While the spread of the new corona virus has impacted our lives, we've all taken preventative measures and have switched to working from home. Instead of chatting with each other in our office kitchen, we're now doing daily team video chats. With our kids at home, our productivity has naturally slowed a bit, but we are adapting and are still hard at work on the next update. In the spirit of a recent post by Jason Fried, we want to offer you a small glimpse into our current home office setup.

"My home office setup is a MacBook Pro with an external display and nothing else. Rarely pen and paper. That black thing behind the display is a PlayStation 4."

"I share my home office with my two cats. For testing MindNode and supporting our users I have a MacBook Pro (+ second screen, stand, Magic Keyboard & Trackpad), two iPads (+ keyboard & Apple Pencil), an Apple Watch and iPhone XR. Also a notebook, highlighter, pen & sticky notes."

"When I work at home I normally work from the kitchen table. For the quarantine, we built a home setup in our bedroom. From the office, I brought home a monitor, an office chair and peripherals.  We also 'borrowed' a desk from our daughter. My wife and I share this setup at the moment."

"Luckily, I have my company iMac here at home. Otherwise MacBook Pro 13", late 2013"

"My usual home office is a IKEA standing desk, Mac Pro with XDR plus 27” LG, a RødeCaster with AudioTechnica mic and headphones for podcasting, as well as my cam for video work. Audio is done with a smaller Bose Setup and some stereo-linked HomePods in the rear. Oh, and I use all the lighting gear for video stuff to bring this room to blinding daylight brightness, which helps a lot with the mood right now. :)"

"My wife and I converted our dining table into a shared home office. My half of the table features a MacBook Pro with an external monitor and an iPad Pro."

"My desk didn’t really change due to Covid-19. Just the office in Impact Hub Ostrava that I share with 2 others is just for me in these days. Featuring Ikea motorized desk, old but still good 24” HP display, 16” MBP, 11” iPad Pro, B&O headphones, Magic Mouse."

"My office is in my bedroom. I reassure myself of the existence of the outside world with a desktop wallpaper of my last holiday. I use two video-led panels on microphone stands to brighten up the room."

The spread of the new corona virus has impacted all of our lives. Here's how we've adapted to working from home.

One of the philosophies that go into the design of all of MindNode’s features is that the app stays out of your way, letting you focus on your thoughts and create your mind map. Simultaneously we put a lot of effort into making our features as powerful and easily accessible as possible. We take advantage of the various types of gestures and shortcuts that are possible on the Mac and on iOS to make mind mapping intuitive and a delightful experience. So we’d like to shine a light on some of the interactions in MindNode that are slightly hidden, and will help you become a power user.

A long press action is triggered by holding your finger down on the screen of your iPad or iPhone on a particular element for about a second. This gesture can add an extra layer of functionality to a button or element that you normally tap, which is how we added a few of the following hidden features in your actions panel.

You can easily change a node into a task by using the Command + Shift + T keyboard shortcut, or by finding the feature in the actions panel, however there is one more hidden shortcut to make this happen. Simply highlight the branch you would like to transform into tasks, and long press the inspector panel icon (the three dots) and voila! You’ve just made some tasks. Long press the icon again to remove them.

If your node has a note attached to it, you can quick preview the content of it by long pressing the notes/tag symbol. A preview will appear on your canvas as long as you keep your finger pressed on the screen.

Next time you want to add an image to your mind map that you have saved in your iCloud folders instead of your photo stream, long press the images symbol and the file manager will show up.

If you like the way a particular node looks, you can quickly copy its style to your entire map, nodes on the same level or the rest of the branch. Select the node you like and long press the style symbol to choose where to apply your look.

That's all for now. Hidden Features will be a recurring series on our blog, showcasing more gestures and interactions throughout MindNode on macOS and iOS.

Learn how to use long press actions in MindNode on iOS and discover some hidden features.

MindNode's Hidden Features – Long Press Actions in iOS

My name is Christopher Grant and I am a professional artist working in the medium of oil on large format canvas to create traditional Abstract Expressionist works.

How has MindNode been a part of your workflow?

While I mainly use MindNode in my professional work, one of the more interesting uses I’ve found is creating cartographic style concept maps for a game I play with friends, Dungeons & Dragons.

Originally it was just a part of my workflow, utilizing other applications along side it. Now, however, MindNode is the workflow. Almost everything I do for our games begins and ends with MindNode. From brainstorming and creating adventures to expanding our cartographic maps. It is the constant brainstorming that is the workspace rather than a jumping-off point.

Tell us more about how you use mind mapping for creating an adventure.

