MindNode 3 for iOS is out, and it’s beautiful.

I have a soft spot for the affordable-yet-wonderful mind mapping app for both Mac and iOS. It syncs flawlessly across the platforms with iCloud, and it’s a pleasure to use. The latest update adds new interface polish, sharing and publishing options, and an amazing new icon, among other things.

I think the trick originated with iThoughts HD, but it’s amazingly handy: when you’re done typing in a node, tap space three times to make a child, or return three times to make a sibling. There are two ways to make children with just a tap as well1, so you can mind map as quickly as possible.

It also makes it easy to draw connections between two nodes and shape the bezier curve. You can quickly detach nodes, shuffle them with auto-arrangement and drag them to other branches. The auto layout feature is beautifully animated and adept at keeping everything looking good. There’s even a dropdown for a quick Table of Contents type overview of your map for navigation, which is especially handy if you’re working zoomed in and don’t want to keep zooming in and out.

Speaking of looking good, the lines, the text, the colors and the user interface are all impeccably designed. I love using this app. You can pick from multiple color themes (not a bad one in the bunch) and have your branches automatically colored. Manually adjusting colors on nodes takes just a couple of taps, and you can change the line type (solid, dashed, dotted) too. You can apply a node’s settings to all child nodes, current and future, so creating a custom design is an easy task.

MindNode 3 costs $9.99 US (universal app) and is available on the App Store now.

  1. don’t repeat that sentence out of context. ↩