add a photo if you like, and carry on. Kunbaa names the family after your surname (the Morgan family), so there is nothing to set up.

Step 3: Add three people

Next is Add three people: closest first. For each, pick the relationship (mother, father, sister, spouse, son) and type their name. A name is all the tree needs to show them. These three are the seed; the next guide shows you how to grow it in every direction.

Step 4: Pick who to invite first

Do not invite all thirty relatives tonight. Pick the one person who already sends the family photos: a sibling, a cousin, the aunt with the scanned albums. Once there is something worth looking at, invite the rest.

Step 5: Send the invite

In the app:

1. Open the Chats tab. Under Not on Kunbaa yet you will see the people you added to the tree. Tap Invite beside the one you chose. (You can also press and hold their card on the tree and tap Invite.)
2. Before we send it: check their name and type their email address. A phone number is optional.
3. What can they do? Choose Editor (can add and edit people, events and photos) or Viewer (can look, but not change the tree). Three switches sit under it: post on the family wall, add people to the tree, message family members. You can change all of this later.
4. Tap Send invite. Kunbaa emails them a link.

On the website, as a family admin: open Members in the dashboard and tap Invite. Type their name and email, and send the email or copy the link and send it yourself, privately, to that person, not into a big group.

Before it goes, the form shows the address back. Check it: whoever signs in with that address will see your family’s tree and posts. If it spots a likely typo, such as gmial.com, it asks whether you meant gmail.com; nothing changes unless you say so. A link sent without an email address is not tied to anyone, so send it only to the person it is for; whoever opens it has to ask you first.

What happens on their side

They open the email, sign in with that same address, and tap the link. Their account joins the card you already made for them, with the photos, birthday and stories already attached, and they see the same tree and the same wall you do. It is one shared space, not a copy each.

You get a notice saying who joined from your invite. If it is not who you expected, tap Not them? Remove on it and they lose access at once.

If you shared a link without an address, they do not get in on the link alone. They sign in and wait, and you see them under Asking to join with the address they signed in with. Tap Let in if you know them, or Not them if you do not.

One more thing: your name

Signed in with email one day and Google the next? Set a Preferred name once, in the app, tap your photo at the top to open the menu, then Profile. It is the name beside everything you share, whichever way you sign in.

Questions families ask