During our gameplay, players will adventure through fictional places I’ve created for them as the Dungeon Master. A Dungeon Master is like a storyteller and the Players are like the main protagonists of the story. Rather than using traditionally drawn maps, I create concept maps where each node represents a specific place such as a town or dungeon.

Are there any features in MindNode that help in particular?

When players explore new areas I’ve not yet created, something that happens a lot in our games, I can quickly create new nodes describing them. It’s this ability to not get bogged down with the multiple keystrokes that makes it so desirable. It’s fast to create maps! This drastically reduces preparation time and perhaps more importantly helps keeps our fictional world where it should be, in our imaginations.

Another important feature of MindNode is one most people may not even consider a feature, it’s esthetics. Because these mind maps that are created for our games are often shared, it’s important they look good. MindNode’s mind maps are quite esthetic and thus I’m not forced to spend large amounts of time making changes in order to make our maps pretty. As such, the app feels lighter, faster and more fluid than other mind mapping applications.

"Almost everything I do for our games begins and ends with MindNode." – Christopher Grant

How Christopher Creates Adventures with Mind Maps – Being a Dungeon Master

MindNode 7 is now available on the App Store, the Mac App Store, and Setapp. This release adds Visual Tags, a new feature that helps you add more context to your thoughts. We have also introduced our new MindNode Plus subscription and a new Free Editor.

Tags are a great way to categorize and add more context to your thoughts. You can use them to prioritize ideas and bring focus to a related group of ideas that are otherwise not connected. Using our tag highlight mode, you can focus on a group of tags to discover new connections between your ideas. 

We’ve also updated our outline to support tags. Now when you’re browsing your mind map in outline mode, you can see which tags you’ve assigned to your nodes.

Visual Tags can also be added to your thoughts while typing them up in Quick Entry. Simply select the tag symbol to add a tag to your node or just type # and the following text will become a tag. This #-shortcut will also work when you edit your nodes on the canvas.

With MindNode 7 we have also changed our business model from a one-time purchase to a subscription. MindNode Plus is our new cross-platform subscription that unlocks all of MindNode’s features on Mac & iOS. 

MindNode 7 is a free upgrade for all existing MindNode 5 and MindNode 6 customers. This means that if you purchased MindNode 5 or 6 your app will automatically update to MindNode 7 and you will get Visual Tags and all other enhancements for free. New features in future releases will require MindNode Plus.

MindNode Plus is available as a monthly and annual subscription. Initially, the monthly subscription will be priced at $2.49 and the yearly at $19.99 (local prices will vary based on taxes and currency conversion).

We have also introduced a new Free Editor, which allows basic editing operations like adding nodes, editing titles, reordering and folding. Documents can also be imported and exported. Even when your subscription has elapsed, you are never locked in and you always have access to your data.

For more information about our decision to change our business model please read our previous blog post, and if you have any questions about your license please check our extensive FAQ about MindNode Plus.

With only 9 months since  MindNode 6, a major point-update last fall and now MindNode 7 with Visual Tags and a major update to our business model, we have entered a new era for MindNode. In the future, we will be able to bring you new features and updates much more frequently. 

We are looking forward to hearing your feedback and please don't forget to check out the release notes for all new MindNode 7 changes - like new stickers, a new theme and better system integration on iOS. 

Add More Context to Your Thoughts – MindNode 7 has Landed

Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

My name is David and I am working as a freelance React Native developer and bootcamp instructor specializing in cross-platform application development. I work remotely and I love building things for happy users.
My other mission is helping people to earn time by sharing all my automation and life hacks!

I am using MindNode for a lot of things, but basically it's for dumping my brain.

As a developer — and especially in the JavaScript world — it's really complicated to stay up-to-date with all the different technologies. When I am reading a great article, instead of just bookmarking it, I make a manual curation for my own work. I found this technique really effective for the memory, because when I am working with clients or during a bootcamp I remember the location of the bookmark on my giant mind map.

As a React developer I am always thinking in terms of a tree of component (It's more or less the same as a giant HTML page with plenty of nodes). When I jump on a new project, I used to draw the application component tree on a whiteboard. Now I am using MindNode, it helps me to visualise the interactions and state.
As an automation Nerd I am using a lot of tools like Zapier to connect API's together. It's really powerful for creating automated flows like the classic onboarding. It's ok when you have simple interactions, but when it become more complex I always create a mind map to reflect all the different scenarios.

Your first release to the store for your mobile application

Going to vacations can be a stressful experience. As humans being we like to complete tasks. That's a great opportunity to use the feature "add task to node" and export them to notes to complete my packing list from my phone!

What features in particular have been important for you?

When you are working 8 hours on a tool, every seconds matters. I am a power user of Alfred, a productivity app which boosts your efficiency with hotkeys.

