After exporting from Apple Notes using this free utility, I opened the text files into Bear, and they were imported as advertised by the app. Unlike other Markdown note-taking apps, which exclusively deal with plain text, Bear supports inline images, too. Specifically, PDF, HTML, RTF, DOCX, and JPEG. Comparisons with Apple Notes aside, Bear stands on its own as one of the most impressive app debuts of the year. Saving links and images with the Bear extension. Seeing which device synced the last edit is useful to confirm which changes have been saved; you can also view Settings > Status to check when the last complete iCloud sync happened. My transition from Notes to Trello couldn’t have come at a better time. But when I noticed that I was using Notes less frequently anyway, I took the plunge, moved my remaining personal notes to Bear, and put the app on my Home screen. Email: viticci@macstories.net. I’ll detail more Bear workflows and tips in the MacStories Weekly newsletters for Club MacStories members. Bear is even more impressive when it comes to getting notes out of the app. Bear makes it easy, for example, to organize my health records by type and year, as well as my articles by project and website. Bear strikes a good balance of fast Markdown editing and rich text presentation. I love Markdown, and Bear brings rich Markdown editing and export to a lightweight note-taking app that feels like a mix of Apple Notes and Drafts. Other editing features that require too many taps in Notes, such as lists or basic text formatting, can be sped up with Markdown in Bear. If you’re into dark themes and interfaces that aren’t white, Bear has most certainly something to offer. Federico is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of MacStories, where he writes about Apple with a focus on apps, developers, iPad, and iOS productivity. HTML is not rendered in Bear notes, but it is apparently rendered in the HTML output from exported notes. Building a successful business on the App Store today is different from what it used to be. I praised Apple Notes numerous times since its relaunch on iOS 9. Bear is based on the same CloudKit storage and syncing technology used by Apple Notes and adopted by dozens of iOS productivity apps over the past year. Typing an asterisk will start a new list; enclosing text in forward-slashes and asterisks will make it italic and bold, respectively. Instead, Bear consistently delivers on all of its promises. Also, if you enter a HEX color code that Bear recognizes as a color instead of a hashtag, it’ll be displayed with a colored dot preview within the note. Which, by the way, the Readdle Documents app can import just fine. Smart syntax that recognizes addresses and colors. However, moving those notes to Trello considerably decreased my usage of Apple Notes, which left me wondering if it was time to consider an alternative app for my personal note-taking needs. It’ll also give you access to advanced iOS shortcuts, tips and tricks, and lots more. Don't stop now! 2017 Apple Design Award App… There’s support for TextExpander snippets. You can link to other notes by enclosing a note’s name in double brackets (i.e.. It takes a while to get used to, but it’s useful if you’re just getting started with Markdown. Effectively, Bear offers an “augmented Markdown” editing environment that employs plain text for quick editing, but relies on rich text and a Notes-like model for everything else. When exporting all notes, you can choose to merge them in a single file or export a folder with text files and attachments3; you can also decide to keep tags during the export or export text files without attachments. If Bear ends up being the app I want to use instead of Notes, and if Shiny Frog can continue to find a balance between free features and options exclusive to paying subscribers, I’d have no problem paying $15/year for an app I would use dozens of times every day. With a system inspired by Ulysses, Bear assigns an alphanumeric ID to each note, which you can use to open a specific note from other apps or widgets – even from the Lock screen. The ability to choose a theme is another advantage Bear has over Notes. My reliance on 3D Touch has increased over the past year, and I would have liked to see Bear adopting the technology to speed up note creation and access to my favorite notes. And, text selection – particularly when editing tags and headers – would often get stuck or scroll in an unpredictable way. If you want to migrate your notes to Bear, you can import an Evernote archive or text files into the Mac app; on iOS, you can pick files using document providers. Any note can have an arbitrary number of tags, which grants more flexibility than having to choose a single destination folder. From this standpoint, the app is more similar to Apple Notes: images can be visualized inline as full previews or smaller thumbnails2, and you can also import any attachment supported by Quick Look (PDFs, .zip archives, text files, videos, etc.) Bear wants to be the new home for your notes, but it doesn’t lock you into a proprietary system. If you go back and edit that link by hitting backspace, it’ll be converted to regular plain text Markdown again. Unlike other Markdown note-taking apps, which exclusively deal with plain text, Bear supports inline images, too. Tags, search, and syncing all work flawlessly. Personally, I’ve used Markdown export to send notes I want to develop into full articles to Ulysses. There’s no way to set custom heading IDs. Made with ️ in New Mexico. Bear has quick organisation, editing tools, and export options