HACKER Q&A
📣 rcarmo

Desktop Mind-Mapping Software?


Every year I try to find a good, cross-platform mind mapping app that runs on as many platforms as possible, does not rely on an online or subscription service, and is not prohibitively expensive, but I end up going through the same options: MindNode (which I use and love but doesn’t have a Windows version, let alone Linux), Freemind (which looks and works pretty badly on modern systems), and all sorts of other things (Mindmeister, Xmind, etc.) which have either gone fully online or all out on expensive subscriptions.

What (if anything) are people using for mind maps? Is there anything decent (maybe even OpenSource) that will run fully offline as a PWA (like draw.io) and not in a browser?

I’ve joked that I’m desperate enough to run an Electron app at this point, as long as I can use it across Windows, Linux and Mac…

  👤 dschuessler Accepted Answer ✓
You can write Markdown in VSCodium and render it as a mindmap with Markmap.

VSCodium is an open-source distribution of Visual Studio Code: https://vscodium.com/

You would have to install the Markmap extension for it to work: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=gera2ld....

👤 mikewarot
I'm not sure if a Desktop Wiki is close enough to what you are looking for, but WikidPad works across all 3 platforms.

http://wikidpad.sourceforge.net/

👤 theGeatZhopa
I very like freeplane. A fork of freemind a long long time ago. It supports scripts with groovy and java and I think others like jython, expose a lot of functionality to an API, My point about: It is still a plain old UI mindmapper with few presentation features. Vibrant community too. I love it.