yEd is a hidden treasure. It is an application for making high quality diagrams. There's a level of this you can do in PowerPoint I guess, but if you need that little bit extra for documentation using more serious diagrams then yEd is really worth your time and investigation. yEd is Java based, but includes a suitable runtime for each platform that is supported. For macOS that means its own embedded OpenJDK Java 21 JRE. Don't let that worry you - it just works!
TL:DR – If you need complex custom structured diagrams then yEd is for you! Easy to get started, powerful and free!
Contents
Installing yEd
Choose the right download. By default yEd shows the Intel download, but if you're using a current Mac then you'll need the download for Apple Silicon which they label as ARM architecture. You'll need to scroll through the downloads to find it. They should probably make it the default now that Apple has completed the transition to Apple Silicon.
Accept the licence and drag the yEd app to Applications. That's it!
Running yEd
Once you load yEd you'll see a welcome window and a main window.
Sample Document
To give you an idea of how powerful yEd is, load up the sample document and you'll start to see the possibilities. Dont try to master yEd at one sitting, but it is rewarding to explore this software and figure out good ways to achieve the graph or diagram that you require.
