SimpleMind Lite is intended for brainstorming, organizing ideas, and outlining research. In this regard, the application helps you present, organize and analyze ideas.
As with many other similar tools, most of your work consists mainly in creating topics and establishing the relationships and hierarchies between them. In this respect, relationships can be expressed with arrows while hierarchies are created by stacking topics on top of each other. The resulting maps can be further explained by adding labels, callouts and notes. Unfortunately, many-to-many associations between topics are not supported.
Luckily, you do not have to put too much care in placing each element exactly where you want it, as the tool can arrange topics without your intervention. Moreover, it is possible to manipulate not only individual but also multiple objects with such actions as rotating and moving. Additionally, there are various alignment functions. All this makes it ideal for brainstorming, which require agile map drawing.
It is excellent that topics can be enriched with multimedia elements. For instance, you can insert images inside a topic to make it stand out. Likewise, it is possible to attach video and sound files to your topics.
In a nutshell, SimpleMind Lite is an excellent mind-mapping tool, probably the best of its type. However, notice that the version being reviewed here is the Lite (free) version and there are some limitations derived from this. In this regard, it does not allow sharing or synchronizing your work on the cloud. Still, you can simply send it to a virtual printer and create a PDF file instead. These inconveniences can be avoided by unlocking Pro features via in-app purchases.
Pros
- Several pre-built layouts
- Free-form layout
- Supports adding labels, callouts and notes
- Automatic arranging of elements
- Various alignment functions
- Supports embedding multimedia elements
Cons
- Many-to-many associations not supported
- Cloud sharing and syncing not supported
- Does not allow saving custom layouts