Curio 29

Supercharge your productivity like never before

Capture and curate all your notes, research, and documents in Curio’s intuitive, freeform notebook environment. With its amazing array of integrated tools you can be more productive and focus on getting things done.

Get started for free ›

Your project notebook

Create a Curio project to represent a real-world project that you’re working on. Next fill it with everything related to that project including notes, images, PDF’s, documents, web links, multimedia, and much, much more.

You can place this information anywhere on Curio’s freeform idea spaces. Or use Curio’s integrated mind maps, lists, tables, index cards, albums, pinboards, and Kanban-style stacks to organize your data into powerful collections.

Then use Curio’s incredible set of metadata properties to find, track, and manage it all.

Welcome to Curio’s freeform idea space environment!

A single amazing app

Curio’s intuitive environment provides a comprehensive collection of integrated tools and features so you can be more productive and stay focused on your creativity and research.

The key point is that everything related to your project is stored, managed, and tracked within a single project file using a single, well-integrated application. You’re not juggling a mess of files scattered about your hard disk with a disparate suite of apps.

It’s all in Curio.

A mix of markdown, rich text, images, tables, and mind maps; plus ChatGPT integration.

Continuous productivity

With Curio you have an extraordinarily close connection to its development and support. In most cases feedback and requests are quickly incorporated in upcoming releases, and many support incidents are answered within hours.

This tighter feedback loop and rapid development cycle, with major releases appearing every few months, allows us to quickly react to customer requests, market trends, and competition.

Traditional licenses include one full year of free major updates so license holders and subscribers will enjoy a continuous stream of major productivity features and enhancements.

Spread a PDF across an idea space and then to additional idea spaces for annotations and notes.

Flexible licensing

Curio can be purchased either as a traditional license or as a Mac App Store subscription.

Purchase a traditional license from our website and get one full year of free major updates. Renew your license whenever you’re ready to enjoy another free year of updates.

Or, purchase a low-cost monthly or yearly subscription from the Mac App Store and know that you’re always on the very latest release as macOS silently handles installing updates.

It’s your choice.

Custom cross references can be created between figures, idea spaces, and web locations.

It’s your data

Your Curio projects can end up containing a massive amount of data.

Unlike some big web-based service solutions out there, your data isn’t in a central database tempting hackers, or inaccessible due to a service outage, or at risk of the shifting focus of a VC investor.

This is your data on your Mac.

Curio also makes it super easy to export all of your project data in plain text, rich text, markdown, PDF, various collection formats, and more.

The journal feature is perfect for daily classes or meetings; the cross-project Status shelf is on the right.

Try Curio today

Curio includes a 2 week trial so you can check it out, risk free.

On launch, Curio will open the Welcome to Curio project and step you through the big features. It also includes a Samples idea space gallery so you can see what Curio can do.

If you’re eager for more details check out Curio’s complete online documentation and collection of videos below.

Kanban task tracking with connected stack collections.

Our customers

Designers gather inspiration and client requirements. Writers brainstorm plot and character development. Students take notes, annotate handouts, and collect research. Professors create and present lesson plans and assignments. Scientists gather lab results and images. Project Managers track tasks and feature checklists. Programmers plan new product features, sketch prototypes, and track competitors. Lawyers gather information, organize ideas and prepare cases. Entrepreneurs mind map ideas and plan new companies.

What will you do with Curio?

An idea space with multiple mind maps, along with the Stencils shelf.

Compositions

Introducing composition, Curio’s most powerful collection figure. Unlike other collections, this über collection is designed to contain and organize other collections!

This means normal figures like text, images, and files plus collection figures like lists, tables, stacks, mind maps can all exist within a composition collection.

Each composition is made up of one or more independent rows, with each row having one or more columns, and each column having one or more stacked figures. Simply drag-and-drop to dynamically create rows and columns.

The composition automatically lays out items, scooting and auto-spacing figures around as the composition is resized and contained figures are added, removed, and modified.

Learn more about compositions ›

Discounts on new licenses are available for qualifying staff, faculty, and students of accredited educational organizations.

If the email address you enter below is a school-issued email address, such as one with .edu, .k12, or other domain, we may be able to instantly qualify you for academic pricing when you press Continue.

👉 Your new license will be issued to this email address!

Otherwise, please upload your proof of academic eligibility, issued by the institution with your name and institution name, dated within the past 12 months.

Examples: a school ID card, report card, transcript, tuition bill or statement. PDF, JPG, HEIC, or PNG. Max 2MB.
Questions or need a pre-validation code instead?

Cancel Continue

Enter your current license information to see your discounted license renewal and crossgrade options. License renewals include one full year of free major updates!

If upgrading from an old purchase of Curio 7 Core or Curio 11 Express from the Mac App Store then follow these instructions.

Find your current license key via the Curio > License menu item. (Or we can send it to you.)

👉 Your new license will be issued to this same email address! (Email changed?)

