Minimal Folio Reviews

by 32113679752$3??:!

I have no idea how this gets such a great reviews. MinimalFolio barely works and while cheep it’s a complete waste of any kind of money. I emailed MinimalFolio developer for a refund i have not successfully gotten MinimalFolio to work.

by Johnnytee77

I used to love MinimalFolio but with the new iOS it’s become unreliable and glitchy.

Stay clear until the fix what has to be easy bugs to iron out.

by 9-3uq4th6890n[q3fgm[

Not simple to me. Too many steps for things that should only need one. Overly ambitious and poorly designed. Not a bad app for some but it most definitely isn’t right for me.

by Maui Kid

Abandoned and never updated! Find something else and don’t waste your money here. Zero stars!

by Empirewest

Annoyed I wasted my money. Can’t even import images without crashing. Unusable.

by Sangleeonly

It doesn’t work properly

by Angus Of Clyde

A couple of years ago I'd have given "Minimal Folio" 5 stars. It was wonderfully simple, easy to learn and easy to use. I could create a new custom presentation for a new prospect in a couple of minutes on the train to a meeting. It presented my work flawlessly.
No more.
Up until a few months ago, MinimalFolio would refuse to find any photographs that weren't in the iPad's internal picture folder. You know, screen shots and images coped from web pages. It refused to see any images stored in the "Photos" app, where I have a couple thousand. I thought it might be an issue with my older iPad, so I bought a new one. Didn't matter. In fact, it's worse.
MinimalFolio now refuses to find any images. Period. When asked to, it crashes.
It still shows presentations created before, but I cannot add any new work, which makes it fairly useless.
I have written the creator at least twice with my concerns, but never received a reply. Sad, because it used to be so elegant.

by Jtsafe

I’ve had MinimalFolio for years and love it but it will no longer sync with Dropbox. I believe the issue appeared with the release of iOS 16.4.1 This review is an attempt to get the attention of the developer because we’d love to continue using MinimalFolio if they can restore functionality at which time I’m happy to change my review back to 5 stars :)

by Chalupamonk

syncing with dropbox is a mess; loses your files if someone else even logs into Dropbox and logs back out of Dropbox on the same device. The design is okay but poorly thought out that you have to swipe down to continue viewing a collection, instead of left and right which most people do to view galleries.
Would not recommend

by Intermediatic

Not enough updates. It’s bad enough that the interface to photos is terrible, but Dropbox doesn’t work anymore and there is also no way to transfer photos from Mac OS Sonoma. RIP to the best portfolio app.

by Streetcat

The portfolio looks great after you get it right. The problem is with the ipad synching. Proper synching would look for the most recent version and put that in place. What happened for me is I loaded some folders into dropbox in the this app folder. Synched within MinimalFolio and they loaded up. So far so good. Some of the photos were too large to display within MinimalFolio however, so i went to the images in dropbox, resized in photoshop and saved. Then in MinimalFolio i re synched. Voila, all the old images on the ipad overwrote the dropbox images. I then thought I would delete the items in MinimalFolio and replace the images in dropbox as I had when I started. This time, when I synched with dropbox, MinimalFolio deleted my dropbox files!!!! This seems totally wrong. A synch should use the newest version of the named file. No idea if I will get it working in time for a presentation. But all in, I have to say for a new buyer it is too much trouble.

by Shadysmith

I appreciate some of the new versions that have reduced crashing and other bugs, but still experiencing strange occurrences, like imported things showing up twice, buggy when moving items around.

The biggest drawback, though, is presenting videos. If for some reason you have to stop the video mid presentation, you have to start from the beginning again — no Pause, no FF or Rewind. It can make for some awkward presentations Dan I’d love to see at least minimal video playback control.

Keep working it at — it’s they still the best presentation format for the iPad out there!

by Sandersong

If only it didn't crash every time I try to add images from my camera roll. When it crashes, it also jumbles the pieces I'd already arranged in columns as well. Quite frustrating. If these two things were fixed, I'd love MinimalFolio .

by Knewmanknewman

I have only played with this for a few minutes, but it is very nice. One thing that was confusing at first was that when I tried to import some RAW photos that were taken on my Nikon then imported to the ipad with the SD dongle of the camera connection kit, MinimalFolio crashed. Raw photos are not listed as a supported file format (and that seems like a good decision by the developer), but it would be less confusing if MinimalFolio displayed an error message rather than crashing, since the user cannot tell what format the photos are while browsing the camera roll. Other than that, this seems like a great tool for showing off photos, and I look forward to exploring it more.

by Locubanito

Great features and connects with dropbox! Amazing interface! Best app for folios.

by Djoliverm

Wow, so easy and so simple to use a toddler could figure it out. I personally prefer dragging files via iTunes directly from my computer and yes, just accept the location services since otherwise you won't be able to get access to your photos. It did crash once but last night when I used it at Portfolio Night (speed dating with Creative Directors), it worked flawlessly, and both CDs and students alike asked how I was presenting my portfolio. Mind you, I was able to get my portfolio on here in a matter of a few hours right before presentation (from downloading MinimalFolio , learning how to use it, to actually using it in a creative interview/mentoring setting), so goes to show how easy this thing is.

