Free · No sign-up to try

Free online timeline maker for stories that connect

Create interactive timelines with Wikipedia autofill, cause-and-effect links, chapters and games. Start free in your browser — no sign-up to explore and edit.

Try it free Explore an example

Land on a real timeline and start editing · A free account lets you build your own and keeps them safe

One continuous axis · Colour-coded lanes · Lifetimes and eras as durations, not dots

How it works

Three steps from a blank canvas to a story in time

Chrnox is built around one loop: capture a moment, place it beside everything else, then explore what the arrangement reveals.

Step 01

Capture the moment

Add an event in seconds, however you have it to hand.

Type a title and a date — day, month, year, or a span
Search Wikipedia and pull in the summary, dates and image
Add a photo and let its capture date fill in the day for you

Step 02

Place it and connect it

Everything lives on one continuous axis, so overlaps become obvious.

Group events into colour-coded lanes that run in parallel
Give things that lasted a real duration, not a single dot
Draw cause-and-effect and association links between events

Step 03

Explore, narrate, play, share

The finished timeline is something you can move through, not just look at.

Zoom from twelve thousand years on screen down to a single month
Write chapters that walk a reader through the story
Turn any timeline into four quick games — or publish it to the Wall

See a finished one

1900–1930: how the modern world was invented

In a single generation, almost every feature of modern life appeared at once — relativity beside Cubism beside the assembly line beside the vote for women. Four lanes, thirty years, and the unmistakable sense of a world being rebuilt in every field simultaneously.

It is the clearest short answer to what a timeline is for: the concurrency is the point, and a list of dates cannot show it.

37events 5parallel lanes 11connections

Explore the interactive timeline Try it yourself

Opens read-only in your browser. No sign-up, no email.

Typed links carry an explanation — “troop movements spread the pandemic”

What people build

One canvas, every kind of chronology

History timelines

Put civilisations, movements and discoveries side by side and watch the coincidences appear. Wikipedia autofill means a century of events takes an afternoon, not a week.

Good for: teaching, revision, research notes, essay planning

Biography timelines

Trace one life against the events that shaped it. Lifespans render as bars, so you can see instantly who overlapped with whom — and by how many years.

Good for: biographers, family historians, character studies, study notes

Personal life timelines

Build your own story from the photos you already have. Chrnox reads each photo's capture date, so a folder of pictures becomes a dated timeline with very little typing.

Good for: memoirs, family history, milestone records

The straight answers

Free, private, and yours

Free to use

Building, exploring, zooming, linking, chapters and the games are all free. There is no trial clock and no watermark on your work.

No sign-up to try it

You land on a real, editable timeline with no sign-up screen first. A free account is what lets you start timelines of your own, back them up, sync them across devices, and publish.

Private by default

Nothing is public until you deliberately publish it. Photos you upload yourself are stripped out before a timeline is ever published.

Your data comes back out

Export any timeline as a JSON file you keep, or save the current view as a PNG image. Import brings a timeline back in.

Questions

Before you start

Is Chrnox really free?

Yes. Creating timelines, adding events, Wikipedia autofill, cause-and-effect links, chapters, the four games and the daily puzzle are all free to use. You do not need to enter a card to start.

Do I need an account?

Not to try it. Open the app and you land on a real, fully editable timeline straight away — add events, follow the links, zoom the axis, play the games — with nothing sent anywhere and no sign-up screen in the way.

You do need a free account to start timelines of your own. It is also what syncs your work between your phone and computer, lets you upload photos and publish, and — importantly — backs your timelines up: anything held only in your browser is lost if you clear your browsing data.

How do I share a timeline I have made?

Publish it and you get a link anyone can open — no account needed on their end. You choose whether it appears on the public Wall or stays an unlisted link you send to specific people. Published timelines are frozen snapshots, so later edits to your copy do not change what you shared.

Can I export my timeline?

You can export a timeline as a JSON file that you keep and can re-import later, and you can save the current view as a PNG image. A full-timeline image export covering the whole span at once is in development.

What dates can I use?

Anything from deep prehistory through today. The axis runs continuously through the year zero into BCE, so a timeline can hold Stonehenge and last Tuesday at once. Each event can be as precise as a single day or as loose as a year, and anything with a beginning and an end renders as a duration rather than a point.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes. Chrnox runs in the browser on desktop, tablet and mobile, and the canvas is built for touch panning and pinch zoom. Dedicated iPhone and iPad apps are in development.

How is this different from a diagram or chart tool?

General diagram tools draw a picture of a timeline. Chrnox models time itself: one continuous, zoomable axis every event genuinely sits on, so overlaps, gaps and concurrency are computed rather than drawn by hand. That is what makes cause-and-effect links, lifespan comparisons and the games possible at all.

Start with one event. See where it leads.

Open it in your browser and start editing straight away. No sign-up until you want a timeline of your own.

Try it free Or play today's puzzle