Stay up to date with the latest improvements to OpenHeritage.
Version 2.6.4 — June 2026
Smoother referenced photo browsing
Referenced photos on source pages now load progressively as you scroll, with a clearer loading state for larger sets.
Better PDF upload compatibility
PDF uploads now accept some valid but non-standard files that do not include an EOF marker, while the existing safety checks for suspicious content still stay in place.
Version 2.6.3 — May 2026
Safer PDF uploads
PDF uploads now use stricter safety checks for embedded files, remote links, scripts, and other suspicious patterns before accepting a file.
Cemetery merges keep photos
When cemeteries are merged, attached cemetery photos are now carried over to the merged result, helping preserve media during cleanup and consolidation.
Version 2.6.2 — May 2026
Broader archive statistics
The statistics page now includes archive-wide summary cards and dedicated sections for photo archive items, sources, source documents, repositories, and research pages.
Coverage dates in the sources list
The sources list can now show coverage dates directly in the table, making it easier to see which periods a source covers before opening it.
Better repository browsing and export
Repository pages now support pagination plus filters by type, visibility, and country, and linked sources can be exported as CSV or JSONL.
Better place details (early access)
Place detail and edit pages now preserve a back link to the places list, and the map on a place page can switch between available geometries by time period.
Version 2.6.1 — May 2026
Better cemetery boundaries
The cemetery detail pages display the calculated area when boundary geometry is available.
Easier geometry updates in Places (early access)
When editing a place, you can now load boundary geometry directly from a GeoJSON or JSON file instead of pasting it manually.
Coordinate recovery for some memorials
In some cases, memorials missing coordinates can now get estimated coordinates automatically from nearby GPS-tagged user-uploaded photos taken in the same cemetery around the same time.
Automatic redirects after merges
Old cemetery and memorial links now forward automatically to the current canonical record after merges, so saved links keep working.
Version 2.6.0 — May 2026
Places (early access)
A new Places section is now available in early access. You can browse canonical places, search and filter them by type, open place detail pages, and, if you are signed in, add or edit place records.
More predictable memorial text search
Memorial text search now uses literal substring matching, making everyday searches by names, places, and inscription fragments behave more predictably.
Better page descriptions
Articles, sources, research pages, photo pages, and people-on-photo pages now generate clearer descriptions for search engines and link previews, improving how these pages appear when shared or indexed.
Version 2.5.2 — May 2026
AI Assistant resilience (early access)
The early-access AI Assistant now shows clearer, localised messages when the selected AI provider is temporarily unavailable or has hit a rate limit. This makes it easier to understand what happened and when to retry.
Version 2.5.1 — May 2026
AI Assistant improvements (early access)
The early-access AI Assistant now works better on mobile screens, with a dedicated conversations drawer and a clearer conversation list layout.
Safer person linking in photo annotation
When linking a face on a photo to an existing person, you now need to explicitly choose that person from the dropdown. Typing free text no longer auto-links to a possibly wrong existing record.
Faster document entry loading
Document entry data now loads faster thanks to improved fetching and caching behind the scenes.
Version 2.5.0 — May 2026
AI Assistant (early access)
A new AI Assistant is now available in early access, with a chat interface, saved conversations, suggested prompts, citations, and a localised interface in English, Ukrainian, and Polish.
Library support in sources
Libraries can now be recorded as a source or repository type in source-management forms, making it easier to model published and library-held materials alongside archives and museums.
Larger direct uploads
The direct upload limit for source-document files has been increased to 130 MB, allowing more files to be uploaded without switching to the chunked-upload path.
Faster person suggestions in photo annotation
The person picker in photo face annotation now caches loaded people and handles suggestions more smoothly, making repeated tagging work faster and less jumpy.
Version 2.4.8 — May 2026
Search available for everyone
Platform-wide Search is now available to everyone. The Search link is always visible in the main navigation, and the home page now includes a dedicated search box. Entry results also show the source and document titles, giving more context before you open a result.
