FreeMind - free mind mapping software

FreeMind is a premier free mind-mapping software written in Java. The recent development has hopefully turned it into high productivity tool. We are proud that the operation and navigation of FreeMind is faster than that of Mind Manager because of one-click "fold / unfold" and "follow link" operations.

So you want to write a completely new metaphysics? Why don't you use FreeMind? You have a tool at hand that remarkably resembles the tray slips of Robert Pirsig, described in his sequel to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance called Lila. Do you want to refactor your essays in a similar way you would refactor software? Or do you want to keep personal knowledge base, which is easy to manage? Why don't you try FreeMind? Do you want to priorize, know where you are, where you've been and where you are heading, as Stephen Covey would advise you? Have you tried FreeMind to keep track of all the things that are needed for that?

Did FreeMind make you angry? Please write us, anonymously if you want.

Download

There are the following precompiled binaries:

Or you download the independent binaries which fit into one floppy disk. You can also download older versions, see all files for download. However, please note that FreeMind requires Java 1.4 or higher; [http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html download JRE - Java Runtime Environment] for your platform or [http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/java.html download JRE for Mac OS X], if you do not have Java 1.4 already.

Install and run

Feel free to try our new installer called FreeMind-Windows-Installer-0_7_1.exe. Or, download the latest binary, e.g. freemind-bin-0_7_1.zip, and unzip the binary to some folder. If you are running Windows platform, double click freemind.exe and you're running FreeMind. If you are on some of the Unix / Linux platforms, open freemind.sh. You don't need to download sources to run FreeMind. If you have problems with running FreeMind on Mac, also try to simply double-click freemind.jar located in the folder lib/.

Get a taste of FreeMind

You can view maps created with FreeMind now, the only thing you need is Java 1.4 installed; just click one of the following links:

Daniel's public map (some bookmarks and remarks)
FreeMind development

If you wonder how the maps exported by FreeMind into HTML look like, follow:

Daniel's public map (HTML) (some bookmarks and remarks)

Screenshots

What FreeMind is good for

Current users of FreeMind use it for the following purposes:

Keeping track of projects, including subtasks, state of subtasks and time recording
Project workplace, including links to necessary files, executables, source of information and of course information
Workplace for internet research using Google and other sources
Keeping a collection of small or middle sized notes with links on some area which expands as needed. Such a collection of notes is sometimes called knowledge base.
Essay writing and brainstorming, using colors to show which essays are open, completed, not yet started etc, using size of nodes to indicate size of essays. I don't have one map for one essay, I have one map for all essays. I move parts of some essays to other when it seems appropriate.
Keeping a small database of something with structure, which is either very dynamic or not known in advance. The main disadvantage of such approach when compared to traditional database applications are poor query possibilities, but I use it that way anyway - contacts, recipes, medical records etc. You learn about the structure from the additional data items you enter. For example, different medical records use different structure and you do not have to analyze all the possible structures before you enter the first medical record.
Commented internet favorites or bookmarks, with colors and fonts having the meaning you want.

Features

Apart from other things, this release of FreeMind features:

Fully functional following of HTML links stored in the nodes, be it www links or links to local files.
From very early versions, Freemind supports folding which is its essential property.
Fast one-click navigation, including folding / unfolding on one click and following links on one click at the same time (you don't have to make choice between fast following of links and fast fold/unfold). You can move the map by dragging the map's background as well as using mouse wheel.
Smart Drag'n Drop, including the possibility to copy nodes or copy style of nodes; dragging and dropping of multiple selected nodes; dropping of texts or list of files from outside
Smart copying and pasting into, including pasting of links from HTML or structuring the pasted content on the basis of the number of leading spaces in a line; pasting of lists of selected files
Smart copying and pasting from, including plain text and RTF (MS Wordpad, MS Word, MS Outlook messages).
Export of map to HTML, with folding (see example)
Find facility, where found items are shown one by one as you do "find next", and the map is unfolded only for the current item.
Possibility to use and edit long multiline nodes; even with newlines
Possibility to decorate nodes with built-in icons, colors and different fonts.
Low costs of risk of switching away to another mind mapping tool, because FreeMind stores maps in XML format. If you have a lot of maps created by FreeMind and you want to switch to another program, writing a conversion program should be easy, especially if that program features Visual Basic scripting facility. Christoph Rissner describes in his article at IICM site his implementation of data exchange between FreeMind and MindManager.
File mode enables you to browse the files on your computer, seeing the folder structure as mind map.
See more details in Freemind development tree

Weak spots include:

The support of pictures in nodes is in preliminary stage. User has to take care that he sends the images together with his mind maps / trees.
FreeMind is basically one user application. Even though users can in principle work on the same map, there is only preliminary locking mechanism to prevent conflicts, at the time, switched off by default.
In rare cases, following of HTML links in the web browser does not work on some computers; the same holds for opening local files.
The positioning of main branches is not under the control of users.
Limited support for fancy graphics.

License

FreeMind is a free software, licenced under GPL - GNU Public License. Basically, that means that you are free to use FreeMind to whatever you want without paying for that, and that any code derived from current FreeMind's code must also be licenced under GPL.

Get help from other users

Ask question on FreeMind's Help forum.

Is FreeMind mind mapping software?