Could it be improved? Sure. I think being able to name each column would be neat. Possibly color each column too, although that might detract from the minimalism. Again, minor gripes, and as is, best portfolio presentation app out there, bar none. Kudos for using Futura as well.

by Captnjinx

Fantastic ap and a great way to display my artwork

by JayMoeD

This is exactly what I was looking for. For the first time in several years I have to do a presentation of my artwork. In the middle of updating my paper portfolio, I started wondering... can I do it on my iPad... is there an app for that? Well, yes for about $15. I'm not saying that's too much for the right program but I just wasn't sure. Then, I saw Minimal Folio and watched the video. For $2.99 I thought it was worth trying. I played with it this afternoon and it's going to replace my oversized black leather folio. Great interface and easy instructions. I'm looking forward to PDF support, VGA out, and using my iPhone as a remote would be phenomenal. If possible, please use the same UI for the iPhone version. That way I can sit across from my client, put the iPad in front of them and see which image they're viewing on my iPhone.

Update: One request... If possible, can you add pinch-zooming to the full screen images?

by D.T...

Its so simple, well designed and does exactly what it promises. I only wish I could export images from it.

by Consumer UX

Super easy to use - adjustable to all my needs - does what it needs to do.

by MotoPixman

This a very useful app for presenting your content. Not only you can make nice JPG galleries but videos and PDFs. We use it to present all our sales literature. This is the only app I have found to implement both horizontal and vertical navigation, very similar to the magazines - like Wired - implementations on iPad.

All the editing and administration can be disabled. This is a huge idea. Nothing can be changed or edited when presenting to a client. No editing menus to get in the way in the middle of a sales pitch, something I always found annoying with Keynote presentations. You can actually hand the device to the customer without fear.

The synchronization with DropBox (our de facto standard for file transfer to the iPad) is a fundamental feature.

On the down side the DropBox synchronization is rather slow. It also fails when a new folder - or folio - is created. Occasionally the application crashes when uploading pictures from the iPad. Once your pictures and content get into the application I have not experienced any problem. Since I find the application son useful I am willing to accept these bugs. I really hope the developer can fix them soon.

by 1byx

Minimal Folio has been a godsend when it comes to showing my video work to clients.
My wife is an agent and uses it as well.
A couple of issues:
Organizing video is a bit of a pain as there are no titles on the videos.
Not clear if you can link more than one iPad to a Minimal folio in Dropbox??? Would be great for an agent with multiple iPads for presentation.

No idea if anyone is continuing to refine MinimalFolio ? Would be nice to see some fine tuning.

by Protohobo

Best port app I have found. Glad it is being updated again.

by Soho Arch

I have been using this for about 4 years. It is the most elegant, straightforward means of presenting my work. I have a separate column for each project, starts with a self made title sheet, on to photos of the completed work, then PDF’s of floor plans. Each project is its own very complete presentation. Then I have a separate portfolio of magazine publications, if an interview with a potential client warrants it. Had a couple of glitches transitioning into iOS 11, but all worked out, and smooth again.

by Rockchalk81

Love MinimalFolio. Bought it over a year ago and still works great on my iPad 1 running 5.0.1
My favorite setup is to use the HDMI adapter to hook to a large HD monitor. MinimalFolio doesn't display until you go into view mode. When you minimize the images, MinimalFolio maintains a full screen image of the last image/screen. Switch from MinFoilio to Keynote and you screen will continue to show your last MinFolio screen until you hit play in Keynote - then switch back using the home button double tap. MinimalFolio rocks - I walk into a meeting carrying nothing but my iPad and adapter.

by Sao Bento Grande

I had been using PDFs displayed via iBooks to show my work on an iPad 1, but swiping through pages did not work well at all, and of course there's no good way to show videos in a PDF. Minimal Folio saved the day. Both the images and videos (encoded using an AppleTV preset in Adobe Media Encoder) look great and play without a hitch. Take one look at the author's website and I think you'll understand why this guy is uniquely qualified to make an app like this - and why it works so well.
The only area for improvement would be a slightly more detailed "getting started" type of thing, but MinimalFolio is highly intuitive, so it's not a big deal.