If you're unsure yet, you can click Decide later to continue into the app without choosing anything. If you don't want to store your data on somebody else's server, you can also choose to save your work on a local drive. You can choose from several online storage services for the online public instance, depending on what you've got an account for. If you're hosting Draw.io yourself, your choices depend on which API keys you have access to. When you first start Draw.io, you need to choose where you want to save your data.

Install Draw.ioĭraw.io is designed as an open source online app, so you can either use it as an online application, download the desktop version, or clone the Git repository and host it on your own server. Call them 'mind maps' or 'flowcharts' or 'idea boards.' They're easy to make with the open source Draw.io application. Some maps describe a thought process, plan, algorithm, or even random ideas desperately trying to fit together in a potential work of art. Maps don't have to be literal to be valuable and full of possibility, though. You could step outside and take the road this way or that way, and if you do, just think of all the new and exciting things you'll be able to see.

Aside from their obvious purpose of actually describing where things are in relation to other things, I think maps do a great job of expressing potential. I remember opening the front book cover of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit when I was younger, staring at the hand-drawn map of Middle Earth, and feeling the wealth of possibility contained in the simple drawing.

Mind mapping software online