▸ Student or teacher? Click here to enter your credentials for an academic discount.

▾ Never mind, please dismiss the academic questions.

If the registered email address you entered above is a school-issued email address, such as one with .edu, .k12, or other domain, we may be able to instantly qualify you for academic pricing when you press Continue.

Otherwise, please upload your proof of academic eligibility, issued by the institution with your name and institution name, dated within the past 12 months.

Examples: a school ID card, report card, transcript, tuition bill or statement. PDF, JPG, HEIC, or PNG. Max 2MB.
Questions or need a pre-validation code instead?

Cancel Continue

Get Started For Free

Curio is available with a 2 week free trial either from our website, with support for traditional license keys, or the Mac App Store, with support for monthly or yearly subscriptions.

Traditional License Subscription

Free

Perfect for smaller projects containing no more than 5 idea spaces. Compare ›

Standard

Kickstart your productivity with amazing features and functionality with projects unlimited in size. Compare ›

$89.99 Edu $69.99

Buy license renewal or crossgrade

Standard renewal $59.99 ($49.99 edu).

$5 per month billed annually or $6 billed monthly

Professional

Our flagship and most popular offering with advanced features for power-users and productivity gurus. Compare ›

$119.99 Edu $89.99

Buy license renewal or crossgrade

Professional renewal $79.99 ($59.99 edu).

$7 per month billed annually or $8 billed monthly

Download Curio and begin free trial

Includes 2 week free trial with all Pro features enabled.
Traditional licenses include 1 year of free major updates.

Mac App Store subscriptions include 2 week trial.
Low cost of entry and always up to date.

Prices in USD. Taxes may apply.
Curio 29 runs on macOS Monterey 12 through macOS Sonoma 14 on Apple silicon or Intel.
Curio downloaded from Zengobi only works with traditional license keys, not Mac App Store subscriptions.Curio downloaded from the Mac App Store only works with Apple’s subscriptions, not license keys.
Release Notes - Documentation (PDF) - License Agreement License Agreement - Terms of Use - Privacy Policy

Curio Traditional Licenses FAQ

Download Curio from our website and begin your 2 week free trial with all Professional features enabled. Once the trial expires, if you decide not to purchase a license, you can continue to use Curio with the Standard feature set to explore the bundled Welcome to Curio project and to create and edit your own projects each with up to 5 idea spaces. Larger projects are opened read-only for viewing, exporting, and printing.

When you’re ready for more, purchase a Standard or Professional license to enable the appropriate functionality. Licenses include a year of free major updates. At the end of this period your Curio app continues working normally — it does not expire or deactivate — however, you will no longer receive app updates. Whenever you wish, you can purchase a license renewal to extend your license with another year of free updates.

Curio Subscriptions FAQ

Download Curio from Mac App Store and you can use Curio without an active subscription with the Standard feature set to explore the Welcome to Curio project and to create and edit your own projects each with up to 5 idea spaces. Larger projects are opened read-only for viewing, exporting, and printing.

When you’re ready for more, start a 2 week free trial by subscribing to a Standard or Professional monthly or yearly plan from within Curio, which instantly unlocks the appropriate features. If you cancel at least 24 hours before the end of the free trial period you won’t be charged for using Curio. You can manage and cancel your subscription by going to your account settings on the Mac App Store any time after purchase.

Compare Curio Editions

Click a feature to learn more in the documentation.

