--- title: Bear Reviews meta_title: 'Bear Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 45 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Bear works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.5 review_count: 45 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-06-21' parent_category: name: Collaboration & Productivity url: https://www.g2.com/categories/collaboration-productivity --- # Bear Reviews **Vendor:** Shiny Frog **Category:** [Note-Taking Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/note-taking-software) **Average Rating:** 4.5/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 45 ## About Bear Bear is a note taking tool for Mac and iOS. ## Bear Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users appreciate the **ease of use** of Bear, allowing for focused note-taking without distractions from menus or notifications. (2 reviews) - Users appreciate the **ease of use** of Bear, allowing for focused and organized simple note-taking without distractions. (2 reviews) - Users love the **intuitive design** of Bear, enabling focused writing without distractions from menus or notifications. (1 reviews) - Users value Bear for its **ease of use in note-taking** , appreciating the organization through tags and cloud sync. (1 reviews) - Users value the **organization capabilities** of Bear, appreciating its ease of use for streamlined note-taking and tagging. (1 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users desire more **feature enhancements** in Bear, such as slash commands available in competing apps like Notion. (1 reviews) - Users find the **tool limitations** frustrating, particularly the need for a subscription to sync across devices. (1 reviews) ## Bear Reviews ### 1. Minimalist, Focus-Friendly Writing—But Syncing Costs Extra **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Victor Z. | COO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2026 **What do you like best about Bear?** Bear feels like a quiet desk when I open it. There is nothing shouting for attention. I can just type and not get pulled into menus or notifications. It makes focusing on text actually possible. **What do you dislike about Bear?** To sync across devices I have to pay. If I just want a simple free tool, that feels irritating. I expect syncing these days without a subscription. **What problems is Bear solving and how is that benefiting you?** Clean and distraction free writing space ### 2. Bear is a good Apple Note replacement **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Vinay A. | Senior Software Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 07, 2019 **What do you like best about Bear?** On top of basic text capture, Bears adds tagging and markdown-like formatting to each note. The note syntax is similar enough to Markdown that you basically don't notice the differences. You can also easily export to HTML, PDF, and other formats. **What do you dislike about Bear?** The syntax is Markdown-like -- sometimes it would be very nice to have plain Markdown (with common extensions). Also, it doesn't integrate with common publishing systems (such as Wordpress). This makes a common action (publish to blog) more cumbersome than I would like. **Recommendations to others considering Bear:** If you're looking for a note-taking app, Bear is fantastic. Don't expect integration with publishing systems any time soon, though. **What problems is Bear solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use Bear to jot down ideas, take notes, and capture useful text. ### 3. Great quick note app **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Andrew R. | UX Designer, Graphic Design, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 04, 2019 **What do you like best about Bear?** Markdown is my preferred way to take notes so I love that this uses that and gives me a minimal amount of organizational tools to have as little friction between ad hoc note taking. **What do you dislike about Bear?** Lack of ability to collaboratively take notes. $15 per year for sync between mobile and desktop feels a bit steep too. I still pay it but it was a hard sell for me initially. **What problems is Bear solving and how is that benefiting you?** Being able to quickly take notes and give them a bit of structure with quick markdown. A minimalist note taker also helps me focus during those times. ### 4. Switched from Apple Notes to Bear **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Internet | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 08, 2019 **What do you like best about Bear?** Bear's interface is clean and simple. Even with lots of notes, Bear keeps everything organized and eliminates any clutter. Lots of different way to customize your view. **What do you dislike about Bear?** When you copy notes from Bear into an email or Slack, you lose the formatting. **What problems is Bear solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use Bear to take notes during meetings and create groupings of notes as a backlog for project coordination. ### 5. Well designed and quite useful. Makes me want to write more. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Doug T. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 19, 2018 **What do you like best about Bear?** The themes and how well designed it is. It makes me want to use it and write more. **What do you dislike about Bear?** I wish I had a little more control over the formatting of what I write. **What problems is Bear solving and how is that benefiting you?** A tool to draft the outline for my books and chapters. It's helped me to be very organized in my outlining - and to follow a pattern as I create topics and supporting ideas. ### 6. Bear is great for writing with minimal distractions **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tom M. | OCC Volunteer Relations Training & Development Manager, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 26, 2018 **What do you like best about Bear?** Bear's minimalist interface is clean and user-friendly. It's great for writing in markdown and plain text for blog posts or other writing. **What do you dislike about Bear?** Bear is almost too simplistic to be a great organizational tool, especially for work-related projects. It is also only available on Mac/iOS. **Recommendations to others considering Bear:** If you are primarily looking for a writing app with minimal distractions, Bear is a great choice, if you are using a Mac or iOS. **What problems is Bear solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use Bear to write in plain text or markdown for articles. ### 7. Fantastic idea, but need plain text version **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Internet | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2018 **What do you like best about Bear?** I love the clean interface, the modern text and the contemporary design. I like the size of the widget and the ability to display two or three columns. I like how easy it is to use headers, to change the font and the import/ export capabilities are great. In my opinion, the mobile version is much better than the desktop. It seems made for mobile. **What do you dislike about Bear?