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Organise your ideas

There’s more than one way to create an outline.

Whether you’re readying a report or arranging an event, sometimes you need more than a simple list. You need hierarchy. And headings. Maybe a way to show relationships among items.

What you need is an outliner.

These apps help you visualise, organise and execute projects. Bullet points optional.

Outlinely

Because Outlinely is a Markdown text editor at heart, the app is robust enough to serve as your go-to outlining and writing app. It keeps these documents organised in a single library and syncs them among all your devices with its companion iPhone and iPad apps.

OutlineEdit 3

With a slew of editing themes, categories for colouring and filtering information, document statistics and support for graphics and images, OutlineEdit 3 is flexible enough to handle outlining, note-taking, task lists and even creative writing. Want to reuse a complex design? The app can create templates based on existing documents.

Bike Outliner

Outlines are often a combination of lists, tasks and text paragraphs – Bike Outliner’s fluid approach to text makes it simple to switch between them. When you need to reorganise, the clever outline-editing mode turns every row into a draggable item for quick rearranging. And when you’re ready to share a document, Bike lets you export it in standard formats other outlining apps can read, like plain text and Outline Processor Markup Language (OPML).

OmniOutliner

This pro-level tool offers a range of customisable formats and templates, powerful styling options and shortcuts for nearly every command, allowing you to create beautiful outlines without lifting your fingers from the keyboard. And OmniOutliner documents sync to the cloud, which means you can edit them on any device.

MindNode

MindNode’s elegant, tree-like mind maps let you organise your ideas in ways a strict outline can’t. Move items freely and define relationships as you visualise your project – and its evolution. Export the final result to PDF, OMPL (a standard outline format), Markdown and more.