Timescrolly

What you can build with Timescrolly

Everything Timescrolly does, grouped by what you are trying to do: explore a span of time, tell the story on it, keep it organised, build it with other people, and take it with you.

Explore time

One axis, from the age of the universe down to a single afternoon, with dates written the way your sources give them — and the same story as a list or on a map, on any screen.

One axis, any scale

Every timeline lives on one continuous axis. Zoom out to billions of years, zoom in to a single afternoon.

  • Drag, scroll or pinch to move; crowded items gather into clusters.
  • Find any item by its title with / or ⌘K.
  • Keyboard shortcuts to move, zoom, and fit the whole timeline on screen.

Dates as your sources give them

Write a date in the calendar your source uses, as precisely as you know it, and let every reader see it in their own.

  • Eight calendars, among them Julian, Hijri, Hebrew and French Republican.
  • BCE dates, years before present, and the far future.
  • Leave out what you don't know, or add a ± when a date is only roughly known.
  • Zoom in and the timeline shows which dates are only roughly known; select one to see its full range.
  • Readers can switch every date to another calendar or era style without changing yours.
  • Count back from the present, or forward from an event of your own.

Custom calendars

Writing about a world you made up? Give the timeline a custom calendar and date everything the way your story does.

  • Name the months, set how many days each has, and choose the date that starts the count.
  • Items, labels and the axis all speak your calendar: 3 Frostfall 3019, not day 1,094.
  • Readers can switch to relative time, and one calendar is shared across all your timelines.

Pro & TeamSetting up a custom calendar comes with Pro and Team. One you already have keeps working on every plan.

Events inside their period

Put events on the period they belong to — a reign, a war, a mission — instead of crowding the main axis.

  • Periods draw as bars that carry their own events.
  • Fold a period away for the big picture, open it for the detail.
  • A period that is still going on runs up to today.

The same timeline as a list

Switch any timeline to a list you read from top to bottom: every event and period in date order.

  • Dates in full, with tags and pictures alongside.
  • Open any entry for its notes, media and sources.
  • Timeline, list and map are one click apart.

The same story on a map

Give events a place and switch the timeline to a map of pins, routes and regions.

  • A place can be a point, a route or a region.
  • Add an uncertainty radius where a place is only roughly known.
  • Every pin leads back to its moment on the timeline.

Read a timeline against others

Lay up to three other timelines beneath the one you are reading, on the same time axis, and see what else was going on.

  • Pick from your own, your team's, shared and public timelines.
  • Drag or zoom once and every strip moves with it.
  • The set lives in the link: nothing is saved, and anyone who can open those timelines sees the same view.

At home on a phone

On a phone the axis stands upright, so you scroll through time with your thumb.

  • Pinch to zoom, double-tap to zoom in, hold an item for its actions.
  • A minimap keeps your place on the whole timeline.
  • Editors add an item by holding the spot where it belongs.

Tell the story

Something on a timeline is more than a label: notes worth reading, the pictures and recordings, and the sources behind them.

Notes worth reading

Descriptions you can actually write in, with Markdown shortcuts as you type.

  • Headings, lists, quotes, links and inline code.
  • For the timeline's introduction and for every item.

Images, video, PDFs and voice memos

Attach the evidence itself: photographs, audio, video and PDFs, each with a caption.

  • Star an image to show it on the timeline.
  • Play audio and video, and read PDFs, without leaving the item.
  • Record a voice memo right in the browser.

Pro & TeamAudio, video, PDFs and voice memos. Images come with every plan.

Sources, cited properly

Sources live in one library for your account or team, and items, entities and relations cite from it.

  • Books, articles, archives, web pages and media, each with the right fields.
  • Add a source once, cite it from as many items as you like.
  • Formatted references appear under every item that cites them.

An assistant that knows your timeline

Ask the AI assistant about the timeline in front of you, or have it draft new items and edits. Nothing changes until you have reviewed it.

  • Ask for a summary, which events overlap, or which dates don't fit together.
  • Describe what is missing, or paste an article, and it drafts the items.
  • Proposed items appear as ghosts on the timeline, so you see where they would land before you apply anything.
  • Every applied change is recorded in the timeline's history, like any other edit.
  • It says when an answer goes beyond what is on the timeline. AI can be wrong, so check what matters.

Pro & TeamA much larger monthly allowance of credits. Free comes with a smaller one.

Turn a document into a timeline

Give Timescrolly a PDF, a spreadsheet or photos of diary pages, and the AI drafts the events and periods it finds. Nothing is added until you have reviewed it.

  • Bring PDFs, Word and Excel files, CSV and text files, photos and scans, or text you paste in.
  • Start a new timeline from a document, with a description and category suggested for you, or add to a timeline you already have.
  • Each draft shows the quote it rests on, and is flagged when its date is uncertain or the timeline already seems to have it.
  • Untick or edit drafts before you add them, and cite the document as a source for every item.

