Scapple is the software equivalent of how I work out my rough ideas on paper. (If I didn’t hate the word “brainstorming” so much, I’d probably call it brainstorming software.) When I’m in the early stages of any project, whether that’s a writing project or a software project, I tend to throw a bunch of ideas down on a big piece of paper, spacing out as-yet unrelated ideas, clustering related notes, and drawing connections between them, trying to work out how everything fits together.
In short, then, Scapple is a tool for getting early ideas down as quickly as possible and making connections between them. The main advantage of doing this in Scapple instead of on paper is that you don’t run out of paper (the Scapple canvas expands to fit as many notes as you want to create), you can move notes around to make room for new ideas and connections, it’s easy to delete and edit notes, and it’s easy to export your notes into other applications when you know what you want to do with them.
I’m well aware that there’s already a plethora of mind-mapping software out there. Where Scapple is slightly different from most is that it doesn’t force you to make any connections, and it doesn’t expect you to start out with one central idea and branch everything else off that. Instead, you are free to write anywhere on the virtual paper and individual notes can be a short or as long as you like. Creating and removing connections is as easy as dragging one note onto another. Most importantly, because its purpose is to allow you to get ideas down and make connections between them quickly, Scapple is dead simple to use. Although I’m currently writing a full manual for it, the QuickStart Guide a little further down should contain everything you need to dig in and get using Scapple.
Homepage: https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scapple/overview
Thanks for this great app. and I am also to Harris Swell who commented above me for his valuable information about how to install this app. For a long time, I couldn’t install it depite several attempts.
Thanks for making Scapple free, it is awesome. I use it in college and is great to be able to access it, really appreciated.
This is fantastic and it works superbly. In order to get the app to work go into the Applications folder then right click on Scapple click ‘Get info’ then under General select ‘Open using Rosetta’.
We are so indebted to the provider of this app, Cmacked, thanks so much for improving our lives! You are superb. Please continue to provide updates for the app when the M1 Apple Silicone native version is released. You are astonishing and we wish you nothing but success.
Thanks, thanks and thanks.