Feature Roundup

Curio has scores of features that you can use to maximize your productivity!

Here’s a central index of all of Curio’s key features with links to details elsewhere in the documentation, separated by our Standard and Professional editions.

Curio Standard

Kickstart your productivity with an amazing collection of features and functionality with projects unlimited in size.

Notebook Environment

• Project notebook environment with intuitive freeform idea spaces.
• Rich text figures with support for bundled and personal figure styles.
• Markdown text figures with extensive syntax support for bold, italics, underline, strikethrough, highlight, inline code, links, LaTeX inline and block equations, wikilinks, headers, emoji, images, lists, checklists, dashed lists, tables, block quotes and callouts, code blocks, and horizontal rules.
• Embedded and aliased files, images, PDF’s, audio, videos, Mail messages, web links, web preview cards, and embedded live web views.
• Wikilinks and backlinks, markdown links, links to selected text or embedded PDF text, jump actions, jump anchors, idea space link figures, and hyperlinks.
• Custom idea space templates and figure stencils plus Stencils shelf for quick access.
• 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.
• Multiple project windows open for the same project.
• Custom app icons, a fun new perk for sustainers to enjoy.

Collections

• Compositions provide flexible, dynamically-sized arrangements of contained figures including text, images, files, plus lists, mind maps, tables, and more. Tabloid compositions create newspaper-style layouts with flexible rows and columns, while matrix compositions provide structured, simplified grids.
• Mind mapping with left, right, top-down, right-down, tree, 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, footers, and numeric formatting.
• 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.
• SVG images.
• Placeholder images for easy swapping, perfect for stencils.
• Resample image to optimize format, compression, dimensions, and/or DPI.
• Markup image to annotate, highlight, and scribble on an image.
• Brush and pen sketching with support for iPad+Apple Pencil via Sidecar.
• Integrated equation editor for LaTeX, AsciiMath, or MathML rendering of inline or standalone equations.
• Spread PDF to spread the pages of a PDF across multiple idea spaces for inline annotations and note-taking alongside the PDF page.

Flowcharting

• Flowcharting shapes for idea graphs, diagrams, and prototyping.
• Sticky lines with arrowhead styles; straight, curved, or orthogonal.

Research

• Sleuth window and Sleuth sidebar shelf for integrated Internet searching via popular research and image sites like Google, Wikipedia, and more.
• AI Services including ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, Perplexity, Poe, Groq, Grok, Mistral, DeepSeek, Qwen, and local LLM chat servers are also available from within Sleuth.

Import / Export

• Import/Export as text, markdown, 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 and 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.
• 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.

Curio Professional

Curio’s most advanced features for power-users and productivity gurus.

• Mermaid figures, Mermaid in markdown code blocks, and Mermaid Organizer documents for advanced diagramming.
• Markdown language code blocks with syntax coloring.
• Synced figure instances where copies of figures across a project share content and meta (transclusion) across an entire project.
• Synced files where figures can sync the contents of text figures and list, mind map, stack, and table collection figures to external local or cloud-hosted files, either bidirectionally, export only, or import only.
• File-backed text figures display the content of embedded or aliased rich text or markdown files, located anywhere on disk, 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 and stencils, master idea space styles and 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.