Pro & TeamA much larger monthly allowance of credits, the same ones the assistant uses. Free comes with a smaller one.

Keep it organised

Tags you reuse across your timelines, and collections that group whole timelines together.

Tags and collections

Tags label the things on a timeline, and the timelines themselves. Collections group whole timelines together.

  • Your tags follow you from one timeline to the next.
  • Filter by tag and share a link to exactly that view.
  • Keep a collection to yourself, or share it with your team.

People, places and things

Keep the people, places and organizations in your history as records of their own, linked from every item they appear in.

  • Give each one a role on an item: author, birthplace, commander.
  • Public entities get their own page, with every item that links them.
  • Aliases, dates, a map and pictures, all in one place.

Bring in your family tree

Import a GEDCOM file from your genealogy program and see the family as a tree, with its people, places, relations and sources.

  • See the people on a timeline as a family tree, generation by generation.
  • Import a GEDCOM file, all of it or a single branch, with the lives on a timeline.
  • People and places you already have are matched, so you choose what to link and what is new.

Work together

Decide who can open a timeline and who can change it, put it on your own pages in your readers' language, talk it over in comments, and keep a record of everything that has been changed.

Share it, or keep it to yourself

A timeline starts private. Make it public, or send a share link to just the people who need it.

  • Private, Team or Public — the owner decides.
  • Share links expire when you choose, or never.
  • Revoke a link and it stops working at once.
  • Paste a public timeline's link and its cover image comes along as the preview.

Put it on your own page

Show a timeline inside a blog post, a course page or a Notion document, and let readers explore it right where they are. Free on every plan.

  • Paste a URL, or a code snippet for pages that take HTML.
  • A private timeline embeds through a share link.
  • Pick its language, and a light or dark theme, to suit the page.

Pro & TeamWithout the small Timescrolly mark.

In six languages

Timescrolly speaks English, Dutch, German, French, Spanish and Italian: the viewer, the dashboard and the help centre.

  • Each reader picks their own language.
  • Set an embed to the language of the page it sits on.
  • Print a booklet in any of the six.

The people you build it with

Invite people by email as viewers or editors, or let a team own the timeline.

  • Editors add and change items; viewers read.
  • Hand a timeline over to someone else, or to a team.
  • A team keeps the work going beyond one person's account.

Pro & TeamCollaborators come with Pro and Team, and a team with the Team plan.

Comments on the timeline, and on each item

Discuss the timeline, or any one item, right beside it — not in an email thread.

  • Reply to a comment, and resolve the thread once it is settled.
  • The discussion stays private, even on a public timeline.
  • New comments and replies notify the people involved.

Suggested edits

Let viewers propose changes to your timeline, and decide for yourself what goes in.

  • Viewers propose a change, a new item or a removal, with a note.
  • Editors tick what to accept and can fix a date first. Nothing is overwritten silently.
  • Accepted edits land as the editor's own, in the change history, and can be undone.

Pro & TeamLetting viewers suggest edits comes with Pro and Team.

Every change, and the way back

Every edit is recorded: who changed what, with the values before and after.

  • Filter by person, field or item.
  • Undo an edit straight from its entry in the log.
  • Deleted items and timelines can be restored for a while.

Pro & TeamReach much further back through the history.

Take it with you

A picture of the view for your slides, the whole timeline as a booklet to print, and a full copy of your data whenever you want it.

A picture of the view

Frame any part of a timeline and save it as an image or a PDF page, ready for a slide, a report or a handout. Free on every plan.

  • Pick a shape, from 16:9 to A4, and keep zooming underneath the frame.
  • PNG or PDF, light or dark, with a caption if you want one.

Pro & TeamWithout the small Timescrolly mark.

The whole timeline as a booklet

Turn a timeline into a PDF to read, print or hand in, or a Word file to keep writing in: a title page, then every item in date order with its notes, images and sources.

  • Choose what goes in, from a full booklet to a compact list of items.
  • In any of six languages, on A4 or US Letter.
  • As a Word file, each cited item gets a real footnote, so the notes renumber as you edit.

Pro & TeamAlso when you edit a timeline whose owner has one.

Your data stays yours

Download a copy of everything you own as one zip file, on every plan.

  • Timelines with their items, sources, comments, images and files.
  • Plain JSON, with a README that explains the format.
  • A team's owner and admins can export the team's data too.

How much room you get for all of this, and which parts come with a paid plan, is on the pricing page. See the plans.

Ask AI

Answers come from the help centre and can be wrong.

Timescrolly does NOT keep your conversations.

What's your timeline?

Your first timeline takes a minute. Free, with no payment details needed.