One of my main problem is time. If I want to edit a mind map here is the classic workflow:

It's very slow, I don't have time for this. This is why I am using Alfred to automate the workflow.

This allows me to quickly copy/paste urls if I want to bookmark them.

According to me, the most important feature with MindNode is sharing files in different formats (.pdf,.png or .markdown) I am using it all the time!

When I need to write a blogpost I can quickly export my MindNode document (with option +  command + e) to a markdown file and illustrate my thoughts with a nice image.

Feel free to contact me on Twitter if you want some automation advice with MindNode 😉

"When I am working with clients or during a bootcamp I remember the location of the bookmark on my giant mind map." - David Leuliette

How David Develops with Mind Maps – Automating and Planning

From time to time we update our privacy policy to adapt it to changing legal requirements and updates to our services infrastructure. Today we released a significant update and we want to ensure you are aware of it.

We updated many parts of the policy to improve its clarity and added more details on how long we retain data. We also added a new section to document how we process data of applicants. Due to local Austrian rules, we also changed the required legal age for data collection from 14 to 16.

You can find our updated version of the privacy policy here. If you have any feedback or need help, please drop us a note at privacy@mindnode.com.

We are excited to announce that we are going to ship MindNode 7, our next major update, early next year. MindNode 7 will add Visual Tags - a brand new feature to bring more context to your ideas. With this release, we are also introducing a new Free Editor and customers can unlock our full feature set with our new MindNode Plus subscription. For all existing MindNode 5 and MindNode 6 customers, MindNode 7 will be a free upgrade.

We will share more information about our new tagging feature in the coming weeks. Today I’d like to focus on our motivation behind changing our business model and what it means for the future of MindNode.

What we learned from MindNode 5 and MindNode 6

Over the last two years, we released two major updates: MindNode 5 was a paid upgrade and MindNode 6 was a free upgrade. When we started working on MindNode 7 we knew that our next release would be a paid upgrade and we closely looked at our experience with the recent updates.

While MindNode 5 was a very popular release with our customers, we weren’t happy with how our new upgrade mechanism worked. As the App Store has no native support for paid upgrades, we tried to work around this limitation, by using differently priced In-App Purchases. This sounded like a great solution on paper and worked great in our tests, but we ran into many issues in real-life situations. Our discount mechanism had to launch a previous version of MindNode to check for eligibility. This did not always work as we had imagined it and resulted in a bumpy experience for some customers.

With this in mind, we knew that we didn’t want to go down the same path again. A subscription-based model showed the most promise to meet our customers’ needs as well as our own when we mind mapped our options.

There are several reasons why we believe subscriptions are the right choice for the future of MindNode.

With subscriptions, we can deliver updates to our users much more frequently. In the past, we had to hold back completed new features for over a year until we had finished all other features that made up a major update.

Going with subscriptions also decreases the entry price for new customers. This is particularly useful for people who may only need MindNode occasionally, for example, a freelancer who is kicking off a new client project.

It also makes pricing much more predictable. New customers no longer need to wonder about the right time to purchase MindNode, since there will be no more paid upgrades that might unexpectedly surprise them.

A subscription-based model also gives us more flexibility in what we can offer to our users. MindNode can be unlocked on macOS and iOS with a single subscription (this is not possible with one-time purchases on the App Store) and we are exploring how we can offer family and business licenses in the future.

Finally, we have to take into consideration that MindNode is a constantly evolving product, which we want to continue working on. Subscriptions provide us with a stable roadmap for the future where we can continue to adopt new Apple technologies in a timely manner, work on supporting collaboration and expand into new platforms.

We are fully aware that a subscription might not be the best solution for all of our users. This is why we are launching a new Free Editor together with MindNode Plus. Instead of a viewer of MindNode documents, our free version now also allows basic editing operations like adding nodes, reordering and folding them. In the Free Editor, we will also continue to support all import and export formats, so your data is never locked in!

When we considered subscriptions, we also made sure we found a good solution for our existing users. As a loyal customer, you will receive MindNode 7 for free and keep access to all its features in the future, even without subscribing to MindNode Plus. Furthermore, you will continue to receive bug fixes and minor enhancements.

MindNode Plus will launch together with MindNode 7 in early 2020. We will offer a monthly and annual subscription. Initially, the monthly subscription will be priced at $2.49 and the yearly at $19.99 (local prices will vary based on taxes and currency conversion).

I understand that every adjustment in a business model can be confusing or irritating. We’ve tried our best to make this transition as smooth as possible and hope you will continue to support us in the future. We’ve prepared an extensive FAQ and if you have any more questions, please contact us.

