Free Your Mind with XMind
Mind-mapping is a popular tool for brainstorming ideas, outlining projects, and organizing information. While some people feel most comfortable mind-mapping with pencils or pens and paper, others enjoy the ease and accessibility of software-based mind-mapping, and there are a variety of tools designed to help make, share, and store mind-maps on your computer. Some, like MindManager and iMindMap are powerful, enterprise-level programs, with price tags to match; free programs like FreeMind don’t have the same features, but for daily use by individuals, they are quite powerful and capable tools. There are even a range on online mind-mapping tools like bubbl.us and Mind42.
My new favorite mind-mapping tool is XMind, a free, open-source mind-mapping program with a useful (though limited) online component. XMind is incredibly easy to use, allowing you to make and share good-looking mind-maps (and flowcharts, outlines, org charts, and other visual representations of textual data) with a minimum of fuss.
Features
XMind is a free download for Windows, Mac, or Linux computers. It is quite intuitive to use — for standard mind-maps, simply select a node, hit “Enter” to create a sibling node (one at the same “level”) or “Tab” to create a “child” node (one under whatever level you’re currently at). When you create a new node, just start typing to create a label, hit “Enter” when you’re done, and hit “Enter” or “Tab” to continue with a new node. If you want to edit or change the label on any node, just double-click it.
A sidebar panel contains a hierarchical representation of your mind-map, for quick navigation, and below that formatting options to change both the appearance (font, colors, etc.) and the structure of your mind-map — you can switch “on-the-fly” from a standard bubble-map to an org-chart, fishbone chart, outline, or several other pre-configured layouts.
XMind is drag-and-drop enabled, too, so you can move nodes around in relation to each other. A set of limited drawing tools allows you to create secondary connections between items, or group them together.
Nodes take more than just labels. You can attach external files, embed images, insert hyperlinks, and attach notes, all from the right-click menu or the standard menu bars.
Exporting and Sharing
Once your mind=map is done, you can export it in a number of formats: images (bmp, jpeg, gif, and png are all supported), HTML, or text are available, as well as XMind’s own formats.
XMind also includes an online web-based component where you can post your mind-maps for public viewing and sharing. Users can download any of the mind-maps in the public repository and import them into their own install of XMind. You can also embed mind-maps into your website.
Unfortunately, private sharing is unavailable in the free version; if you want to use XMind to collaborate on sensitive topics, you will need to use the Pro version.
Pro features
Other features lacking from XMind’s free version but available with a paid upgrade include new views — such as GANTT charts and a GTD todo item feature; a presentation view allowing users to show mind-maps in full-screen; the ability to record audio notes (useful for recording a lecture while mind-mapping your notes — notes are time-tied to the recording itself); and more export formats including PDF, Word, PowerPoint, and MindManager.
The Pro version is not particularly affordable, unfortunately. In fact, the developers have chosen to license XMind Pro with a subscription model, which is quite unfortunate. To upgrade, expect to shell out $6.00 a month, or $49 a year. I realize that users are getting ongoing access to the web features, but I would much rather see a one-time fee for what is primarily a traditional, desktop-based piece of software.
I’m also surprised to see that, with so many online mind-mapping apps out there, XMind has not make it possible to create, edit, and clone mind-maps using the online interface. The upload, share, download, and edit model now is hardly an effective way to collaborate — it would be easier just to email the files back and forth, and just as unsatisfactory. Hopefully XMind will continue to develop the online component to add true live collaboration in the near future.
Conclusion
Despite some small faults (which are really external to the program itself), XMind is a fine mind-mapping program. For individual users who don’t need to work collaboratively, XMind has all the features you should need, with a very low learning curve. It’s effective and even fun to use — and that’s key, because mind-mapping is all about transforming work into creative play in order to unleash your inner creativity. Longtime readers of this site know I have a somewhat conflicted relationship with mind-mapping, but with XMind, I was able to start producing really useful mind-maps in a matter of minutes.
I highly recommend you try it out for yourself: XMind.
WRITER'S BIOGRAPHY
Dustin Wax
Dustin M. Wax is a freelance writer and project manager at Stepcase Lifehack. He can be reached though his freelancing site at DustinWax.comDon't Be Stupid: A Guide to Learning, Studying, and Succeeding at College.
Follow him on Twitter: @dwax.
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Comments
Martin Stewart says on February 24th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Great article and always interesting to see people discussing mind maps. I couldn’t access http://www.xmind.com but did find http://www.xmind.net was this a misprint?
Martin
Jon says on February 24th, 2009 at 10:53 am
Links to xmind.com are wrong. It looks like it’s xmind.net instead.
Dustin Wax says on February 24th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Martin and Jon: Thanks for pointing that out. I fixed it — interestingly, the XMind logo was linked to the right address. Funny that my mind should go wonky while writing a post about mind-mapping….
Yes, But Still... says on February 24th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
I haven’t tried any mind-mapping before: Do you have any past articles on how to get started?
Chris says on February 24th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
The problem with Xmind is that it is a Java app. Java is notoriously slow for use in stand-alone applications, and has all sorts of quirky interface features that make them difficult to use. I’d advise trying something native to your operating system.
Fitz says on February 24th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Cmaptools is also a great mindmap tool, and its free. (but also java)
Tsessebe says on February 24th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
@Yes, But Still….
