The Freeform App is Apple’s Productivity Guilty Pleasure

Apple Productivity

Creating this article using Freeform (Screenshot by author)

There are so many mind-mapping/whiteboard apps available on the Apple platform, but what if the best one was hidden in plan sight? And free?

What if its developer (for reasons unknown) gave the app an ambiguous name? Freeform, for example.

Freeform what? Gymnastics? Dance? Skateboarding?

Er, productivity? Seems unlikely, but actually, it’s about productivity.

Freeform is a combination of mind-mapper, drawing tool, and whiteboard apps. It’s available on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It supports collaboration, too.

When I first tried it, I didn’t think there was much to it. Now that I’ve used it in anger, so to speak, I’m not sure how I’ll fit everything it does into one article.

Well, I’m going to try to cover the important bits.

By the way, all the illustrations for this article were created/stored on a Freeform board.

What do you do with Freeform? You create (white)boards of infinite size and fill them with objects. Objects include text, photos, writing, sketches, links to the Internet and so on. You can then group them together and connect them up.

Launch the app, and you’ll see the boards displayed as a matrix of thumbnails or as a list. It’s your choice.

Freeform opening screen (Screenshot by author)

This is one of the app’s weak points. It’s not a showstopper, but it’s like going back to the early days of the iPad. You can’t put boards into folders.(I know.)

All you can do is pick out:

The ones you worked on recently. Boards you’ve marked as favourites. Anything boards you’ve collaborated on. .