We are excited to announce that we are going to ship MindNode 7, our next major update, early next year. MindNode 7 will add Visual Tags - a brand new feature to bring more context to your ideas. We are also launching MindNode Plus, a new subscription.

MindNode 7 – Visual Tags and Business Model Changes

It’s that time of the year again when many of us are updating our iPads & iPhones to the newest version of iOS. While most of the attention is usually given to the new system features Apple has created, developers are also excited to take advantage of new tools and features they can integrate into their apps. And we’re no exception. We’ve been working hard the past three months to make sure MindNode users can benefit from and enjoy what iPadOS and iOS 13 has to offer. Here’s what we’ve been able to create for MindNode 6.1.

Multi-tasking has been a slowly evolving feature of iOS. Starting with being able to have apps running background processes and to the unveiling of a split-screen multitasking mode two years ago. This year the next step is the arrival of having multiple documents open simultaneously from a single app. What this means for you is that now you'll be able to have MindNode open in multiple spaces on your iPad, enabling you to work on multiple mind maps simultaneously.

MindNode users will know we’ve had support for Dark Mode for a while now. However with iPadOS 13 there’s a subtle change in how it works - thanks to systemwide support for Dark Mode. Now you can have Dark Mode active when your iPhone or iPad goes dark, based on the time of day or your system settings, or you can have MindNode’s appearance adapt to the theme of your mind map.

Quick Entry is an easy way to jot down your thoughts in an outline format and instantly transform them into a mind map. With MindNode 6.1 we’ve added the possibility to save your Quick Entries as drafts, so that you can keep working on them until you’re ready to send them to your canvas. Quick Entry Drafts will be coming to our macOS version soon in an upcoming update.

Siri Shortcuts is an easy way to automate tasks that you regularly perform by asking Siri to do them. These tasks can be something Siri learns about your behavior, or workflows you create on your own. With iOS 13 Siri Shortcuts have become even more powerful, by allowing users to add parameters to their shortcuts. What this means is that you can now tell Siri to open a new MindNode document with a title, some text, or the current date already filled in.

To start add the Export Document action from MindNode's shortcuts

Change the parameters to last opened document

Choose the file format you need. Make sure that the export goes to Clipboard

Add the Get Clipboard action from the Sharing shortcuts

Next add the Send Email action from the Mail app shortcuts and change the parameters to send Clipboard to your team's email addresses and enter your subject.

Make sure that the last opened document in MindNode is the one you want to share before you start the shortcut!

With iOS 13 Apple also greatly improved support for Apple Pencil and annotations in general. MindNode 6.1 takes advantage of this in two different places.

You can now add drawings and annotate images directly in MindNode. In annotation mode, you can easily scribble a few comments on your attached images, quickly draw a supply and demand graph for your economics class notes, or start sketching your next backyard project.

The second improvement is related to screenshots. When you take a screenshot using the Top/Side button and Volume-up button combination you can now get a screenshot of the entire mind map. Annotating and sharing a mind map has never been easier.

While we were getting these iPadOS & iOS 13 features baked into MindNode 6.1 we also were busy squashing bugs, fine-tuning existing features and adding a few others as well. Check out our full release notes for more details.

MindNode 6.1 is available now on the App Store.

MindNode 6.1 is now available! Check out what we've built in our latest release and how we're integrating new iPadOS & iOS 13 features into MindNode.

Multi-Document, Dark Mode and more – MindNode for iPadOS 13

My name is Thomas Dori and I'm a digital strategist who combines his 3 passions - contemplation, communication, and coding - into one business.

Is there one situation or project in which mind mapping helped you the most?

Digital Marketing (Strategies) is a very broad concept. Especially, when you are not working in this field every day, it can quickly feel overwhelming. To help my clients and me see the bigger picture including all the opportunities and necessities I start every project by presenting a mind map that gives a clear overview of what needs to be considered before and while doing digital marketing. We then use a copy of that mind map as a checklist to keep track of what we already thought about and what still needs to be considered. The final result is a clear vision of what the client’s company currently stands for, where it wants to go, and what needs to be done to get there.

How did you get your thoughts out of your head and into a mind map?

My current mind map for digital marketing is probably the millionth version of what it used to be several years ago. It started with the wish to have an overview of types of media (owned vs. shared vs. earned vs. paid). I continued to work on mind maps about branding, personas, social media marketing, and content marketing - and thought "Why not merging them into one huge mind map?" After moving everything around for hours and making it as MECE (mutually exclusive & collectively exhaustive) as possible, I tweaked the wording to get some nice acronyms (BRACES + 4C). The final but also essential step was the styling. I used the brand colors of my agency „Anwert" and the gorgeous stickers that MindNode has built in. Although I love the Auto Layout feature, I used the manual layout in my mind map because I wanted to give some nodes a bit more spacing than others.

