Bear Reviews & Product Details

The ease of use that bear enables for simple note-taking while giving the ability to stay organized with easy tags and cloud sync is key. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Wish there were features like found in Notion / Craft where you can use a slash command to find other important features. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

i love the way i can write in markdown, post to my blog in markdown, export is great too, backup is solid, love the way the tagging vanishes after i've used it so it's nice and clean to look at. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

could be a little cheaper on the yearly but very good all the same. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Bear has a minimalistic User-Experience (UX) / User-Interface (UI). I love that it syncs on my iPhone 12, iPad Mini 6, Mac Mini (2020), MacBook Pro (2018) and Apple Watch 6. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I do not have many dislikes - maybe the 100s of alternatives out there have a lot more native integrations with other apps. Another dislike might be organization is lacking a bit. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like the fact that the Bear app is minimal on purpose. So there are very less distractions if you're using the app to take down notes, ideas or creating content for your blog. It is super easy to use, offers many optimizations and also comes with a whole lot of keyboard shortcuts. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I would have liked its pro version to be with more advanced features but then that would just lose its objective of being a minimalistic note-making app. Other than this I don't like the default option of the notes being saved to icloud storage. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

By creating the shortcut link of the notes, I can make a shortcut from a long archive of notes. I also use the archiving feature a lot instead of deleting it entirely. Sometimes what seems unnecessary may become necessary later on. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

When I copy it in other areas and paste it into Bear, it can come in a very different format. And I would like to use the keyboard delete button to archive or delete or create like a shortcut. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

My favorite thing about Bear is how the developers seem to listen to their user community.

I like how quick and effortless it is to start a new note using markdown.

The UI is clean and minimalistic.

I really like how notes can be bundled together.

Bear allows you to copy notes in markdown, html, rich text and plain text and export notes as PDF, MD, DOCX, JPG, HTML, RTF.

Bear syncs across all my Apple devices. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I wish you could login to your notes via web browser.

I would like to be able to have some sort of table function. I know this is in the works but even Apple Notes has this feature.

I wish some of the new features that the show up in Panda (the Beta test version of Bear) would trickle their way into Bear sooner. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

This may sound silly, but as a writer, I'm particular about my writing environment. I want a minimalist interface with almost nothing on it, large type in the middle of the screen only, and formatting options. Bear ticks all the boxes beautifully, on both desktop and mobile. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

As of the time of writing this article, the main Bear app still shows your markdown. The new Bear app, (called "Panda") which I am beta testing, hides all this. This is the one thing I didn't like about the old app and it's being fixed. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

You can write your notes in markdown, adding easy formatting and code snippets Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Have to pay to unlock nice features through the Bear Pro subscription Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is a extremely good markdown citizen - you can type in GitHub flavoured Markdown and it has no issues whatsoever. I have a lot of notes apps, but ones that respect markdown, whilst being fast at search are hard to find.

It also has quick shortcuts for todays date, supports checkboxes (and a filter so you can have one giant to-do).

But really, it's the speed that you'll stay for. That also means speed of sync across devices (iOS/MacOS).

It even has multiple themes (multiple dark modes, for those who are interested). The build in tagging support is powerful, and allows you to create tags anywhere in a document, it doesn't need to be formatted in a specific way, the sidebar will capture all of the tags created.

Finally, it has excellent exporting support - HTML, Markdown, .txt. You'll be able to share your notes, easily.

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Honestly I have nothing to dislike. It's a former Apple Design Award winner, it's quite a high bar. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.