A few apps I’ve discovered recently (or am otherwise keeping eyes on):
Tangent Notes: PKM notes app with backlinks, Matuschak-style sliding panels, and the ubiquitous network graph… reads MD files wherever you want to store them. Mac/Windows. http://tangentnotes.com
Gems: PKM, with an emphasis on visual thinking (concepts maps with a really good note taking interface). In development/waitlisting; roadmap is promising. Web. http://gemsnotes.app
Airlist: outliner and task list with backlinks. Very polished design. I’m hoping for deep links or a URL scheme… i*OS https://airlist.app
Mmm, yes— Anytype is on my list! There’s a category of workspace/canvas apps I’m keeping eyes on like this, including Sophia Xu’s Unigraph (https://unigraph.dev)…
TBH, I think this is part of the challenge of canvas/workspace style apps. Particularly those that operate as minimal creative operating systems…
it’s like the challenge some people felt with Notion when that first dropped (so much it’s capable of that there’s a learning curve in figuring out the best way to set it up for your own needs).
Some of the tools in this category seem to want to solve EVERYTHING— messaging, scheduling, calendaring, knowledge management, etc. And I think that can be hard to wrap your head around if you’ve already got a system composed of specific apps for specific tasks.
Yes and … Anytype is visually beautiful but I can’t tell what it does after 5 minutes of looking at it. That isn’t a good sign. Craft is also attractive but in only a couple of minutes I had a solid idea of what it does.
Anytype gives me lock-in heebie-jeebies. What happens when I want to break up with the app and my whole life is in there? I feel the same way about Roam and Notion.
Looks impressive, and nearly what I’m looking for (like ‘The Brain’ but more visually attractive). Web based might be a deal-breaker though, raising questions of information portability… And £12 a month is getting into Roam territory.
I might be able to do something similar with iThoughtsX, though, so it’s useful to see just for the concepts.
IThoughts is one of the go-to apps in my stack, and I don’t know why it doesn’t get more love than it seems to. If it had just a few additional features/adjustments, I’d be made up…
There’s more URL scheme functionality in iThoughts than many other apps, and the search is amazing. My iThoughts feature wishlist includes:
url scheme to search (open search with input from a URL)
url scheme to invoke a filter in a map
larger search interface (half screen or even full screen by expansion)
more robust support for non-hierarchical nodes and edges; “call outs” are useful, but could be even more so…
Great ideas. I’m a huge mindmap user and switched from MindNode for the advanced functionality in IThoughts. Your suggestions would turn it into a powerhouse.
It seems the s-curve in mind-mapping apps is steep and peaks rapidly. The market is probably not broad either. If that’s the case, I can see why mind-map app developers might prefer to dial back the investment and remain in maintenance mode.