How did it feel to finally see all your thoughts in a mind map?

Relieved. This mind map is like my external memory, and every time I look at it, I'm delighted that I have spent so much time to build it. It's like a cheat sheet that helps me to remember everything.

Once you were done with the mind map, what did you do next?

My mind map for digital marketing will never be final. It is the core of what I'm doing in my business every day. And like my business adjusts to new knowledge, trends and customer needs, so will this mind map. But even though it's a living document I use it all the time for myself as well as to support my clients in their (digital) marketing efforts. Most of the time people are stunned by how graspable such a complex topic becomes in a mind map - and how beautiful MindNode makes it look.

Where can people find out more about you and your work?

"Most of the time people are stunned by how graspable such a complex topic becomes in a mind map." - Thomas Dori

How Thomas Shows Clients the Bigger Picture – Creating a Marketing Strategy

My name is Teddy Svoronos and I’m a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. 

MindNode is the app that I use to begin the process of developing new classes. When staring down the barrel of a new class session, there is a seemingly infinite number of paths I could go down - huge numbers of topics, examples, and in-class exercises that could conceivably be incorporated into the class. MindNode helps me turn this complexity into a plan. I can group ideas into categories, which then link to one another in ways that gradually emerge as a class plan.

I start by creating as many Main Nodes as possible - using ⇧-Enter to dump all the ideas that pop into my head into a messy group of unstructured ideas. As I do this, I often start seeing connections immediately, so I’ll drag them on top of one another, or creating connection lines between them. If there are images, examples, or tables that I want to reference, I’ll drag them onto the map as well.

The best part is the transition from feeling overwhelmed and without structure to seeing a concrete set of steps to move forward. The mind map ends up being the starting point for further content - handouts and slides and such - but the map is always visible and always guiding how I conceptualize the class.

You can find out more about me on www.teddysvoronos.com or on my Twitter profile.

Teddy's Public Policy Class Mind Map
References: Kleinberg, J., Lakkaraju, H., Leskovec, J., Ludwig, J., & Mullainathan, S. (2017). Human Decisions and Machine Predictions. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 133(1), 237-293.

How Teddy Turns Complexity Into a Plan – Preparing a University Course

My name is Eric Bowers and I'm a Mortgage Loan Originator, business owner, writer/blogger.

That would be working on writing my first novel, the forthcoming The Mayor of Blackout County. My issue with the project was that I had the basic outline in my head, but needed to create more of a timeline so that I didn't get lost within the milestones of the story. I ended up creating a horizontal timeline using Vertical layout with angular branches, which was a great help in creating visual indications of my progress along the story line. 

I began, as I often do, with the Quick Entry feature. I input the main goal of what I was trying to accomplish, which was, "Write novel". Quick Entry seems to be at the core of what MindNode represents to me; a literal canvas upon which I can just let my mind wander. I entered a few major milestones into the outline entry area in Quick Entry, and then clicked "Create Mind Map". As the weeks and months went on I was able to add to the mind map using my iPhone and iPad or of course, my MacBook. It's important that MindNode is installed everywhere so that when inspiration strikes I have captured my thoughts.

See here for the map for the novel. It's not overly useful because I have folded up the details as it has the entire story contained there in milestones and major events. One thing to note: I created a separate theme for this particular mind map, to coincide with the overall feel of the story...that's a hint, but it always puts me in the right mindset.

In a word: relieved. I thought,"There. Now you have no excuse not to write this novel, because the elements are in place."...and what was funny was I just began writing, checking off tasks that I had assigned to various pieces of the story. Getting the main points out propelled me forward as a writer.

Because it obviously contains spoilers, I only showed the mind map to my wife who exclaimed,"Wow that looks great! What app is that?" (I'm not joking, either. She hadn't used MindNode for a while and was impressed with the layout capabilities).

How MindNode Propels Eric Forward – Writing a Novel

For many years our website was only an afterthought. We pride ourselves on sweating over every single detail in our app, but we neglected all other channels of communication with you.

Last year we embarked on a journey to change this. As a first step, we updated our onboarding emails earlier this year. These are the emails you can subscribe to when you first launch MindNode. The 3-email-course takes you from how to create nodes to how you can style your documents and while doing so teaches you a little bit about Apple Strudel - a typical Austrian dessert. You can subscribe to this course on our new Learn page or preview the first email here.

While working on our new onboarding emails, we also started a project to revamp our website. The goal was to no longer present MindNode as two separate apps (with dedicated feature pages), add focus on how you can use MindNode (something that comes up a lot in support emails) and to find a fun & delightful design that better fits with the app.

