SimpleMind - Mind Mapping 4+

This is the best mind mapping app I have found for iOS/MacOS. IMO the most important ‘feautre’ for a mind mapping or creativity app is being able to get your thoughts down without having to devote attention to the interface, and the interface here is simple and elegant- especially if you have a keyboard. After only a day I found the app pretty effortless to use (my other favorite app is Scapple, but there is no iOS version yet.)

The app comes with a good library of prebuilt styles but also has a lot of customization options so you can create your own styles, apply style elements to just individual items in a map, etc. There are multiple connection types available which is important if you like creating ‘free form’ type maps, most apps force you into a rigid connection scheme that looks bad if you want to move items around.

Finally, the app has some deeper features such as item notes, multiple link types, labels, checklist toggles, images, and an outline view. All for a single one-time registration fee (you’ll need to buy both iOS and MacOS apps separately though). The free version is completely usable on its own, and gives you plenty of opportunity to decide if you want to pay for the extra functionality of the Pro license.

I use this on an iPad and iPhone. There are so many mind mapping apps that are subscriptions or you only get a couple maps with the free versions. It took me way too long just to find one that I could just buy with a one time cost. I think I did read that you purchase it per platform though, so if I want to use it on my laptop I would have to buy that version. I probably won’t use it on the computer but even if I did, the software is good, so I’d be okay with the cost.

There’s one really big problem for me though which I hope is fixed in a future update. When I’m using the Apple Pencil on the iPad and enter a field to write into, it centers that field on the screen. That means I have to lift and move my hand to the center every time I want to write and then move the whole map back to the position I had it in. The palm rejection in the app isn’t great, both these together have caused some frustration. I’d much rather have an option to toggle this off so I can just write in the field where it already is.

You can paste an entire mind map (or a section of a mind map I think) into this app from PURE TEXT, if you ask ChatGPT to output a mind map in a certain format (specifically “XML based OPML 2.0”).

You can also OUPUT this format from the app and paste it into ChatGPT and it understands it and can help you understand it, elaborate on it, expand certain branches, brainstorm, think about how to connect sections, etc. Or it can even turn a mind map into a paragraph form and understand it like perfectly, which is shocking. Or it can literally do almost anything you want.

I think these things may have been paid features on the pro or premium purchase of this app (which was a one-time fee.) I can’t remember if I got them with that upgrade or if they already existed and I just found out about them after having already upgraded. But either way, the paid upgrade was very much worth it.