Contact Us

Email the helpdesk

Do not hesitate to reach out if something is unclear. We reply to all messages within a few days and a large share of messages lead to improvements in our features or help pages. If researchers do not contact us, we cannot learn about problems.

For most questions or suggestions, please email genome@soe.ucsc.edu, a public mailing list. For other ways of reaching us and advice on what to include in your email, please see below.

To keep up to date with our data and feature releases, subscribe to our low volume mailing list. Announcements are also posted on Follow GenomeBrowser on Twitter Twitter.

Genome Browser staff 2021

Help us to resolve your question quickly

Before posting a question, we strongly encourage you to search our mailing list archives, our website, and our wiki for the answer. Please follow our technical support guidelines in your queries. This will give us enough information to resolve your issue without requests for more information. When sending us a browser URL, please you use our Session tool to create a link that fully captures the browser settings. All other links to the main Genome Browser will time out after a few days. If the URL is not to the main Genome Browser graphic but for track or item details pages, be sure to remove the "hgsid=<value>" parameter from any URL you send, as this can cause your personal settings to change unexpectedly. Read more about making links in our documentation.

Search the Genome Browser website:  

Search the Genome Browser Wiki Site:  


We encourage you to search the appropriate archive before contacting us via the mailing list, but we will reply to your message as quickly as we can.
Questions and comments submitted to most of the Genome Browser forums are publicly accessible and searchable. You may not want to send pre-publication data (custom tracks, track hubs), usernames or passwords to these. Use the "genome-www" email address below for queries that you do not want to see in internet search engine results.

Mailing list

Subscribe Search Write
Website and data questions
Publicly searchable, interactive discussion forum for questions about the UCSC Genome Browser software, annotation database, genome assemblies, bug reports and release cycles (high volume).

Subscribe Genome archives genome@soe.ucsc.edu
Server and website access problems
Private forum for reporting server errors or other access problems on the UCSC Genome Browser or BLAT servers. Scheduled service interruptions for system maintenance are posted to the genome-announce forum and our Twitter feed.
Please also use this private forum for sensitive data. It is visible only to our staff.

  Private: Not searchable genome-www@soe.ucsc.edu
Mirror and source code questions
Interactive discussion forum for questions about the setup and maintenance of Genome Browser mirrors. Commercial use of the source code and binaries requires a license. Set up a mirror.

Subscribe Genome-mirror archives genome-mirror@soe.ucsc.edu
Genome Browser announcements
Notifications from the Genome Browser project team about new software and data releases, and other items of interest to Genome Browser users (low volume).

Subscribe Genome-announce archives  
Track hub developers mailing List - discontinued in favor of a changes page
Track Hub Developers can learn about new Track Hub settings on our software release log or ask to join this collaborative mailing list to receive news about new track hub settings. The list shares updates about new documented settings on the Hub Track Database Definition page.

Track hub developers archives genome-www@soe.ucsc.edu
Genome Browser Training Program
For information about virtual or in-person training, please email us.

    genome-www@soe.ucsc.edu
Comments and suggestions
Private forum for suggesting new tracks, utilities, and other features for the Genome Browser.

    Suggestion Box

Commercial licensing inquiries

Genome Browser: genome-www@soe.ucsc.edu
Private forum for licensing questions. For more information about licensing the Genome Browser software, see the software licensing requirements.

Blat and In-Silico PCR: kent@soe.ucsc.edu
See the Kent Informatics web site for more information.

Postal address

We accept chocolate and hop-based drinks from users who want to express their satisfaction with our services:

UCSC Genome Browser Group
University of California, Santa Cruz
1156 High Street
Mailstop: Genomics Institute
Santa Cruz, CA 95064