Description
Once ideas pile up, an outline in a text editor starts to tangle: indentation held together by spaces, moving one item to another branch means cutting and pasting a whole block, and a single screen never shows which part matters. VYM, short for View Your Mind, is an open source desktop mind mapper where branches grow outward from one central topic on a single canvas and a drag is all it takes to regroup them.
It does not lean on flashy templates. The effort goes into sorting out thoughts: each branch can carry a note, flags and small icons for progress, priority or a to do, and branches and frames take their own colors and line styles. Maps export to web pages, images and text, so people without the software can still read them. It is written with Qt under the GPL 2 and is most at home on Linux, with Windows and macOS builds offered on the official site.
Several central topics: one file can hold multiple independent central topics, handy for laying out different subjects of one project side by side
Branches and notes: every branch can carry a note where the idea is written out in full, leaving only keywords on the map so it stays clean
Flags and icons: a built in set of progress, importance and mood icons lets you mark a branch with a few clicks, which also works for tracking tasks
Colors and frames: branch colors, link styles and frame shapes are adjustable, so one kind of content keeps one color and reads at a glance
Rearrange freely: drag a branch to move it or change its parent, and the whole subtree follows without any copying and pasting
Export and share: maps export to HTML pages, images and other formats, and the official site home page is itself exported from VYM
Scripts and macros: a built in script editor can process branches in bulk, so repetitive tidying can be automated
It does not lean on flashy templates. The effort goes into sorting out thoughts: each branch can carry a note, flags and small icons for progress, priority or a to do, and branches and frames take their own colors and line styles. Maps export to web pages, images and text, so people without the software can still read them. It is written with Qt under the GPL 2 and is most at home on Linux, with Windows and macOS builds offered on the official site.
Features
Several central topics: one file can hold multiple independent central topics, handy for laying out different subjects of one project side by side
Branches and notes: every branch can carry a note where the idea is written out in full, leaving only keywords on the map so it stays clean
Flags and icons: a built in set of progress, importance and mood icons lets you mark a branch with a few clicks, which also works for tracking tasks
Colors and frames: branch colors, link styles and frame shapes are adjustable, so one kind of content keeps one color and reads at a glance
Rearrange freely: drag a branch to move it or change its parent, and the whole subtree follows without any copying and pasting
Export and share: maps export to HTML pages, images and other formats, and the official site home page is itself exported from VYM
Scripts and macros: a built in script editor can process branches in bulk, so repetitive tidying can be automated
