Giving your mind maps a unique look is great. Of course, you would want to make them feel more like you. Which is why we introduced Personal Themes.

In this article, you'll learn how to create them and also what information is kept and which are changed when you apply a theme to an existing document.

Create a Personal Theme:

To create your custom themes, create a new document with a main node, up to six child nodes, and one connection. Set the colors and font to your liking. You can not only select the styling for the first level of nodes, but the following levels as well, and thereby create a hierarchical theme.

Then select Create Theme in the themes sidebar. In the pop-up, decide whether you want the theme to be dynamic (i.e., switch between light and dark mode) or not.

Now you're all set, and your styling will now be available in the theme selection, where you can also choose to give it a new name in the context menu.

You can also add existing themes via drag and drop or share your themes with others via the context menu entry.

Creating a new document:

Once you create a new MindNode document using your Theme, everything will be as you defined it.

But what exactly gets saved into the theme? Or in other words: What does the theme remember to do?

For the main node:

• Node shape
• Border style
• Branch style
• Color
• Text formatting such as the font, text color, and bold & italic (underline & strikethrough are lost)
• Text alignment will be reset to centered

For child nodes, it's a bit more complex:

The first child node determines

• Node shape
• Border style
• Branch style
• Text formatting such as the font, text color, and bold & italic (again, underline & strikethrough are lost)

The color of the next up to five child nodes is also saved. Beginning with the seventh child node of a mind map, the branch color will be an alternation of those colors.

For Connections:

• Connection style
• Start- and endpoint style
• Connection title: text formatting such as the font, text color, and bold & italic (again, underline & strikethrough are lost)

If a Personal Theme is created without a connection, it will by default have a line as a start point and an arrow as an end point.

Applying a theme to an existing document:

When you apply your Theme (or any theme in general) to an existing MindNode document, some things won't change, as they may be important for the content and context of your mind map.

Such information is

• text formatting such as bold, italic, underline, and strike
• Connection start- & endpoints
• Node shapes