Mind Maps is an app that lets ideas flow from your mind to a digital canvas. You can map out your ideas in a flowchart or outline and then easily jump back and for between the two formats. It's an intuitive app that's a must-try for anyone that needs to record their ideas.
It's available on Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile for $2.99, though a 30 day free trial is available.
Makes note taking easier
The problem with taking notes with a pen and paper is that you can't rearrange the notes afterward, and you certainly can't change an outline into a flow chart with the touch of a button.
In comes Mind Maps Pro, an app that can genuinely save time when it comes to note taking and that can improve how you review what you take down.
Creating notes is simple enough. If you're in diagram mode you just click add and can enter text or hand write notes. You then click on a shape and click add to connect one thought to another. You can customize the shape, color, and text size of each shape. At any point you can click one button to switch over to outline mode. If you wrote your notes by hand, the app will convert the handwriting into text in your outline.
After you've taken notes in a free flowing style, you can rearrange them easily to become more uniformed.
Outlines look pretty familiar to anyone who has done them on Word or OneNote. But being able to switch back and forth between a diagram and an outline with the same content helps you visualize ideas.
Is it worth using over other note taking apps?
There's no shortage of note taking apps in the Windows Store. OneNote and Evernote are powerful note taking tools that are used by millions for a reason. Mind Maps Pro doesn't simulate all of the features of these apps, and really isn't intended to. Instead, Mind Maps Pro can be used in conjunction with the rest of your note taking system, though if you're a lighter note taker could be used exclusively.
If you're using Mind Maps Pro alongside another note taking app you can save or share notes in a variety of ways including saving notes as an image, text, PDF, Visio, OPML, or Ideament file. You can also print the notes if you prefer hard copies.
You can also bring notes from other apps and share them directly into Mind Maps Pro. If you want to open a document in the app you right click it and select open with-Mind Maps Pro. The app says that it is a share target allowing you to share websites and text but in our testing we couldn't get that to work.
Overall Thoughts
Mind Maps Pro takes a basic idea and executes it well. If you want to take notes or record any ideas, it's definitely worth checking out, especially with how long the free trial is.
The things holding back from Mind Maps Pro being rated even higher are some issues that we ran into. We couldn't get OneDrive support to work and couldn't share things to Mind Maps Pro as a share target. If these are fixed, it will be very close to a perfect app for the task it's trying to achieve.
