Exporting everything from mymind, and what actually comes with it

mymind is one of the better-designed tools in this whole category, and exporting from it does not have to mean you are unhappy with it. People back things up. It is worth doing whether you are leaving, trying something else alongside it, or just want a copy of your own material sitting on your own drive.

Good news first: mymind does have a real export, it is easy to find, and according to their own help documentation it saves your actual files rather than only a list of links.

Does mymind let you export your data?

Yes. mymind's own support article on the subject confirms a built-in export function, reachable from your account settings rather than buried in a menu.

1. Go to access.mymind.com and sign in. This is the same address you use to open your mind day to day.
2. Click the cog icon in the bottom left corner. That opens your account page.
3. Click Export My Mind, in the bottom right. mymind then begins building your export.
4. Choose or create a destination folder. Their documentation is specific on this point: you cannot save directly into Documents or Desktop, so create a subfolder first.

One practical catch worth knowing before you start: mymind's export documentation states the function currently only works in the latest versions of Chrome or Microsoft Edge, because of how those browsers write files straight to your disk. If your default browser is Safari or Firefox, you will need to switch for this one task.

What does a mymind export actually contain?

Two things land in your chosen folder, according to mymind's own account of the process. Every image and PDF you saved comes out as its own individual file, not wrapped inside a proprietary format. Alongside those files sits a single cards.csv, which mymind describes as covering your notes, quotes, bookmark links and text highlights.

That is a meaningfully honest export. A lot of cloud tools will hand you metadata and leave the actual files behind a paywall or an API you never reach. mymind's own documentation does not describe that kind of gap here: it specifically says each image and PDF you saved gets written out to your local folder.

What mymind actually gets right

It is worth saying plainly: mymind's whole pitch is that you should not have to organise anything, and for a lot of people that is exactly the point, not a shortcoming. Its smart tagging reads the domain and the words in a page title and files things automatically, so a save can go straight in without you naming a folder or picking a tag first. Search is the primary way back to something, not a browsed hierarchy you have to keep tidy. That is a considered design position, not a missing feature, and it genuinely suits people whose real objection to bookmarking tools was always the filing step itself.

Why would you export if you like it?

Because liking a tool and wanting a copy of your own material are not opposites. mymind is a subscription, priced up to $129 a year with no free plan to fall back on, and everything you save lives on their servers rather than your drive. Both of those are ordinary, reasonable trade-offs for a cloud product, not flaws, but they are trade-offs worth having a plan for regardless of whether you ever cancel. A yearly export costs you the couple of minutes above and gives you a copy that exists independently of your subscription staying active.

One thing we could not confirm

mymind's help article does not say whether the export function still works once a subscription has lapsed or been cancelled. We looked and could not find a clear answer on their own site. If you are planning to cancel and want the export first, the safe order is to run the export while your account is still active, and to email mymind's own support directly at help@mymind.com if you need to confirm the exact behaviour for your account before you do anything irreversible. An honest gap is better than a guessed procedure.

What to do with the files afterward

Whatever you decide about mymind itself, keep the export. It costs little and it is the only version of your material that does not depend on their servers staying up.

If you are only backing up, a labelled folder somewhere safe is enough. If you are moving some or all of that material into a visual library instead, there is no dedicated mymind importer in Muse yet, so this is a manual move rather than a one-click one. The images and PDFs mymind exported are ordinary files, so you can drag them straight into a Muse collection the same way you would drag them into any folder. The cards.csv sits alongside them and opens in any spreadsheet app if you want to keep the notes, quotes and links it holds as a separate reference while you go.

Either way, the underlying point holds regardless of which app you end up using: an export that gives you real files, sitting in a folder you control, is worth having on principle. mymind's own documentation says that is what its export does, and that is a genuinely good thing about it.