AttoGetting started
Your first hour with Atto, in order. No Terminal, no genealogy jargon, and nothing you have to get right the first time — every step here is reversible.
What you need before you begin
- A Mac with an Apple chip (M1–M4), macOS 13 or newer.
- Your purchase email, which has the claim link for your license file.
- One relative you are curious about. That is genuinely enough — you do not need a single certificate to start.
Not bought yet? Buy the kit — $299. Windows is closed beta, invite-only, and not publicly available yet; you can still buy, claim your license, and get support from a Windows PC.
1 · Install the app
Download the Mac app from the download page. Open the disk image, then drag Atto out of that window into Applications or your Desktop before you run it. Opening it from inside the mounted image is the single most common install snag.
If macOS says it can’t verify the developer, right-click the app and choose Open.
2 · Import your license
Open the claim link from your purchase email and download license.json. Then in Atto, click Import license in the bar at the top of the window and choose that file.
That is the whole licensing step. There is no folder to find and no command to type. Until a license is imported, creating projects and the Inbox stay locked.
If the claim link says it expired, reopen the claim page — the download link is deliberately short-lived, but the page keeps working. Lost the email entirely? Email Support with your Stripe receipt.
3 · Create a project
A project is one family line. Name it something you will recognize a year from now — a surname and a town works well, like rossi-sellia.
Everything for that project lives in a folder on your own Mac (~/AttoVault/). Nothing is uploaded anywhere.
4 · Tell Atto what you already know
This is the step people skip, and it is the one that makes everything after it work.
Go to Inbox and fill in the short “what I know” note: a name, a rough birth year, and a town or region. Guesses are fine — “somewhere near Catanzaro, around 1890” is a usable starting point. Atto reads this note to build your search links.
Already have a family tree? If you exported a GEDCOM (.ged) from Ancestry, MyHeritage, or FamilySearch, import it on Home instead. Everyone in that file appears in your tree right away, and you can skip ahead.
5 · Build a find plan
On Research, click Build find plan. Atto turns your note into a list of ready-to-open searches — Antenati for Italian civil records, FamilySearch, Ellis Island passenger lists, and others, already filled in with the name, year, and place.
Click a link and it opens in your normal browser, where you log in as yourself and look at real records. Atto never scrapes an archive or logs in on your behalf. That boundary is the reason Atto stays out of trouble with those sites — and the reason nothing appears in your tree by surprise.
Want to see the whole loop before doing real research? Open Practice & advanced tools on the Research screen and run the practice records. They are made-up samples that ship with the app, not real ancestors, and they never change your tree.
6 · Approve your first record
When Atto has something to suggest, it goes to the Approve queue — never straight into your tree. You look at the evidence, then choose Add to tree or Reject, one record at a time.
This is the only way anything is ever written to your family tree, and only a human can do it. Not an AI helper, not a background job. Rejecting costs nothing.
7 · Look at your tree
The Tree tab builds a private chart on your own machine and opens it in your browser. Full Social Security numbers are stripped before anything is drawn.
A brand-new project has an empty tree until you import a GEDCOM or approve your first find — that is expected, not a bug.
Where people go next
- Citizenship paperwork — the checklist on Research tracks each document from Identified to Recognized. It is a tracker, not legal advice, and Atto never files anything for you.
- Old handwriting — photograph a hard-to-read act and Atto drafts the text for you to check. Pick who the record is about first; the draft then waits on Approve like anything else.
- Sharing with family — build a redacted site and invite specific people. Off by default.
- AI helpers — entirely optional. MCP setup if you already use Cursor or Claude; ignore it otherwise and nothing breaks.
If you get stuck
Check the first-session questions in the FAQ, then email Support. Please don’t post certificates, passport scans, or Social Security numbers in Discord — send those nowhere, and describe the problem instead.