Version 2.4.7 — May 2026
Media preview compatibility
Original source-document files now expose metadata more consistently to browsers before download or playback begins. This improves inline opening and media seeking, especially for video files.
Video preview refresh fix
When switching between videos in the document viewer, the preview now refreshes correctly instead of occasionally keeping stale player state from the previously selected file.
Version 2.4.6 — May 2026
Upload time estimates
Document uploads now show an estimated time remaining, giving clearer feedback during large and chunked transfers.
Smoother document and media loading
Partial file loading has been improved for source documents, making video seeking and other range-based downloads more reliable. Cross-source document search also handles cancelled requests more cleanly, reducing spurious unexpected-error states during rapid filtering or navigation.
Version 2.4.5 — May 2026
Video previews in document viewer
Video files attached to source documents can now be previewed directly in the document viewer. Videos no longer trigger the large-file warning used for other formats, and playback is smoother thanks to support for partial downloads.
More resilient uploads
File uploads now retry automatically when a transient connection or stream error occurs, reducing failed uploads on unstable networks.
Memorial editor improvements
Birth and death years are now validated across memorial editing, import, and transcription workflows. When you add a new person to a memorial, the editor also keeps the new entry in view instead of leaving it below the fold.
New help articles
A new How to use the platform article section brings step-by-step guides for search, maps, the photo archive, source documents, and volunteer workflows.
Version 2.4.4 — May 2026
KML and KMZ map previews
KML and KMZ files attached to source documents can now be previewed directly on a map inside the document viewer. Placemark points, lines, and areas are rendered in place, so geographic content can be inspected without downloading the file first.
Version 2.4.3 — May 2026
Search quality improvements (early access)
The early-access Search page now does a better job of surfacing relevant cemetery and research records by prioritising the most important names, places, and summary text when building meaning-based matches.
OCR quality filtering
Automatic transcription processing now more reliably detects noisy OCR output, reducing false high-quality scores for fragments such as mixed-script text, domain-like strings, and stray number-heavy lines.
Version 2.4.2 — May 2026
Search improvements (early access)
The early-access Search page now finds better meaning-based matches in addition to exact keyword matches, helping surface relevant records even when the wording differs. Photos can now appear directly in search results as well, expanding what can be discovered from a single search page.
Memorial list improvements
The memorials page now supports coordinate-based filtering, making it easier to narrow results to a specific area. Memorial cards and loading placeholders have also been refined for a cleaner browsing experience.
Coordinate picker basemaps
When choosing coordinates for a memorial, you can now switch between map base layers to get the view that works best for the location.
Version 2.4.1 — May 2026
Search improvements
Search results pages now include dynamic meta tags and structured data, making individual search result pages indexable by search engines and shareable with proper previews. Search index quality has also been improved: persons linked to memorial photos are now included in search results.
Memorial search results now display a photo preview thumbnail. Research record hits now show associated surnames and places directly in the result card.
Version 2.4.0 — May 2026
Search (early access)
A new platform-wide Search page lets you find memorials, cemeteries, research records, persons, and source entries all in one place. Results are highlighted and ranked by relevance, with filters and pagination for every result type. Enable the AI semantic search toggle to find records by meaning rather than exact keywords.
Document viewer improvements
The document viewer and source entry tables now support direct navigation to individual entry pages. Tab selections are also reflected in the page URL, making it easy to share a direct link to a specific view and improving search-engine indexing.
Document upload enhancements
The document upload panel now offers an option to create a separate document record directly from an uploaded file. File upload security checks have also been strengthened.
Version 2.3.11 — April 2026
Memorials upload improvements
The memorials batch upload page now shows a clear call-to-action for users who are not signed in, with direct links to register or log in. The page is also now included in the sitemap for better discoverability.
Statistics charts
The statistics page charts (date patterns, demographics, languages, photography) have been rebuilt with ApexCharts, bringing interactive tooltips, zoom, and improved rendering across all screen sizes.
