WiseMapping is a free, open-source, web-based mind mapping tool designed for individuals, teams, and educational institutions. It enables users to create, share, and collaborate on mind maps with role-based access control, facilitating brainstorming sessions, project planning, and knowledge management. Built with modern open standards technologies like SVG and React, WiseMapping provides a versatile and user-friendly platform to visualize and organize complex information effectively. The open-source codebase powers https://www.wisemapping.com, ensuring reliability and continuity in its development.
WiseMapping provides a comprehensive set of features for creating, managing and sharing mind maps.
- Topics & structure: Unlimited hierarchy, drag-and-drop reordering, indent/outdent, sibling and child creation, multi-selection, copy/paste (including paste-as-child), and detached free-floating topics (
Ctrl/⌘+ drag to disconnect) - Layouts: Classic radial mind map (horizontal, balanced) or top-down tree (vertical)
- Topic styling: Shapes (rectangle, rounded rectangle, ellipse, line, none, image), fill and border colours, border styles (solid, dashed, dotted), and font family, size, weight, style and colour
- Connector styles: Seven connector shapes — thin and thick curved, arc, straight and curved polyline, heartbeat and neuron — with per-branch colour overrides
- Relationships: Free-form connections between any two topics, with configurable colour, line type, start/end arrowheads and solid/dashed/dotted strokes
- Themes: Seven built-in themes — Classic, Prism, Robot, Sunrise, Ocean, Aurora and Retro — plus light and dark mode
- Canvas: Configurable background colour and pattern (solid, grid, dots) with adjustable grid size and colour; pan, zoom, zoom-to-fit, two-finger/trackpad zoom, and remembered scroll and zoom position
- Undo/redo: Command-based undo history covering every editing action
- Rich-text notes: Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, bulleted and numbered lists, inline links and icons
- Document linking: Attach external URLs and resources to any topic
- Icons: Searchable SVG icon gallery with a "frequently used" section, plus the full emoji set
- Topic images: Render a topic as an image picked from the gallery
- Find in map: Incremental search with match-by-match navigation across every topic
- Outline view: Hierarchical outline of the whole map, with note and link indicators
- Expand & collapse: Per-branch collapse, expand/collapse all, and expand to a chosen depth
- Keyboard-first editing: Comprehensive shortcuts with an in-editor reference pane for both Windows/Linux and macOS bindings
- Version history: Browse earlier revisions of a map and revert to any of them
- Print: Print-optimised rendering of the current map
- Import: WiseMapping XML (
.wxml), Freemind (.mm), Freeplane (.mmx), XMind (.xmind), MindManager (.mmap) and OPML - Export as image: SVG, PNG, JPG and PDF
- Export as document: Plain text and Markdown
- Export to other tools: WiseMapping XML, Freemind and Freeplane
- Role-based sharing: Invite collaborators per map as owner, editor or viewer, enforced by map-level permission checks on every request
- Edit locking: A map being edited is locked so concurrent sessions cannot overwrite each other's work
- Publish & embed: Make a map publicly readable and embed it into web pages, blogs and documentation
- Organisation: Colour-coded labels, starred maps, filtered views (all, owned, shared, starred, public, by label), duplicate, rename, bulk delete, and per-map info
- Authentication: Database accounts, Google and Facebook OAuth2, any OpenID Connect provider (doc/oidc), and LDAP, with JWT-based sessions
- Account self-service: Registration with optional reCAPTCHA, email activation, link-based password reset, and account deletion
- Admin console: Account management and system status pages for administrators
- Spam & abuse controls: Spam detection on write and as a scheduled batch, with automatic user suspension
- Housekeeping: Scheduled history purge plus inactive-user and inactive-map cleanup
- Telemetry: Micrometer metrics with Prometheus and OpenTelemetry/OTLP exporters, disabled by default and opt-in per operator
- Multi-platform: Runs in any modern browser on desktop or mobile, built on open standards (SVG, React)
- Multi-language: 13 UI languages — English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Japanese, Hindi and Arabic (right-to-left)
- REST API: Full REST API for integration and automation, documented with OpenAPI
- Self-hosted: Complete control over your data with on-premise deployment
- Supported persistence: PostgreSQL v15+ (recommended for production), MySQL v8+ and MariaDB v11.4+ (supported for production), HSQLDB v2.7+ (development/testing only)
- Docker deployment: Production-ready multi-architecture (amd64 and arm64) images on Docker Hub
- 🆓 100% free: Every feature, without restrictions
For production deployments, follow the official Docker images and instructions on Docker Hub: https://hub.docker.com/r/wisemapping/wisemapping.
The following steps are intended for local development only (not production). For production, see the Deployment section above.
- JDK 26 or higher
- Maven v3.x or higher (http://maven.apache.org/)
- Yarn v4 or higher
- Node v24 or higher
The fastest way to get a full stack running is one of the reference Compose overlays under
distribution/. They run the published wisemapping/wisemapping image against a real database,
so no local build is required:
$ cd distribution/app-postgresql # or app-mysql / app-mariadb
$ cp .env.example .env # set WISEMAPPING_DATA_DIR and POSTGRES_PASSWORD in it
$ mkdir -p <WISEMAPPING_DATA_DIR>/logs
$ docker compose up -d
WISEMAPPING_DATA_DIR and the database password are mandatory — Compose fails fast if either is
unset. See distribution/app-postgresql/README.md for the full set of variables.
Application will start at http://localhost/c/login. You can login using test@wisemapping.org with password password, or as an administrator with admin@wisemapping.org / testAdmin123.
$ mvn -f wise-api/pom.xml package
$ cd wise-api
$ mvn spring-boot:run
The API starts on :8080 backed by an in-memory HSQLDB, so no database setup is needed for development. Point it at PostgreSQL, MySQL or MariaDB with an external config overlay (see Configuration).
You need to checkout https://github.com/wisemapping/wisemapping-frontend first. Then, follow the next steps:
$ export APP_CONFIG_TYPE="file:dev"
$ cd wisemapping-frontend
$ yarn install
$ yarn build
$ cd packages/webapp; yarn start
Application will start at http://localhost:3000/c/login. The dev server proxies /api to the API on
:8080. You can login using test@wisemapping.org with password password, or as an administrator
with admin@wisemapping.org / testAdmin123.
- PostgreSQL v15 or higher (Recommended for production)
- MySQL v8 or higher (Supported for production)
- MariaDB v11.4 or higher (Supported for production)
- Hsqldb v2.7 or higher (Development and testing only - NOT for production)
WiseMapping backend is based on Spring Boot v4 and it's highly customizable. Additional documentation can be found here
The preferred option is to extend it by overriding application.yml
$ java -jar wise-api/target/wisemapping-api.jar --spring.config.additional-location=file:./app.yml
For example, this overlay
configures PostgreSQL as the database. Equivalent overlays for MySQL and MariaDB live alongside it
under distribution/.
- Paulo Veiga pveiga@wisemapping.com
- Pablo Luna pablo@wisemapping.com
- Ezequiel Bergamaschi ezequielbergamaschi@gmail.com
The source code is Licensed under the WiseMapping Open License, Version 1.0 (the “License”); You may obtain a copy of the License at: https://github.com/wisemapping/wisemapping-open-source/blob/develop/LICENSE.md
- API Documentation - Complete REST API documentation with examples
- Backend Documentation - Backend-specific documentation including telemetry and OpenAPI specs
- Deployment Guide - Docker and deployment documentation
This README focuses on development setup. For production, use the Deployment section above.