A lot of team effort went into creating our website, but it wouldn't have been possible without the fantastic work and collaboration from our graphic designer Isabella Thaller, our web designer Thomas Strobl and marketing consultant Thomas Dori. 

I hope you like our new website. Let us know what you think.

My name is Rosemary Orchard and I'm a developer by day, and a blogger and podcaster by night!

It's hard to pick just one, any complicated idea starts out as a mind map for me to let me get to grips with all facets of it. I'm currently working on a course to help people learn JavaScript to use with apps like Drafts and MindNode has been extremely helpful letting me keep track of and organise all my ideas.


I usually start in quick entry mode on iOS. My iPhone is usually the device in my hand so I start listing things there, then I jump into the mind map as the ideas slow down, and add to what I have and rearrange things.

Depending on the mind map I can feel anything from awed to overwhelmed! In this case I feel rather daunted by the tasks ahead, creating a whole course, but also calmed because I can see where everything is and what I've already completed is marked off.

I shared my mind map with a few friends for feedback before tweaking it. Then I printed it out on A3 paper so I could stick it on my wall! It's colourful and a great reminder of my goal right now.

"Creating a whole course, but also calmed because I can see where everything is and what I've already completed is marked off." - Rosemary Orchard

How Rosemary Teaches JavaScript – From Awed to Overwhelmed

What do you do when your ideas become overwhelming? When you need to concentrate on just one thought? These were some of the questions our team was asking itself nearly a year ago, and resulted in the development of Focus Mode.

It’s now been a few months since we released MindNode 6, and many of you have had a chance to experience it for yourself. We’ve been happy to hear from plenty of our customers about how Focus Mode has become a part of their brainstorming process, from helping them put a spotlight on the details, to presenting just the right part of their mind map to their audience. Your feedback has been indispensable, and we’ve already been working on squashing bugs and looking into how we can make Focus Mode even better.

To shed some light on how we work, we spoke to one of our engineers, Michael Schwarz, & our designer, Harald Eckmüller to gain some insights into what goes into making a new feature.

Michael’s motivation came from wanting to find the solution to a problem: “It was a challenging task, and as I have many large mind maps, I liked the idea of focusing on the sub-content”. With the challenge set, the first step was imagining what the feature would look and feel like. Even though the idea seemed straightforward, focusing on one particular branch and make the rest of the document less distracting, the nature of the tree-structure of mind maps raised a lot of questions that added a layer of complexity.

Harald explains: “Mind maps may have content all over the canvas with naturally occurring clusters. These draw more attention visually, so should they be de-emphasized more when focusing elsewhere? How much of the surrounding of a given branch do you need to clearly see to be able to work with it? When you start focusing on a branch with a node three tiers removed from the main node, do you need the path all the way up to the main node with the focus, or is this too much context?”

To answer these questions a few different approaches were tried out, at first with paper prototyping and static mockups, and later creating an entire Swift Playground to quickly tweak parameters like opacity, blur, hue etc. One of the earliest implementations was a “hoisting mode”, elevating a subsection of the mind map into a separate document. This seemed too disconnected, leading to a “presentation mode” which showed more context. After seven iterations the final result was a dynamic mixture of both approaches, using the zoom factor as a way of presenting more or less surrounding content.

An early version of Focus Mode (above) showing a different approach of presenting the unfocused nodes compared to the final version (below).

As development continued new questions were appearing all the time - from designing the user interface and interaction to how other features like undo & redo were impacted by entering Focus Mode. Michael and Harald elaborate:
- How can you effortlessly get into and out of Focus?
- How does an unfocused node react to a mouse cursor?
- Where do you refocus if you delete all of the focused nodes?
- Do you re-enter Focus Mode if undo/redo is triggered?
- How does keyboard navigation work?
- What is selected when you use a shortcut like select all?
- How can you make the feature discoverable, yet keep it easily at hand for more pro users?

Indispensable to finding a way through this maze of issues was the support of our fantastic QA team and our beta testers. Trying something new meant we had to learn what works and is right for our users. We combed through our support requests for inspiration, conducted interviews, and collected as much feedback as early as we could into the process to find the right solution.

What Harald and Michael both learned from working on Focus Mode was the importance of prototyping and creating an environment where the designers and engineers could play with and adjust the feature and quickly collaborate. With something as nuanced as Focus Mode the limitations of static design mockups became apparent very early on, and revealed the need for more dynamic tools. Simultaneously working in an environment with flexible project management allowed the ultimate goal to be changed as much as necessary. And what have they been able to do with the fruit of their labor? Harald and Michal explain in their own words:

Harald: “I do a lot of narrative design for interactive fiction in my spare time, and being able to throw all my thoughts into a document, then sort it, and eventually fine-tune my thoughts into a workable narrative idea is a process that produces huge mind maps. All the characters, places, events, plot-relevant objects, groups and what not can make it hard to concentrate on a specific part. Don't get me wrong, I need that creative chaos to find unexpected connections and come up with plot-twists that are interesting, but having the option to simply push away all the distraction and focus on just one scene is extremely helpful to me.”