API rate limiting
Rate limits have been added to several public API endpoints (name lookup, sitemaps, source documents, reverse geocoding) to improve platform stability under load.
Version 2.3.10 — April 2026
Cross-source document search
A new Documents page is now available in the navigation menu. It lets you search and filter uploaded source documents across all sources in one place, without having to navigate into each source individually.
Document viewer improvements
The document viewer now shows uploader information and upload timestamps in the document details panel. The sidebar and preview panel also adapt better to different screen sizes.
PDF upload security
Uploaded PDF files are now validated for structural integrity and known malicious payload patterns before being accepted. Oversized PDFs and files that fail security checks are rejected with a clear error message.
Version 2.3.9 — April 2026
External archive links in document viewer
Columns in the tabular document viewer can now be tagged with the Archive Short Name semantic type. When archive metadata columns (archive, fund, inventory, case) are all tagged, each row gains a direct link to search that case in an external archive tool — opening the relevant record in Duck Archive Inspector without leaving the page.
Increased upload limit
The maximum file size for direct uploads has been raised to 300 MB, accommodating larger scanned documents and multi-page PDFs.
Photo wall stability
The photo wall grid now correctly cancels in-flight requests and releases resources when navigating away, preventing stale loading states.
Upload form locking
All form fields in the document upload panel are now disabled while an upload is in progress, preventing accidental changes to file metadata mid-upload.
Version 2.3.8 — April 2026
Document upload
Large files are now uploaded in chunks, making uploads more reliable on slow connections and removing the previous oversized-file warning.
Tabular document viewer
Text search in tabular (spreadsheet-style) documents now highlights matching cells in real time. Regex patterns are supported in column filters.
Version 2.3.7 — April 2026
Document Upload
Attaching documents to a source is now available directly from the source page and the document viewer.
A new upload dialog lets you select files, set a title, choose a visibility mode, and accept a rights declaration before submitting.
Drag-and-drop is supported alongside the standard file picker.
Upload progress is shown inline, with clear feedback at each stage.
PDF files are previewed inline in the document viewer; other formats fall back to a standard file display.
Cemetery Map — Beta Banner
The cemetery map page now shows a beta notice informing visitors that the map feature is still in active development.
Source Photo Wall
Photos linked to a source are now displayed conditionally, avoiding empty sections when no photo assets are available.
Version 2.3.5 — April 2026
Bug Fixes
Document image viewer — further hardened the image viewer against crashes caused by prototype-polluting libraries. Internal iteration loops now explicitly skip inherited properties, preserving correct prototype-chain semantics without side-effects on other components.
Version 2.3.4 — April 2026
Bug Fixes
Document image viewer — fixed crashes caused by third-party libraries adding extra properties to built-in JavaScript prototypes. The viewer's OpenSeadragon instance is now fully isolated in its own module scope, preventing any interaction with other copies of the library loaded on the same page.
Version 2.3.3 — April 2026
Bug Fixes
Document image viewer — the viewer now loads and manages its own dedicated OpenSeadragon instance instead of sharing the one bundled by other UI components. This eliminates a class of crashes caused by version mismatches between different OpenSeadragon builds loaded on the same page.
Photo view recording — photo view counts are now only incremented for authenticated users, preventing anonymous traffic from inflating view statistics.
Document page images — the page viewer now prefetches display-optimised image variants when available, reducing load times for high-resolution scans.
Upload confirmation wording — the upload responsibility confirmation now explicitly mentions publication responsibility alongside content responsibility.
Version 2.3.2 — April 2026
Bug Fixes
Document image viewer — further hardened the fix for viewer crashes introduced in 2.3.1. The patch is now applied proactively at viewer construction time, covering additional edge cases where stale async tile callbacks could arrive after a viewer was destroyed.
Version 2.3.1 — April 2026
Bug Fixes
Home page locale detection — the home page now correctly reads the visitor's saved or browser-preferred language when redirecting to a locale, instead of always falling back to English after server-side rendering.