The term mind mapping is related to british psychologist Tony Buzan. In Buzan's context, mind map is a tree with many colors, pictures and personal expression. FreeMind is not really mind mapping software in the sense of Tony Buzan, nevertheless, one would say that FreeMind belongs to the class of so called mind mapping software.

Some of members of that class come pretty close to Buzan. Have a look at the site of first class commercial mind mapping software MindManager. You may also want to see examples of mind maps in Buzan's sense.

Alternatives to using FreeMind

To achieve that which FreeMind offers, you can use variety of tools.

Commercial mind mapping program, for instance Mind Manager, Inspiration, Visual Mind orMindMapper.
Note editor / reference manager / PIM - personal information manager, for instance open source Key Note for Windows. In the case of Key Note, you obtain folding, much richer text formatting than in FreeMind, many small notes in one file and it is quite easy to reorganize the structure of your notes. It is not so fast when it comes to changing the color of nodes and not so intuitive when you move things around. It is not possible to set a link to a node, only inside the note, which is sort of equivallent of FreeMind's node without children. Key Note is much faster because it is not written in Java, but it runs on Windows platform only. Definitely worth having a look at.
Text editor with Outline mode, e.g. MS Word, LyX or Emacs. Outline mode enables you to fold headings and move complete "nodes" (chapters, sections, subsection) around, as well as changing the levels of the nodes. The convenience and speed of operation in the areas of restructuring, organizing, overviewing and adding items does not reach that of FreeMind, but on the other hand: if you already use one of these editors, you can avoid the extravagance of installing and learning to use a new tool and gain part of what FreeMind offers that way.
Text editor with Folding mode, e.g. Emacs, Vim or jEdit. Again, you achieve information hiding, but the overheads of using folding mode when compared to FreeMind are considerable.

Authors and contributors

The current project director is Daniel Polansky, with Christian Foltin serving as a project manager.

Up to the version 0.4, FreeMind was developed by Jörg Müller. Jörg has not only started the project, he has also done a very good registration on Open Directory and designed the architecture that is still in use today.

The versions 0.5 and 0.6 have been developed by Daniel Polansky.

The credit for the version 0.6.5 goes mainly to Petr Novak of Brno, with smaller contribution of Daniel Polansky.

The credit for the version 0.6.7 goes mainly to Dimitri Polivaev and Christian Foltin, with smaller contribution of Daniel Polansky.

The credit for the version 0.7.0 goes mainly to Christian Foltin, with smaller contribution from Bob Alexander, Alex Dukal, Andrew Iggleden, Takeshi Kakeda, Dimitri Polivaev, Daniel Polansky, Knud Riishøjgård and others.

Version 0.7.1 is a bug fix version of 0.7.0 including auto-save with contributions by Christian Foltin, Daniel Polansky and a patch by Dimitri Polivaev.

According to Jörg, various smaller contributions are due to Sebastian Fischmeister - misc patches, Jean-Luc Deladriere - french support, Jared Rhine - no longer used perl script freemind2html, Richard Krutisch - author of MAK. Hauke Helmers - the images, Rainer Janssen - time and Jost Schenck - author of MyMap.

Do you want to reward authors for their work?

Drop us a line saying that you like FreeMind. You can do it even anonymously on our Thank you for the music forum - just start a new thread and click "Post commment", it's really easy. We are always glad to read that someone finds FreeMind useful. This definitely increases our motivation.

Please, address any questions with problems to the Help forum.

What users say about FreeMind

Rich, 14.4.2004: First off, congratulations on a truly awesome application with a fantastically intuitive interface... I thought I'd spend 10 minutes evaluating it but I had so much fun I ended up playing for hours - I even missed lunch!

Daniel, 1.2.2003: How do I know that FreeMind is a high productivity tool? The answer is I don't. I am using FreeMind on daily basis and am very satisfied with the benefits it brings me. What I really consider important is that when I use FreeMind, most of the time I don't have to ask myself "how do I do this thing in FreeMind", but I rather just do what I need without thinking about it. FreeMind makes my task of collecting, organizing and analyzing information on a given topic much easier.

James, 14.10.2002: Now, having tried out the new release, I can tell you: It's brilliant! Well done!

Henning, 21.11.2002: I recently started using FreeMind and I'm rather delightet. After getting to known it, it immediately became one of my every-day-use-tools.

Joe, 20.1.2003: I downloaded Freemind several months ago and it has become a vital part of my daily activites. I am enormously grateful for the program.

Paul, 9.2.2003: What a splendid piece of work!

Tom, 13.2.2003: I appreciate version 6.1 very much. Having the DnD capability into and out of my emails has now made Freemind the source document for my management work. 6.1 is stable, simple and elegant in text, lines, and manipulation. I prefer such elegance to commercial versions because I have work to do, not time to make things look better. This is a superb complexity organizer.

I also use it at home to capture my martial arts learning as I head towards a black belt. I put in the basic movements and the katas or arranged groups of movements. I use that when I practice at home.

Perry, 10.4.2003: I have been using FreeMind for two or three months now, and find it totally indispensable! I simply can't say enough good things about how it has helped me get on top of an overwhelming workload. I've tried task managers and project managers ad-nauseam, and they are either too simplistic or too cumbersome.

See more of positive reactions on [http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=320015 Thank you for the music] forum.

Please see documentation on customizing the interface and the User's Guide for usage and configuration help.

Main Page

Contents