A Family Tree Made of Voices
Build your tree by typing plain sentences about the people you love, then give each of them their own memories and recordings, kept in their real voice.
Generations connected, with each person holding what only they could tell. The marked profile is one whose voice has already been recorded.
Type a sentence. Watch the tree take shape.
Most family trees stall at the form. Hearthsay does not ask you to fill one in. Type how you would say it out loud, and the person appears on the tree in the right place, with the right relations.
“My grandfather Mykola”
Mykola is added two generations above you, on your side of the tree, ready for his first recording.
“Mykola is my mother’s father, born in Lviv in 1938”
The relation is read from the sentence: he is placed as your mother’s father, with his birthplace and year on his profile.
“Add my sister Olena, two years younger than me”
Olena joins your generation as your sister, with her birth order kept alongside your parents’ branch.
“Baba Halyna is Mykola’s wife”
Halyna is placed beside Mykola as his spouse, and the children already on the tree connect to them both.
Nothing is locked in. Every relation Hearthsay reads from your words is shown on the profile, so you can confirm it, correct it, or move someone to a different branch at any time.
A tree you grow by typing
Add and track your family tree from simple prompts. Write a plain sentence about a person and Hearthsay places them where they belong, across generations and family branches.
Relations from plain words
Say "my mother’s father" or "my cousin on my father’s side" and Hearthsay works out the relationship. You do not have to learn a chart, pick from menus, or draw the lines yourself.
Every person carries their own memories
Each profile holds the recordings, stories, recipes, and advice saved for that person, so the tree is made of real voices, not just names and dates.
Many hands, one shared tree
Family members can contribute memories for the same person. Each profile shows how many sources, memories, and contributors have added to it.
Languages and accents kept
A profile records a primary language, the other languages spoken at home, and notes on accent, so how someone spoke is preserved rather than flattened.
Consent shown on every profile
Each person has a clear consent status. A profile is marked verified or pending, and answers are only built from memories that were consented and saved.
Living and remembered, side by side
Mark each person as living or remembered. The tree honors people who are still here and those who have passed, in one gentle place.
The whole family, not a contact list
Parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, and children stay connected to one another. The people you love are related on the page the way they are related in life.
Every person on the tree carries their own voice
A name and a date tell you almost nothing about a person. Open a profile in Hearthsay and you find what they actually said: the story they told every year, the recipe they never wrote down, the advice they gave when it mattered.
Record them while they are here
Open their profile and record the story as they tell it. A few minutes at a kitchen table is enough to begin, and you can keep adding for years.
Bring in the recordings you already have
Old voicemails, wedding videos, cassette transfers, birthday messages. Upload what your family already keeps and it is transcribed and attached to the right person.
Play their real voice back, together
Anyone in the family who has access can press play and hear the recording itself. Grandchildren who never met them can hear exactly how they sounded.
From any profile you can ask a question, and Hearthsay answers only from the memories saved for that person, with the sources shown. Nothing is invented, and no answer draws on public models or third-party voices.
Before the stories fade
There is a window in every family when the oldest generation is still here and still telling. It is easy to assume there will be more time to sit down and ask. Hearthsay exists to make that afternoon easy to have, this month rather than someday.
Families living with Alzheimer’s or dementia often find their way here first. Recording early, while a parent or grandparent can still tell their own stories in their own way, is a gentle thing to do together. The recording itself can be a good hour: a familiar story told again, on purpose, with someone listening closely.
When memory changes, or after someone has passed, what the family keeps is not a description of how they spoke. It is the recording itself, in their own voice and their own words, ready for a grandchild who has not been born yet.
Consent comes first, always
Record only people who have agreed to be recorded, and stop whenever they would like to stop. Each person on the tree carries a Consent Passport: their own statement of how their recordings may be used, who may hear them, and what should happen to them later. It travels with every memory saved for them, and their choices are honored after they are gone. You can read more on the voice and consent page.
Hearthsay is a family memory app. It is not a medical device, a diagnosis, or a treatment, and it is not a replacement for care, grief counseling, therapy, or professional support.
Their voice is never faked
Hearthsay analyzes a voice in order to organize it. It transcribes what was said, captions and titles a recording so it can be found again, and measures recording quality so you know whether a take is clear enough to keep. That is the whole of it.
Hearthsay never speaks as a person. It does not clone, recreate, synthesize, or imitate a voice, and it does not build a voice model from your family’s recordings. Everything you play is a real recording someone made: their actual words, in their actual voice. Nothing is generated.
When Hearthsay answers a question, the answer is written from the memories your family saved and shows you the sources it used. It is Hearthsay telling you what was said, never a machine pretending to be the person who said it.
What the Voice Family Tree is not
It is a private collection of consented recordings, arranged as a family. It is not a public genealogy service, an ancestry search, or a place to build a tree from strangers or records you have no consent to use.
Hearthsay preserves recorded memories and source-backed reflections. It does not recreate a person, replace them, speak for them beyond what they recorded, or preserve consciousness.
Questions families ask
Can I build my family tree just by typing a sentence?
Yes. Write a plain sentence such as "My grandfather Mykola" and Hearthsay adds him to your tree in the right generation. Keep going in ordinary language, adding a spouse, a sibling, a birthplace or a year, and the tree grows as you type. You can always open a person and correct anything by hand.
How does Hearthsay know how people are related?
It reads the relationship out of your own words. "My mother’s father", "my cousin on my father’s side", or "Halyna is Mykola’s wife" are enough to place someone and connect them to the people already on the tree. Every relation it infers is shown on the profile, so you can confirm or change it.
Does Hearthsay clone or recreate my loved one’s voice?
No. Hearthsay never clones, recreates, synthesizes, or speaks as a person. Voice analysis is used only to organize recordings, caption them, and measure recording quality. Every sound you hear in Hearthsay is a real recording that person made: their actual words, in their actual voice. Nothing is generated.
Can I upload old recordings of someone?
Yes, as long as you have permission to use them. Voicemails, home videos, cassette and reel transfers, and voice notes can all be uploaded and attached to that person on the tree. Hearthsay transcribes them and files them alongside anything you record now.
Is Hearthsay helpful for a parent with Alzheimer’s or dementia?
This is one of the deepest reasons families start recording. Recording early, while someone can still tell their own stories, means the family keeps their voice and their own words later on. Record only with their consent and stop whenever they would like to stop. Hearthsay is a family memory app, not a medical device, a diagnosis, or a treatment, and it is not a substitute for care or professional support.
What happens to their recordings after they pass away?
The recordings stay in your family’s private vault, exactly as they were saved, and their profile is marked as remembered. The family can keep listening to their real voice and reading their own words. Consent choices they made while living continue to be honored, and you can decide in advance who keeps access.
Is my family tree private?
Yes. Your tree and every recording on it are private to your family by default. There is no public sharing, no public genealogy directory, and no public voice models. You control who is invited, and you can export or request deletion of your family’s data.
See the family tree
Open the demo tree to explore a sample family and how each profile holds real memories, with no account needed. Hearthsay is in invite-only Early Access.