Michael: “I use it most of the time to present the content of a large mind map in smaller pieces. It’s also useful during joint brainstorming sessions to ‘lock in’ into a special subtopic.”

Focus Mode is available now in MindNode 6 on Mac and iOS.

We’d love to hear how it’s become a part of your mind mapping flow and what you love, hate or would change about it.

Pro-tip: Refocus quickly from one node to another using the long press gesture on iOS or Option-click on Mac.

What do you do when you need to concentrate on just one thought? Learn how this question lead to the development of Focus Mode.

Learning to Focus – How we created Focus Mode

MindNode 6 is now available on the App Store and Mac App Store. MindNode 6 comes with a brand-new Focus Mode, Sticker Search, and the ability to hide Connections.

It also brings Multi-Select, improved External Screen Support, and customizable Panels to iOS.

And we added Traditional Chinese as our 14th supported language! MindNode 6 is a free update for all MindNode 5 customers.

Our brand-new Focus Mode puts a spotlight on one part of your mind map and fades out all the rest. It minimizes distractions and - at the same time - ensures you don’t lose context. The path to the main node is always visible, and when you zoom out, surrounding nodes will slowly fade in. This unique perspective enables you to easily refocus on a single area of your idea.

To help you reduce distractions even further, we also added the ability to - independently of Focus Mode - hide all connections on your canvas.

Stickers are a great way to give your documents clarity and personality. As our library grew, it became harder to find the right Sticker for your thought. With the search field in the sticker picker, you can now quickly find the perfect sticker in no time.

Styling, editing and rearranging multiple nodes at once just got a whole lot easier. Select multiple objects by touching and holding anywhere on the canvas. Alternatively, long press the canvas to start a rubber band selection. And in case you're using an Apple Pencil, touch the canvas with one finger and move the pencil to start a rubber band selection.

Big ideas need space, and with an external screen, you get a different perspective on your ideas. Using the feature "Lock Viewport" in the settings, you can lock the zoom and scroll position on your external screen to always keep one part of your document in view. You're now also able to use Quick Look to view images and configure the resolution of connected displays.

MindNode's most important task is to support you exactly where you need it. This applies to every (UI) element of MindNode including panels. Drag and drop your favorite actions from the Actions Panel onto the Panel's quick actions slots. On iPad, you also got the ability to drag Panels to the other side of the screen now.

MindNode is now fully localized to Traditional Chinese. With this addition, we now support 14 different localizations: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Dutch, English (US), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish (Spain), and Swedish.

Besides adding features that give you more focus we also wanted to make the transition between the iOS and the macOS versions of MindNode as seamless as possible. This is why we also decided on changing some of our keyboard shortcuts. Yes, for your muscle memory, it will take some time to adapt, if you were used to the old shortcuts. But trust us, in the long run, you will enjoy being able to use the same shortcuts on your iPad and Mac. We can sincerely say this because everybody in our team went through the same process.

MindNode 6 is a free upgrade for all MindNode 5 customers. If you are using MindNode 2 for Mac or MindNode 4 for iOS, we offer discounted upgrades for MindNode 6.

For more details please have a look at our release notes:

If you tried MindNode 5 before and want to retry MindNode 6, you can reset the trial using the following links:

More Focused Than Ever - MindNode 6 Has Arrived

MindNode lets you format text in various ways.

You can use different font types, make text bold, italic or underlined, or use strikethrough.

Under the hood, we save your text and its formatting using a markup language called HTML, the same used for websites.

HTML makes it easy to display the same formatted text when sharing MindNode documents to myMindNode, our web service for viewing your mind maps in a browser.

Since MindNode 2 we have been using a component called Ashton to transform formatted text to HTML.

Ashton stands for AttributedString to HTML Transformation and we open sourced it a long time ago.

Up to MindNode 5.1, Ashton required a lot of extra work to compensate for differences between iOS and macOS.

First, it converted the platform-specific text to an intermediate format, which is then converted into HTML, as illustrated below.

Using this method we were able to share more code between iOS and macOS when converting between the intermediate format and HTML.

Back then this was a sensible decision. The platforms had a lot of differences and a layered approach was a suitable solution to tackle this complexity.

Since then, both platforms have evolved and the differences in the text system shrunk significantly.

Therefore, we decided to rewrite Ashton without the overhead of an intermediate format, speeding up the loading and saving of documents in MindNode, simplifying the process diagram.

