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My Favorite Apps

There are six apps I use constantly in my work as an author and lecturer. Two of them I’ve used for years and the other four are new. I discovered all of them since the beginning of the year.
The apps are:
- Nebo
- Scrivener
- iThoughtsX
- Scrintal
- Milanotes
- Heptabase
New ideas start out as a scribbled note on Nebo on my iPad. When I get time, I expand the idea with notes and sketches. Oftentimes I take screenshots and send them to my laptop to be incorporated into other apps.

The image shows my scribbling for this article.
I’ve used this app for years. I’d guess I’ve written over 15 books with it, both fiction and non-fiction. I use it for anything that I think will end up being more that eight or nine thousand words. A feature I use a lot during the warm weather months is the iPad version. I’ll go to the pool and use the iPad and a keyboard to write.
I’m a mind-mapping fan and I have a few mind-mapping apps on my laptop.
I see quite a few articles discussing mind-mapping apps but I rarely see the articles mention iThoughtsX. This is my favorite mind-mapping app and I use it constantly. It has all the features of the ones mentioned in the articles and is easy to use.
Currently, I’m a beta user for this app which won’t be official until the end of the year.
It’s a productivity app with a difference: there are no templates and no folders: just a white screen for cards, lots of cards. This app complements the way my mind works without bogging it down trying to fit an idea into a template.
As the app adds more beta features, I find more uses for it.
The graphic shows an early version of this article. Green cards are completed first drafts. Revised drafts will be a different color.