Document image viewer stability — fixed a crash in the image viewer that could occur when reopening a document or navigating between pages in certain browsers.
Expanded Useful Research Links
The genealogical research links article has been significantly extended with additional regional archives, specialised historical databases, and diaspora record collections.
Version 2.3.0 — April 2026
Source Documents
Sources can now have archival documents attached directly to them — linking original scanned or born-digital materials to the bibliographic record.
Single-file upload — attach any file type (PDF, DOCX, TIFF, ZIP, etc.) to a Source.
Page-based documents — upload a sequence of individual page scans; each page receives a stable identity for independent viewing and future citation.
Tabular records — CSV, XLS, and XLSX files are imported as structured records with a column schema editor that lets you label and type each column.
Large-file support — files of any size are accepted through chunked upload; the source record stays lightweight while the binary is stored in object storage.
Advanced description — each document can carry a Markdown-formatted description, editable directly from the document viewer and rendered with full formatting.
Document Viewer
A new document viewer lets you browse multi-page archival documents page by page, read transcriptions, and navigate between pages without leaving the source context. The layout adapts to the available screen width.
OpenHeritage Mobile App (closed beta)
A new Android app is in closed beta for field contributors who photograph grave markers on-site.
Take photos directly with the device camera and have them tagged with GPS coordinates.
GPS quality indicator shows accuracy in real time before the shot is taken.
The app detects nearby cemeteries automatically based on your current location.
An offline upload queue handles unreliable connectivity — photos are uploaded in the background with automatic retries until they succeed.
GPS Coordinate Validation
GPS coordinates are now validated before being stored. Invalid or out-of-range values are rejected at the point of ingestion, keeping location data consistent across memorials, cemeteries, and photo assets.
Version 2.2.9 — April 2026
Move to Cemetery — Background Processing
Moving a memorial's photos to a cemetery folder now runs as a background operation. Previously, memorials with a large number of photos could cause the request to time out before all images were transferred. The operation now completes reliably regardless of how many photos are attached, and the page responds immediately while the transfer continues in the background.
Version 2.2.8 — April 2026
AI-Powered Grave Photo Detection
Uploaded memorial photos are now automatically analysed by an on-device AI model to detect whether the image actually shows a grave stone. Photos that do not match are flagged for review, helping to keep the archive accurate and consistent.
Photo scoring runs at upload time with no manual intervention needed.
Confidence threshold tuned to reduce false positives.
Detection metadata is stored alongside each memorial image.
Articles System Improvements
The articles section received several quality-of-life upgrades:
Language mismatch alert — when you open an article whose language differs from your current UI language, a banner appears with a direct link to the correct version.
Viewport-aware table of contents — on wide screens the table of contents floats alongside the article text; on mobile it appears inline above the content.
Performance — the content manifest is now built once at startup and served from memory, eliminating redundant file reads on every page visit.
Useful Genealogical Research Links
A new article listing curated resources for genealogical research in Ukraine has been added, including state archives, online databases, and diaspora record collections.
Transcription Review Navigation
The memorial transcription review workflow now shows the cemetery name and provides direct navigation buttons to both the memorial and its cemetery — reducing the number of clicks needed to verify context.
Version 2.2.7 — March 2026
Cemetery Context in Transcription Review
Transcription review assignments now carry the associated cemetery ID. This unlocks:
A "Go to Cemetery" navigation button directly from the review page.
A "Go to Memorial" button to jump to the full memorial record.
Faster resolution of edge cases where knowing the cemetery location disambiguates names.
Version 2.2.6 — March 2026
Home Page & SEO Improvements
The home page now automatically detects the visitor's preferred language and redirects to the appropriate locale version (
/en/,/uk/, or/pl/).Open Graph and canonical meta tags are generated correctly for every locale, improving appearance in search results and social sharing.
The build pipeline was updated to detect which services have changed and rebuild only those containers, cutting deployment times significantly.