** Unfortunately this application displays text as code instead of as plain text. When I copy and paste a link to a website, I don't want to see the http and all the details, I just want to see the name of the url or the name of the company. Same with font. I don't need to know that I am typing in H2 or "body". There really should be a way to turn this off. If there is then it's difficult to find, but it's the reason that I've stopped using it and have switched to Xpad which is an incredibly simple plain text widget. **Recommendations to others considering Bear:** Check out the interface before deciding to switch to this project, and determine whether or not you can put up with the extra text, eg: the word "link" surrounds any urls, and is in red. This is completely unnecessary in my opinion, and I don't understand why the developers would do this. Other than that, it's excellent! **What problems is Bear solving and how is that benefiting you?** I was just using this to remain organized. I tend to write notes in here prior to organizing them so it's nice to have something quick at hand. ### 8. Bear a beautiful note taking experience **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Brian M. | Multicultural Center: Multimedia Specialist, Design, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Bear?** I love the customization that this program offers. **What do you dislike about Bear?** I dislike that I cannot access this on the web or can collaborate with other users. **Recommendations to others considering Bear:** You won't be able to access this on the web, however, it does a great job on providing intuitive environment for the Apple ecosystem. **What problems is Bear solving and how is that benefiting you?** Having a note taking application with markup and a BEAUTIFUL UI is exceptional since we have to export notes to our clients or to the team. ### 9. Bear is Awesome! **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Daniel T. | Android Developer, Computer Software, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 12, 2017 **What do you like best about Bear?** I love how you can beautifully format text through just using Markdown type syntax. There's no need to mess with different formatting tools or buttons as in other text applications. Your writing can come to life in just a matter of minutes, and it can be organized in an elegant way. **What do you dislike about Bear?** I wished that Bear had some support for Android, and also you can export your beautifully formatted document in a PDF format. **What problems is Bear solving and how is that benefiting you?** Being productive, taking notes, and organization. ### 10. Perfect balance between Evernote and Apple Notes or Simplenote **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Internet | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 03, 2017 **What do you like best about Bear?** I really like the overall design of the app. Bear is really clean and navigation is intuitive for new users. The keyboard shortcuts and formatting options are super helpful. I primarily use this for meeting notes and personal task management and it works perfect once you get set-up. The features are not bloated or overbearing like on Evernote, and more comprehensive than something like Simplenote. **What do you dislike about Bear?** The free version does not include syncing across devices, which is a common feature for other note taking apps in this space. Furthermore, support is lacking for those who struggle to get the sync working correctly, which doesn't make sense for a paid feature. There's no log in, so everything syncs via your iCloud account. While this makes set-up super easy for most users, I had to troubleshoot for an hour or so to figure out that I would need to use my personal Apple ID on my phone and work laptop to get this to function correctly. At least this was my workaround for the issue, their support follow-up was not helpful and instructed me to sign in and out of my iCloud account to make it work. Seems like they don't have this figured out for many use cases yet. **What problems is Bear solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use this for taking meeting notes and keeping daily to-do lists. ### 11. Nice and simple **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Oil & Energy | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2018 **What do you like best about Bear?** I really like how simple the entire experience is. No bloat at all. I also really like how you can link notes with a hashtag. **What do you dislike about Bear?** As great as the hashtag is with connecting my notes, sometimes it would be really great to have folders to organize things. **Recommendations to others considering Bear:** If you’re looking for a streamlined note taking app, then this is a great one to give a try. **What problems is Bear solving and how is that benefiting you?** Note taking. ### 12. Great for quick note taking **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Internet | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 15, 2017 **What do you like best about Bear?** I like that you can use most of the formatting commands from the key board. Especially when creating check-lists. It's a very simple UI with clean lines. **What do you dislike about Bear?** There's not much flexibility to it beyond simple note taking. Also, the export options are limited and it's not quite as simple as "copy & paste" because you lose some of the formatting. **Recommendations to others considering Bear:** This isn't really a platform that you can share across a company, it's more to the preference of the user taking notes. **What problems is Bear solving and how is that benefiting you?** Speed of note taking. ## Bear Discussions - [Does Bear require iCloud to sync?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/32298-does-bear-require-icloud-to-sync) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [View Bear pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/bear/reviews?filters%5Bnps_score%5D%5B%5D=4&open_modal_url=%2Fes%2Fproducts%2Fbear%2Fwishlists%3Fhost_path%3D%252Fproducts%252Fbear%252Freviews%253Ffilters%25255Bnps_score%25255D%25255B%25255D%253D4%26source%3Dpdp_avatar§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-06-23+19%3A22%3A30+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=f59c9b2b-6080-4c87-8bb5-4bfb0a32cb3f&secure%5Btoken%5D=996f8d8ee8c8e05ac49a130721e05bc60847109105ab0150325fe1c2ff973f06&format=llm_user) ## Bear Features **Agentic AI - Note-Taking Software** - Autonomous Task Execution ## Top Bear Alternatives - [Notion](https://www.g2.com/products/notion/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (10,994 reviews) - [Evernote](https://www.g2.com/products/evernote/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (2,009 reviews) - [Microsoft OneNote](https://www.g2.com/products/microsoft-onenote/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (1,820 reviews)