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FreeMind

Free mind mapping software

FreeMind is a premier free mind-mapping software written in Java. The recent development has turned it into high productivity tool that allows faster operation and navigationIt is a mapping software designed to help to organize knowledge in an holistic approach. It is suitable for any learning process and very useful to help the learners to organize their learning processes with an individual approach.

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 prioritizeknow where you are, where you've been andwhere 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?

Running

To run FreeMind, do one of the following.

  • in Windows, double click Freemind.exe, or
  • on any operating system, double click freemind.jar in the lib/ folder of the folder in which FreeMind has been installed.

Getting a taste of FreeMind

You can view mind maps created with FreeMind now in your web browser, if you have Java 1.4 installed.

MapNote
FreeMind documentation Shown as a mind map, using a Java applet with around 700 KB.
Mind Map Gallery Mind maps contributed by FreeMind users, embedded into this wiki.
Daniel's public map Some bookmarks and remarks.
Daniel's public map (HTML) Map exported into HTML; some bookmarks and remarks.

Screenshots

See more in Screenshots.
FreeMind-computer-knowledge-080.png FreeMind-learning-german-080.png
FreeMind-freemind-development-080.png FreeMind-my-health-080.png

Uses of FreeMind

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 that 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.
  • Undo
  • 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 hisimplementation of data exchange between FreeMind and MindManager.
  • File mode enables you to browse the files on your computerseeing 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. When you want to carry a map around with you, you have to take care that you take the image files with you.
  • FreeMind is basically one user application. Although 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 casesfollowing of HTML links in the web browser does not work on some computers; the same holds for opening local files.
  • Limited support for fancy graphics.

License

FreeMind is free software and open source software, licensed under GNU GPL V2+ (GNU General Public License), where "V2+" means "version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version". Basically, that means that you are free to use FreeMind to whatever purpose you want without paying for that, and that any code derived from current FreeMind's code must also be licensed under GPL V2+. See also Licensing.

Get help from other users

Ask a question on FreeMind's Help forum. Also, consider looking at the collection of asked questions, using the search function of your browser. If you're unlike most of computer users, you may also consider reading the documentation, accessible from the menu Help > Documentation; press Ctrl + F to search through the documentation. For Linux users, FreeMind on Linux page may be helpful.

Documentation

See detail in Documentation.

Documentation available includes the following.

  • Mind map documentation: Application menu: Help > Documentation.
  • Windows help-like documentation: Application menu: Help > Help.
  • Printable documentation in PDF

Alternatives to using FreeMind

See detail in Alternatives to FreeMind.

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

 

File Attachments

You have here one installation file for windows included in this course package. If you own an Internet connection, you can go online and check if an updated version of the programme is available

Download

Choose among the following binaries of the current FreeMind 1.0.1, depending on your operating system:

OSDownloadSize (MB)Note
MS Windows Windows Installer Min 29 A smaller version without SVG export and PDF export.
MS Windows Windows Installer Max 38 All-inclusive version
Mac OS X MAC OS X 92 All-inclusive version. Information for Mac Maverick (10.9) and Mountain Lion (10.8) Users: After the download, the operating system reports the application to be broken. Please see here for the solution.
Mac OS X 10.6.8 MAC OS X 10.6.8 150 All-inclusive version, still version 1.0.0. Users of version 10.6.8, please take this link; a different java version is included there.
Linux Ubuntu Linux  ?? Please consider first checking the release notes.
Linux Debian Linux (currently still for the 0.9.0 version) 2.6 Please consider first checking the release notes.
Linux SuSE 9.x Linux and other RPM-based distros like Fedora and Mandriva 2.8 See also release notes.
Any binaries for any operating system 29 A smaller version without SVG export and PDF export.
Any binaries for any operating system - max 38 All-inclusive version
eComStation Download: WarpIN Installation package from netlabs.org 7.6 All-inclusive version

For Linux, the installation procedure is described in length.

Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0