to help you write quickly and share anywhere and preserve your privacy with encryption. With iOS 10, Apple brought collaboration to Notes using the new CloudKit Sharing API, and it’s been a fantastic addition to the app. If you don’t want to export your notes as text (.txt), Bear has a variety of options: These formats should be enough to ensure anyone’s needs can be met when moving from Bear to something else. In the information panel (accessed by tapping the ‘i’ button in the top right corner of a note), you’ll find a ‘Last Editing Device’ field underneath statistics for the current note. I’m still figuring out if Bear is worth committing to, but I’m intrigued by the app, and there’s a lot to unpack. I wasn’t able to test importing notes with attachments and rich text from Evernote as I no longer have an Evernote database to test against. Bear is a focused, flexible notes app used by writers, lawyers, chefs, teachers, engineers, students, parents and more! Swipe left on a note, select More, than tap Duplicate to create a copy. I’d especially like to see customizable Home screen quick actions to create a note, open a specific note or tag, and start a search. Bear was clearly built with a lot of care, and it shows. I’m particularly intrigued by the choice of including TextBundle, a relatively new entry in this space that, among other apps, is natively supported by my favorite text editor, Ulysses for Mac and iOS. The Markdown syntax (trailing whitespace) is not supported, but you can press the Return key once to achieve the same result. Instead, I want to lay out the reasons why Bear is superior to Notes as well as the features it’s missing. He can also be found on his three other podcasts on Relay FM – Connected, Adapt, and Remaster. The aforementioned formats are supported as exporting options for individual notes as well. Take a look at how easy it is to build a widget to open a Bear note with Workflow: I’ve been using the Bear URL scheme to open a private note I need to view often, but also to jump to a tag view to show a list of notes, which is faster than having to search manually in the Notes app. On the iPad, the chevron icon in the top left has a delightful transition when switching from list to reading a note. If you buy the annual subscription or subscribe to the monthly plan for 12 months, themes and advanced exporting options will be unlocked forever. I tested Bear’s import feature on my MacBook Air. About Contact GitHub API Privacy Policy. A Matt Cone project. I turned this on immediately. I didn’t have enough time to test the final beta of Bear, and I believe a note-taking app is best evaluated over a few months of usage. By default, Bear uses its own flavor of Markdown that is slightly different from John Gruber’s original version. Similarly, you can paste text from Markdown, HTML, or code. If iOS devices are your primary work machines, you’ll be glad to know that Bear can be automated and integrated with Workflow using x-callback-url. Club MacStories offers exclusive access to extra MacStories content, delivered every week; it’s also a way to support us directly. There aren’t a lot of whizbang features in Bear. I came across a few bugs in the beta version of Bear I tested before launch. Also, tags can be combined for deeper organization by inserting them together, such as #articles #blog; in the tags sidebar, you’ll have expandable menus to view notes that have been assigned both tags. Your Bear notes will propagate across the iPhone, iPad, and Mac (Bear also has a Mac counterpart) in seconds thanks to CloudKit. Generating ongoing revenue from loyal customers who depend on software doesn’t work for everyone, but it does for a lot of services I pay for, and I’m curious to see how this will play out for Shiny Frog. I can start a note in Bear and add sections and a few lists without having to tap through multiple menus over and over. The Markdown syntax is not supported, but you can drag and drop images into a note. You can enable TextExpander integration in Settings > General. Now, whenever a friend wants to share a document with me, they can do so with the free Notes app and my iCloud email address. Alongside Markdown and a focus on power user features (more on this below), another differentiator of Bear is its rich selection of powerful import and export tools. As I wrote in an issue of MacStories Weekly (exclusive to Club MacStories members), I recently moved my Club-related notes from the Apple Notes app to Trello. Bear offers a unique take on Markdown that is both visually appealing and functional. No spam! After moving my most frequently accessed notes to Trello1, I looked at what was left in Notes, and I realized that I wanted to see if a different app could fill the gaps Apple didn’t address. After seeing rich links in Notes and iMessage, it’s difficult to go back to regular links. For everything Notes gets right, there are several limitations that have required me to change how I work: Notes has no native Markdown support, no automation features, and its organization system based on folders could use a revamp. While I like the way Bear displays tags in a Slack-like dark sidebar, I wish I didn’t have to enter tags as hashtags in the middle of a note’s text. It’s like Evernote, but without the bloat. As Bear betas went out to testers, I told myself I wouldn’t need it because I was perfectly fine in Notes. Avenir Next, San Francisco, and Menlo in Bear. Organize things in your home with Bear and nested tags. Bear doesn’t have any collaboration features for now.
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