Curio for Mac

Product summary

Curio is a full-featured brainstorming and note-taking application for macOS. If you need a powerful canvas for organizing ideas or want a replacement for OneNote on Windows, Curio’s professional edition is worth evaluating. It bundles an extensive set of tools for mapping projects, capturing media, and preparing presentations.

Suggested substitute

• Microsoft Excel — commercial product that some users rely on as an alternative for structured note-taking and simple diagrams.

What the Professional edition brings

• Sleuth integration for searching image resources (for example, Google Images and Flickr) directly from inside the app.
• A presentation mode that lets you display idea spaces cleanly to others.
• Ready-made stencils and templates plus project-level features like dossiers and encryption.
• A status shelf that enables color-coded tracking of tasks and events.

How it works and what you can do

Curio uses a free-form workspace so you can place notes, images, audio recordings and video anywhere on the idea board rather than being limited to fixed containers. You can customize the feel of your boards with a variety of background styles (notebook paper, graph paper, linen textures, etc.), giving each project its own visual identity.

Drawbacks to consider

• The application is very feature-rich, which creates a steep learning curve for new users; however, a comprehensive user manual is available for those who want to dig in.
• There is no iPad version yet, so mobile users who prefer tablets may find the lack of an iOS/iPadOS app limiting.

Minor enhancement

• Added a “Create alias to file instead of embedding” checkbox in the Insert > File dialog so you can link files rather than embed them (equivalent to holding Option while dragging from Finder).

Recent bug repairs and behavioral fixes

• Fixed a style problem that occurred when creating attached collections.
• Notes can now be applied to individual collection items (lists, mind maps, index cards, tables) rather than only to the collection’s root element.
• Improved spacebar behavior so we enter a pending state on keydown for spacebar presses that previously caused mismatched key events when dialogs closed.
• Corrected spacebar handling between Quick Look and cursor-zoom modes.
• Addressed problems with figures that contained notes when using Arrange > Collect Into List/Mind Map.
• Added a warning: enabling project sections will make the project incompatible with Curio Core and versions earlier than 7.
• Resolved an issue where Option+Shift failed to create a truly empty List or Mind Map object.
• Prevented the app from hanging if Spread PDF was invoked with no PDFs present on the idea space.
• Gesture support is now controlled by a new preference and is disabled by default; enabling it issues a caution if a gesture-enhancement utility is detected that might interfere with undo behavior.
• Fixed a crash that could occur with the shelf system when switching between projects.
• Resolved a hang when opening the Library or performing searches caused by unresolved asset aliases.
• Prevented an autosaved, untitled project from being closed without saving if another project was opened in a new window.
• When collapsing lists or mind maps with the spacebar, the first-level children now remain visible so you can tell the collection was collapsed.