Huminz — Write Your Life Story, Memoir & Biography for Free

Yes, it is. Huminz’s basic level is totally free. It allows you to write your story. Add your pictures, videos and friends.

Creating and sharing stories on Huminz is completely free — no subscription, no hidden fees. The only paid feature is ordering a professionally printed physical book of your story. Other printed outputs may be added in the future, but writing, editing, and sharing your stories will always remain free.

Anyone who feels the urge to have their story told and shared. Family members who would like to preserve the family history and those amazing stories of their parents’ lives. It can also be used as a tool for all ages to tell someone else or an historical figure story.

Your stories are private by default — only you can see them. You decide who to share with and when: send a story by link or email, or make it completely public. You can also invite someone to contribute to a single chapter, which lets them add their own version of that memory. Sharing is reversible at any time. Huminz will never share your story or your personal information.

Yes. Huminz has a dedicated mobile web app built from the ground up for phones and tablets. When you open Huminz on a mobile device you are automatically directed to the mobile version. If you save it to your home screen, it behaves just like a native app — no app store required.

Just sign up and choose to create a new story. We recommend that you start with adding milestones for major events in life. Schools, work,weddings and kids. Look at the meanwhile column to remind yourself of major events in history.

Yes. You can write multiple stories at the same time.

While writing about a certain period in your life, “Meanwhile” gives a snapshot of the other events that were happening at that same time around you. As you scroll down these lists, they are bound to trigger long-forgotten memories from your past.

If you feel you hit a wall and don’t know how to proceed, click the “stuck” button for insightful questions to get your stories rolling again. For a blank chapter there is also Jumpstart — see the next question.

No — the story stays yours. Jumpstart is there for the hardest moment, the empty page. You write one sentence about the memory, Jumpstart asks you three questions about it, and from your answers it drafts a few paragraphs in the voice of your own writing. You can edit every word of it, ask for a different draft, or throw it away. Nothing is added to your chapter unless you accept it.

Click on the milestone you want to edit and use the “Make a chapter” button in the dialog box.

You can cut and paste text from any source. You can write in any application you are comfortable with and then copy it to the Huminz chapter.

Yes. You can invite contributors to any chapter using the People feature. An invitee can write their own version of that chapter — adding details, memories, or photos from their perspective. You, as the author, then decide whether to keep your original, use theirs, or copy over the parts that resonate. The story is always yours; contributors can only suggest.

With our easy-to-use tools, you can tell your story in words, pictures, videos, and voice recordings, all in one place.

You can easily include photos from any phone or tablet. Our unique method allows you to seamlessly move any picture as you are editing your story.

You can easily add a video clip to any chapter. Video clips must be on YouTube in order to add them to your Huminz story. Once they are there you add them to Huminz by pasting their address into the video clip dialog.

Yes. You can record audio notes directly in the app. Each chapter can have its own audio recordings, which play back when reading the story.

People is a unique feature of huminz that allows you to have mini stories about the important people in your story. People is also the way to invite others to see and participate in the story.

Huminz displays your story in eight reading modes: Story (a clean narrative layout), Events (your chapters and milestones as a scrollable board), Timeline (a visual chronological view), Paper (your story as a personal front page), Map (your life plotted geographically, chapter by chapter), People (read the story through the people in it), Slides (a full-screen slideshow for a family gathering), and Trivia (a quiz made from your own story). You can switch between modes at any time.

Share by email, on Facebook or on Twitter, create a slideshow for an event, or print a book. Your friends do not need to be Huminz users to read a story you share with them.

Sharing works at the story level: a story is either private, shared with the people you send the link to, or fully public. There is no separate setting to publish only some chapters of a shared story. If you want part of a life kept apart, keep it as its own story — you can write as many as you like.

Absolutely. You can share by email, on Facebook or on Twitter. Your friends do not have to be Huminz users, but we would love to have them writing and sharing their stories too.

Yes. You can download your story as a PDF or a Word document at any time, and either file can be taken to any print service. You can also order a professionally printed book from inside Huminz, with no files to handle yourself. How the printed book works.

Like a real book. A title page, a contents list with page numbers, then your chapters in order with their photographs, and a cover. Huminz lays the pages out for printing, so nothing is cut off at the edges or lost in the binding. You choose the size and the binding, look through the whole book before deciding, and order it from inside Huminz — there are no files to handle yourself. More about the printed book.

We love it too, but printing is only offered for the book layout at the moment. The newspaper is a way of reading your story on screen, and one you can share by link. A printed newspaper edition is something we would like to add later.