Using the timeline

How to make events, move them, date them as exactly as you know them, tie them together, and find your way around — with a mouse, a trackpad, a touch screen or the keyboard.

Rather be shown? Take the guided tour: it lights up the real editor one control at a time. In any timeline, Guided tour at the right-hand end of the toolbar starts it again, and the Hints switch at the top of the event panel explains each part of the panel in turn.

Making events

Double-click empty space: Adds an event there, sized to suit the zoom, and opens the event panel ready for its name.
Shift + drag across empty space: Sweeps out a period, from where you press to where you let go.
Add event: In the toolbar: adds a period in the middle of the view, on the first free row.
Period, Moment or Note: Choose one under Category in the panel. A period runs from a start to an end — a reign, a war, a life. A moment is a single point in time — a birth, a battle. A note belongs to no event at all (see Notes).
Title and Color: The name as it shows on the canvas, and its color: one of the swatches, or More colors for the rest. Colors are handy for grouping events by theme, person or place.

Moving and resizing

Drag an event: Moves it in time, or up and down to another row.
Drag either end of a period: Changes its start or its end, and nothing else.
Snap to: In the toolbar: the step a dragged date lands on, from decades to hours. Hold Alt while dragging to land between steps.
Click an event: Selects it and shows it in the event panel. Double-click it to open the panel too, if it was shut. Click empty space, or press Esc, to let it go.
Delete or Backspace: Deletes the selected event, as Delete event at the foot of the panel does. Ctrl + Z brings it back.

On someone else's public timeline you can look around, select events and read their notes, but not change anything.

Dates and uncertainty

Precision: How finely a date is known, from the year down to the minute. The date fields show only that much, so “539 BC” never turns into “Jan 1, 539 BC”.
Certainty: Choose Uncertain to say how much earlier (−) or later (+) the start and the end could be, in anything from minutes to centuries. On the canvas it shows as banded ends on a period and a whisker on a moment. A period's uncertainty can't be longer than the period itself: it shows how far a date might move, not a rival chronology.
Start, End and Duration: Type a date, or a length to move the end. The end can't come before the start; typing a start after the end moves the whole period later instead. A period typed down to no length suggests Moment, which is what a single point in time is for.

Links and anchors

Link: In the panel: ties the event to another, in a sentence — “This event's start is 4 years after the start of Reign of Solomon.” Linked events move as one in time. Each link is listed with Edit and Remove link; switching Link off removes them all.
Drag a linked event: Everything linked to it moves the same distance in time. Drag an end of a period, and whatever is linked to that end follows. Dragging never changes a gap: to change one, choose Edit and type it.
Hold Ctrl while dragging: Takes everything linked to the event up and down with it too, by the same number of rows.
Anchor: In the panel: holds the event to its date, so no drag can move it, or anything linked to it — though they can still change rows, and its dates can still be typed.

Notes

A note on an event: Type it in the panel's Note field: your reasoning, sources or references. A note icon appears beside the event's name; click it to show or hide the note, for everyone who reads the timeline.
A note on its own: Choose Note under Category, for a comment that belongs to no one event — where you have got to, say, or the reasoning behind several at once. It sits at its date and row as an icon: click it to show or hide it, drag it to move it, and double-click it to change it.
Turning an event into a note: Removes its links, anchor and uncertainty, which a note doesn't have. Ctrl + Z brings them back.

New notes start shut. Notes are saved, shared, overlaid and imported with the timeline, and a note left open stays open for readers.

Finding your way around

Drag empty space: Moves the view in any direction. Drag the ruler along the top to move through time alone.
Scroll wheel: Scrolls up and down through the rows. With Shift held, it moves back and forth in time.
Ctrl + scroll wheel, or pinch: Zooms in and out around the pointer. Scrolling over the ruler zooms too.
Two fingers on a trackpad: Swipe to move the view in any direction; pinch to zoom.
Fit: In the toolbar: zooms to show every event at once, including those of any timeline overlaid on yours.