The rewrite was undertaken in Swift, which we expected to give us an additional performance boost when compared to the former Objective-C implementation. Surprisingly, after testing our first rewrite approach we experienced a significant slowdown despite having removed the intermediate conversion phase. After analyzing the performance in more detail, we discovered that Swift’s string manipulation methods were substantially slower than the previously used Objective-C implementations. But we didn't stop there. We further refined our rewrite, by diving one abstraction level deeper into Swift String handling and used the character view directly for parsing the input. Consequently, we were finally happy with the results of the rewrite.

Measuring the speed of both implementations showed the following results:

AppKit Implementation: 0.13 sec (2236% slower).  

The results show, that we were able to improve the reading performance substantially. 

Reading text from a MindNode file is now twice as fast as before 🎉. 

Interestingly, the writing speed slightly decreased compared to the old implementation. 

This was a result of slower AttributedString reading performance due to the use of Swift. Nevertheless, as consequence of the ongoing performance refinements on the Swift programming language we expect this time to go down in future.

From a user's perspective, the reading speed which affects document opening performance, is far more important than the marginal writing slowdown, when closing a document. 

Additionally, we improved other aspects of the Ashton component.

We fixed a longstanding bug which led to removed leading and trailing newlines and also improved the text color parsing, removing small visual differences in color perception across macOS and iOS.

Based on this work we were able to enhance our Markdown import to now support bold and italic formatting.

Ashton 2.0 is extensively unit tested, which gives us great confidence in making additional improvements in the future, without worrying about accidentally breaking expected parsing behavior.

We are happy to announce that Ashton 2.0 is now open source as well, you can find it on GitHub.

Ashton is released under MIT license as part of IdeasOnCanvas’s open source effort.

Learn how we speeded up the loading and saving of documents in MindNode.

A snappier MindNode Part 2 - Text Persistence

At first blush, the last couple of MindNode releases may have seemed minor - focusing on bug fixes and smaller improvements. Though if you dig deeper, and take a closer look, they have been huge. A lot has changed under the hood and depending on the size of your documents and the tasks you usually perform, you might have noticed that MindNode now feels snappier, more responsive and overall much faster than previous versions of MindNode for iOS and macOS.

In this blog post, we will take you through some of the changes to MindNode's code base and architecture, the changes that allowed us to make big performance improvements during document opening, text editing, node dragging and node resizing. Before we start, let's take a look at the final result.

Software today is very complex. There are many factors that influence both the measurable, as well as the perceived performance of the software we all use and love. In fact, performance tuning is a common task for many software engineers - and it can be equally frustrating as well as very satisfying. Finding the fixes for performance issues can sometimes feel like the famous search for the needle in the haystack. While issues might be complex and very diverse, the root source of many performance problems falls into one of a few buckets. Let's take a look at the most common problems and some ways to solve them.

Being lazy might not be a trait, that you'd attribute to fast and snappy software. Funnily enough, it can be one of the most effective solutions to performance problems.

Whenever a result is computed, which isn't actually needed at this point, unnecessary work is done that slows down the device. So being lazy is a good thing - the goal should be to only compute what is actually needed. While this may sound trivial, it's far from trivial in big and complex software with ten thousand lines of code or more. At this size, it can become hard to reason about the code, especially if functions have side effects. 

In this blog post, we will take you through some of the changes to MindNode's code base and architecture, the changes that allowed us to make big performance improvements during document opening, text editing, node dragging and node resizing.

Blog

Greetings from Our Home Office

MindNode's Hidden Features – Long Press Actions in iOS

How Christopher Creates Adventures with Mind Maps – Being a Dungeon Master

Add More Context to Your Thoughts – MindNode 7 has Landed

How David Develops with Mind Maps – Automating and Planning

Updates to Our Privacy Policy

MindNode 7 – Visual Tags and Business Model Changes

Multi-Document, Dark Mode and more – MindNode for iPadOS 13

How Thomas Shows Clients the Bigger Picture – Creating a Marketing Strategy

How Teddy Turns Complexity Into a Plan – Preparing a University Course

How MindNode Propels Eric Forward – Writing a Novel

Welcome to Our New Website

How Rosemary Teaches JavaScript – From Awed to Overwhelmed

Learning to Focus – How we created Focus Mode

More Focused Than Ever - MindNode 6 Has Arrived

A snappier MindNode Part 2 - Text Persistence

A Snappier MindNode Part 1 - Performance Tuning

MindNode 6 – Focus on Your Ideas

MindNode Goes Setapp

MindNode 5.2 - Dark Mode, Continuity Camera, Siri Shortcuts, and More

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