I’ve been a fan of hashing out my thoughts or preparing for projects using mind maps for many years, and over this time have gone back and forth between using dedicated mind-mapping Mac or iOS apps and just drawing em out on paper.

Today I tried making a mind map about a real project with Apple’s Freeform for the first time, inspired by my M1 MacBook’s recent upgrade to macOS 27 (leapfrogging clear over the much-maligned version 26, as planned). I’m quite happy with the results.

The Freeform “Connectors On” mode makes throwing down a graph of connected, labeled shapes very easy. Because Freeform is a general purpose idea-board tool that isn’t focused on mind mapping specifically, I couldn’t hammer idea-nodes onto the screen quite as quickly as I can with dedicated mind mappers, but it works well enough—and with more flexible-feeling results, too. Reshaping nodes and dropping other stuff onto the board uses essentially the same gestures and patterns I’m used to from Keynote.

That latter point makes Freeform feel much more “Appley” than the various third-party mapping tools I’ve used over the years. I had especial fun sprinkling bare text labels all over my map, changing their fonts and rotating them this way and that for a sort of Principia Discordia look.

I plan on using the map that I made to drive an upcoming project meeting later this week. I wanna try opening it on my iPad, making a duplicate of it, and then slapping some sort of “Done” marker on every node that we manage to cover in our conversation. If that works then I’ll probably draw worried circles around topics that I want to bring up next, too. Being able to make these kinds of impermanent messes on my notes is one reason I value digital tools.

Nothing beats paper when I want to use paper, but I think Freeform is gonna be my digital mind-mapping solution for the foreseeable. I’ve even ordered yet another Apple Pencil from BackMarket (my third, having lost one and let the battery die on another) with the idea that I can scribble Freeform stuff on my iPad, but we’ll see about that.