Tony Buzan writes a whole lot of mind-mapping books, but be careful not to get overwhelmed; I never managed to get thru those books.
Mindmapping frustrated me because I always wanted to learn it for the sake of learning it just ‘cos it kept getting mentioned, yet I had no real use for them (or so I thought). But one day when I was researching for an article and found my linear outline becoming frustrating, it suddenly dawned on me that a network-arrangement would work better… and suddenly I “got” mindmaps. I think.
Wojciech Kulicki says on February 24th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
I’ve used xMind for about 6 months now for almost EVERYTHING – goal planning, financial planning, studying for licensing exams, and on and on… Mind Mapping is one of the greatest concepts I have ever come across. Thanks for the post!
Jeff says on February 24th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Would love to try the demo but I am not willing to create an account just to try a demo. Most companies once they get your email address bombard you with unwanted email…the penalty for trying their product
Ernie Oporto says on February 25th, 2009 at 12:44 am
Doesn’t seem to export to a freemind type format that can be used by tools like iPhone apps.
Pradeep says on February 25th, 2009 at 1:34 am
I have not tried XMind, but it appears that FreeMind already has most of the features contained in the free version of XMind. Additionally, Freemind also has a variety of export formats (pdf, svg, jpeg, html). As an occasional Freemind user, I do not see any incentive to switch.
Dustin Wax says on February 25th, 2009 at 2:02 am
YEs, But Still: Not about mind-mapping but the closely related Rico CLusters: http://www.lifehack.org/articl.....pping.html
Chris: I have nothing against Java and have ahd no issues with it. I remember the Bad Old Days when Java was a pain ,but these days, I don’t even notice when I’m using it.
Jeff: I haven’t received one piece of email from XMind. But that is an unnecessary step — there’s no reason to force users to have an account if they’re not going to use the online sharing.
Pradeep: I like Freemind, but I never *used* it. XMind I’ve been using like mad. But if FreeMind is doing it for ya, don’t switch.
Anelly says on February 25th, 2009 at 5:46 am
I am very familiar with mind-mapping, once because i made an research about it for a school project and second because i realize how useful it it and since than i use this method to organize different activities. I enjoyed reading your post.
Joe says on February 25th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Jeff: You can enter a spurious email address – there’s no verification step.
Pradeep and Dustin: I used FreeMind to write my thesis, and it was invaluable. I played around with XMind this morning, importing my thesis mindmap. After doing nothing more than toggling nodes expanded/collapsed, XMind crashed – and it was using more than 1 GB of RAM. I’ve never seen anything get that big – the file I imported is only 98 KB.
I wouldn’t say it has MORE features than Freemind, just different features, some of which may make it easier to dive into it (though I have to admit that it’s prettier). Freemind’s ability to collapse and expand the entire map one level at a time is critical to me, but doesn’t seem to exist in XMind.
Dustin Wax says on February 25th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Joe: I haven’t had memory issues with XMind on my little netbook (1 gig RAM) but that doesn’t mean much these days — systems are so complex, who knows why something won’t work on one system and runs fine on another?
I think the “collapsing” you’re talking about in FreeMind is what XMind calls “node as a mind-map” — I haven’t used either feature, so I can’t be sure, but it might be worth comparing if that’s a feature you use a lot.
Mia says on February 25th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
I love to mind map. A boss of mine introduced me to it and I haven’t stopped since. I tried to use Xmind once, but could never get it to install properly. I currently use MindApp. It’s cheap ($49), but simple and clean. The problem I had with Freemind was it took too much effort to make it pretty (shallow, but that’s important to me). In the latest version of MindApp it has sample templates to pretty up your mind map in a hurry and imports Freemind maps. I paid $49 for it, at the time they were on version 4. Last week I updated to version 6 with no extra cost.
http://www.mindapp.com/Pc/PcHome.asp
Paul Foreman says on February 26th, 2009 at 10:52 am
If you wish to view some examples of Hand-drawn Mind Maps pop over to my Blog for some inspiration.
Kal says on February 27th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
I’ve used Xmind recently, and I’ve found that it has a memory leak. Each time you move or adjust a chain in your mindmap, it uses 1-5MB of RAM…. after a while that starts to add up.
I used frequent restarts to get around the issue, but Great program overall!
opentube says on March 15th, 2009 at 9:20 am
we have also featured a list of free mindmap tools here
http://open-tube.com/top-12-be.....g-tools-2/
we hope that it is useful.
Paul Greeneyes says on December 30th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Outstanding application but too slow to work without irritation, I even created main data in freemain and then import that data in Xmind to speed things up :)
Airton says on January 28th, 2010 at 8:46 am
I also like the tool but some times I get irritated by the slowness. Someone mentioned that Java is the reason, but I don’t agree. Freemind is also Java and is a very quick tool. Probably XMind has the memory leak mentioned by Kal.
Someone mentioned before that it doesn’t export to Freemind. Actually it does. I’m using the version 3.1.1 and it exports and imports from Freemind…
In general I like the tool very much. Very easy to use and with nice appearance. Only problem so far is the slowness…
Airton says on January 28th, 2010 at 8:59 am
Animation and Shadow….
Just found out that you can improve the performance by disabling the animation and shadow in the preferences window.
Now it is very quick and I can design larger maps…