The date under the pointer shows in the top right-hand corner of the ruler, only as precisely as the zoom allows: to the minute when you're zoomed right in, and to the nearest few years (“c. 1450 BC”) when you're zoomed far out.

Reading the canvas

A bar: A period, from its start to its end.
A dot: A moment: a single point in time.
Banded ends: How much earlier or later a start or end could be, beyond the bar or inside it. The solid outline is the best guess.
A whisker: How much earlier or later a moment could be.
A name under its bar: There's no room for the name inside its bar or beside it, so it hangs underneath, from a small tick at the start of the bar.
A dark corner: There's no room for the name anywhere near this bar. Point at the bar to see the name and dates, or zoom in. Pointing works the same for any name that's cut short.
Note: The event has a note. Click the icon to show or hide it on the canvas. While the note is showing, the icon has a ring around it.
Anchor: The event is anchored to its date. Dragging won't move or resize it, or move anything linked to it.
Link: The event is linked to others, and moves with them. The note and anchor icons take their event's color, but a link icon takes its group's, so every event that moves together shares one color. Point at the icon to see the whole group's links — a solid line for this event's own, dotted for the rest — and click it to list them, and edit or remove one.

Sharing and layers

Private / Public: In the top bar, and on each timeline on your dashboard: who can see it. Only you can see a private timeline. Anyone can view a public one, find it on Explore, lay it over their own or import it, but only you can edit it; the terms of use spell out what that permits. While it is public, the button beside it copies its link.
Share: While a timeline is public: sends its link through your device's own share sheet where there is one, or offers it to copy and to post to X, Facebook, LinkedIn or email. Timeline Source doesn't advertise, so sharing is how it grows.
Description and topics: Both sit beside the title in the top bar, and on each dashboard card. Click the description to read or change the whole of it, and + Topic to file the timeline under up to three subjects; click a topic to change it. Explore searches the description and offers the topics as filters.
Layers: Brings another public timeline onto yours. Overlay lays it over yours to compare them, read-only, and fits both on the screen; switch it off at any time. If its author later deletes it or makes it private, it stays in the list marked as no longer available, so you can remove it. Import copies its events into yours for good, with the original author credited.
Snapshot: Copies what is on the screen as a picture, to paste into a document, or saves it with Download PNG. Move and zoom first to choose what it shows. It is drawn at three times the size, so it stays sharp, and carries the timeline's title and the site's name along the bottom. Nothing is uploaded.
Save a copy: On someone else's public timeline: makes a copy of your own that you can change.

Your work saves as you go. Without an account it's kept in this browser only; Save to an account keeps it for good. Publishing, importing and saving a copy need an account.

If the top bar ever says Saving paused, your account (or the whole site) has reached a daily limit on saving, set far above ordinary use to stop runaway scripts. Keep the tab open: your changes stay in it and are saved when the limit lifts. The ? beside it explains what has happened and when saving resumes.

On a phone or tablet

Drag one finger: Moves the view, the same as dragging empty space.
Pinch two fingers: Zooms around the point between them; slide both together to move the view as you go.
The event panel: On a phone held upright it comes up from the bottom of the screen, and starts shut so the canvas has the whole screen: tap the round button on its edge to open it. Turn the phone on its side and the panel goes back to the right-hand edge.
The menu: Everything the toolbar cannot fit — Snap to, Private or Public, Layers, Snapshot, Guided tour — moves into the menu button at the top right. The description shrinks to an icon beside the title; tap it to read or change it.

Keyboard shortcuts

`←` `→` `↑` `↓`	Move the view; hold `Shift` to move further
`+` `−`	Zoom in and out
`Delete` or `Backspace`	Delete the selected event
`Esc`	Clear the selection, close a link's details, or leave a text field
`Ctrl` + `Z`	Undo
`Ctrl` + `Shift` + `Z`, or `Ctrl` + `Y`	Redo
`Ctrl` + `S`	Save now

On a Mac, use ⌘ for Ctrl and Option for Alt. Shortcuts wait while you're typing in a field.

See it for yourself

The sample timeline has a little of everything on this page.

Try it now