Apple’s included Freeform app is a flexible instrument for note-taking, doodles, collaborative planning, and rather more. Here is how you can use it as a mind-mapping instrument for visualizing plans, tasks, and concepts in your Mac, iPhone, and iPad.
First unveiled at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Convention in June 2022, Freeform is an open-canvas sort whiteboard app. It’s meant to be each a inventive and enterprise instrument — permitting single customers or a gaggle to share ideas, concepts, sketches and textual content visually.
Amongst its many talents, Freeform can simply substitute sometimes-expensive mind-mapping and brainstorming apps. By having the ability to broaden a venture as you go or transfer separate units of data round on a limitless area, it makes a very good place for visually organizing ideas, concepts, art work, suggestions, and extra.
The benefit of a program like Freeform over writing and drawing on paper is the power to revise, re-arrange, and even re-think your concepts, plans, or agenda. Images and different artwork will be dragged in, shapes and colours added for emphasis, handwritten or typed textual content will be written, drawings and circling will be added with an Apple Pencil or related stylus.
A mindmap made in Freeform of a deliberate itinerary to components of Europe.
The key behind mind-mapping apps is that when you find yourself in them, you might be inspired to focus your consideration and visualize your plan. This helps streamline and make clear what, when, and the way you need to accomplish one thing.
Getting began
A clean whiteboard will be as intimidating as a clean piece of paper, however with digital instruments you do not have to fret about making errors, since they are often simply corrected or undone. This frees you to suppose creatively in addition to virtually, which many individuals discover brings readability to their thought course of.
Step one, after all, is to open the app. If you happen to’ve by no means used it earlier than, take a second to go searching, after which examine the Assist menu within the menubar to get a guided tour of the instruments and capabilities of this system.
One straightforward strategy is to easily create a field within the heart of the board utilizing the form instrument, and add some textual content to articulate a objective, concept, or suggestion. Utilizing the textual content instruments, shapes, and arrow choices, you possibly can then create related ideas and put them the place they match.
Do not suppose it’s important to be artist to utilize a whiteboard app.
Upon getting created a form or textual content field, small controls will seem beneath it when you choose it. For shapes, this contains line thickness, shade, and transparency.
For a textual content field, choosing it brings up shade, dimension, and styling controls, lengthy with a option to change fonts. In case you are utilizing an Apple Pencil or suitable stylus, or are on an iPhone or iPad, drawing controls will seem on the backside of the window while you faucet the Pencil icon on the prime of the board.
Have a brand new concept? Add it in, transfer different issues round or put it in its personal field with an line connecting it to a different thought. You make the foundations.
The focusing impact this has is what makes mind-mapping so widespread.
Collaboration
As highly effective as seeing an concept will be by visualizing it, including collaborators will make ideas broaden by including different views and concepts to the combination. Apple’s customary sharing instruments can be found right here, and you may add folks on Apple units to see and work in your Freeform board with you.
Bringing collaborators in Freeform is much like how its accomplished in different Apple apps.
Choices embrace reside collaboration utilizing FaceTime inside the Freeform app, or simply making the doc shareable in order that others can add to it each time its handy for them.
Once you need to share and sync your mindmap with others, make sure that iCloud sync is turned on for the Freeform app. You could find this beneath Settings, [Your name], iCloud, Apps utilizing iCloud.
If you happen to do not see Freeform listed, click on on Present Extra Apps and scroll all the way down to toggle iCloud syncing for Freeform. As soon as that is accomplished, return to the Freeform app.
If you happen to’ve simply turned on iCloud sharing for Freeform, it could take a couple of minutes on your created boards to sync. As soon as that is accomplished, the Share icon within the higher proper of the app provides you many choices.
You’ll be able to add folks by means of your present contacts, FaceTime, textual content message, or e mail. As a result of different contributors might want to have the Freeform app out there, collaboration is at the moment restricted to Apple machine customers.
Saving, exporting, Connectors
There are some minor variations in the best way the Freeform app works in comparison with most Apple apps you may need used. For starters, there isn’t any Save button. Every board you create is robotically saved domestically in your machine, and synced by way of iCloud.
Exporting boards is restricted to the PDF format, although screenshots can be taken of a piece in progress. If you happen to want a contemporary area however do not need to create a brand new board, you possibly can add a tab to the prevailing board.
That may imply you find yourself with plenty of totally different tabs, and many various sections to your thoughts map. With iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia, Apple is including a Scenes characteristic to assist with this, because it enables you to shortly bounce to totally different components of your Freeform board.
Additionally coming in iOS 18 is an enchancment to a characteristic that’s notably necessary with mind-mapping. It is referred to as Connectors, and already it has the power to let you choose a number of objects after which group or rearrange them in numerous methods.
As soon as the newest replace to Freeform is formally launched, it is going to be doable to extra simply join objects on the board.
Leverage photos, textual content, shapes, fonts, and Connector instruments to comprehend your plans and concepts.
Options
Whereas Freeform is a superb, and free, app that will help you get began with mind-mapping and extra, it is not the one app of its type. A number of different choices exist which may fit your explicit wants even higher.
MindNode ($20 per yr) is a visible concepts supervisor that allows you to seize notions and tie associated ideas collectively visually by assigning every new expression its personal shade. It is also out there as a part of Setapp, an enormous assortment of Mac and iOS software program which begins at $9.99 per 30 days.
OmniGraffle is a multi-layer, org-chart fashion app that can be utilized for mind-mapping on Mac, iPad, and iPhone, with each subscription and one-time model licenses. One-time pricing is $149.99 for the standard license for Mac, or $59.99 for the standard license for iPhone and iPad.
The one-time pricing covers all updates to the present model, and discounted pricing on future variations. The subscription license for OmniGraffle is $12.49 per 30 days, which covers all three platforms.
XMind is a superb possibility for individuals who should collaborate throughout a number of platforms. It is out there on Mac, Home windows, Linux, iPhone, iPad and Android units. It options versatile constructions for organizing concepts that may be combined and matched as wanted.
The app has a free tier with fundamental features, together with a extra Professional paid tier for $59.99 per yr or $4.99 per 30 days.
Whether or not you simply need a big clean canvas for doodling or portray, or want a fast option to create a enterprise org chart, or should plan a gaggle occasion with others, Freeform lives as much as its identify. Thoughts-mapping is only one of its many talents; having the ability to collaborate or create on Mac, iPhone, or iPad makes it a must-try app.