	Free	Standard	ProProfessional
Notebook Environment
Project notebook environment with intuitive freeform idea spaces.
Maximum number of idea spaces per project notebook.	5 max	Unlimited	Unlimited
Rich text figures with support for bundled and custom figure styles.
Embedded and aliased files, images, PDF’s, audio, videos, Mail messages, web links, web preview cards, and live web views.
Markdown rendering with rich text, emoji, images, lists, block quotes, and code blocks.
Interconnected wikilinks and backlinks, plus markdown links, jump actions, jump anchors, idea space link figures, and hyperlinks.
Custom idea space templates and figure stencils plus a handy Stencils shelf.
Hierarchical Organizer sections for independent divisions in larger projects.
Integrated Journal for a project diary, meeting notes, or class notes.
Follow Figures and Bundle Figures for lightweight figure groupings.
Automatic project backups for peace of mind.
Bundled appearance themes to change the look of your Curio interface.
Custom app icons for sustainers to enjoy.
Collections
Compositions, our most powerful collection figure, can contain text, images, files, plus other collections like lists, mind maps, and tables, all arranged into one or more independent rows, with each row having one or more columns, and each column having one or more stacked figures.
Mind mapping with left, right, top-down, and org chart arrangements; branch boundary shading; relationship lines; date calculations.
Lists from simple to-do’s to complex hierarchical lists, numbered or bulleted, checkboxes, level styles, date calculations.
Albums of photos or documents, such as PDFs, with optional captions.
Index cards for organizing your notes.
Tables with headers and footers.
Pinboards for freeform collections of text and images.
Stacks for Kanban-style task tracking.
Table of Contents list or mind map.
Focus mode to help you concentrate on specific figures or branches.
Meta
Figure meta including checkmarks; percent complete; local project tags, cross project tags, and nested tag sets; start, due, duration, done, plus smart date calculations; priorities; ratings; resources; notes; custom click actions.
Inline #tags and @resources.
Organizer meta flags column.
Status bar to view and edit figure meta data.
Search and Quick Find to quickly find and jump to idea spaces and figures with simple or complex queries including regular expressions and boolean logic.
Query-based Organizer Filters, dynamic Smart Filters, and Pinned Organizer Items.
Multimedia and PDFs
Create and embed audio and video recordings.
Embed YouTube and Vimeo videos.
Resample image to optimize format, compression, dimensions, and/or DPI.
Brush and pen sketching with support for iPad+Apple Pencil via Sidecar.
Integrated equation editor for LaTeX, AsciiMath, or MathML rendering.
Spread PDF to spread the pages of a PDF across multiple idea spaces for inline annotations and note-taking alongside the PDF page.
Flowcharting
36 flowcharting shapes for idea graphs, diagrams, and prototyping.
Sticky lines with several arrowhead styles; straight, curved, or orthogonal.
Assistants
Sleuth window and Sleuth sidebar shelf for integrated Internet searching via popular research and image sites like Google, Wikipedia, and more.
AI Services such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, Perplexity, Poe, and Groq are also available from within Sleuth.
Import / Export
Import/export as text, image, PDF, HTML, CSV, OPML, and 3rd party mind map formats.
Extensive markdown export and import.
PDF Mirror live export of your project as a PDF to any specified location, including synced cloud services.
PDF Table of Contents in exports.
Sync tasks to Calendar & Reminders.
Local library shelf to easily list, find, preview, open, and drag in files anywhere on your Mac or within custom scope folders, including support for DEVONthink items.
Evernote integration for quick access to your notes in the cloud.
TaskPaper import and export and OmniOutliner Pro OPML import.
Works with Curiota: our free, always available menu bar app for quickly jotting down ideas, taking notes, or collecting files when inspiration strikes.
Power User Functionality
Synced figure instances where one or more copies of figures can share content and meta (transclusion) across an entire project.
File-backed text figures display the content of embedded or aliased rich text or markdown files, located on disk on in the cloud, as editable text figures.
Figure layers allow for more flexible layouts and arrangements.
Cross references, with custom types like Agree and Evidence, can be created between figures, idea spaces, and web locations for more organized research.
Status shelf for easy cross-project task tracking at a glance.
Query-based collections allow you to create list, mind map, or stack collections that contain the dynamic results of a query, like `due<2w or #active`.
Master figure styles & stencils, master idea space styles & templates, and master markdown styles for dynamic updates throughout a project.
Presentation mode for group brainstorming sessions, plus Present in Window for remote window sharing.
Custom figure data allows custom keys and formatted values to be associated with your project figures and available for search queries.
Custom variables for use throughout your project for dynamic text replacements.
Custom sharing actions to export data to other apps via 3rd party app URL schemes.
Custom appearance themes to fine-tune the look of your Curio interface.
Custom project backup settings.
External project library to support Spotlight searching of project assets.
External repositories for sharing styles, stencils, and templates with colleagues.
Project password for project security.

Curio Sightings

Learn how customers are using Curio in these discussions.

January 2022 Software of the Month: Curio
MacPowerUsers

Curio for Thinking and Knowledge Management
MacPowerUsers

Zengobi Curio - Should I purchase it?
MacPowerUsers

Brandon Sanderson outlining
Zengobi Forums

Curio sample: coding classes
Zengobi Forums

Better use of Curio
Zengobi Forums

Curio as outliner
Zengobi Forums

Story planning
Zengobi Forums

Huge Shoutout on Overtired
Overtired Podcast

Updated Curio tutorial on ScreenCastsONLINE
ScreenCastsONLINE

Organising literature in Curio
Zengobi Forums

Use for Development of a New College Course
Zengobi Forums

Academic workflow for subject recruitment, scheduling, etc
Zengobi Forums

User case studies or usage for Curio
Zengobi Forums

Workflow: music teacher
Zengobi Forums

Curio used for a lawyer's briefcase
Zengobi Forums

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Meet Curiota!

Curiota is our free, out of the way yet always available menu bar app that allows you to quickly jot down ideas, take notes, or collect files when inspiration strikes.

You can also send text or files into Curiota via macOS Services, the macOS Share button, the print dialog’s Save PDF to Curiota option, a browser bookmarklet, and even AppleScript.

While Curiota can be used even if you don’t own Curio, when combined with Curio you have a powerhouse combination since Curiota helps you collect notes and files outside of Curio. Then, when you’re back in Curio, you can view, search, and access all your collected Curiota information directly using Curio’s Library.

Learn more about Curiota ›