There are countless note taking and To-Do applications. Most of these are feature rich and loaded with lot of gimmicks. Today, I am reviewing a note taking application that is extremely simple to use but it is effective for those who need a note taking app that just works. Bear is a note taking application for iOS and Mac that has strong Markdown language support. Read on!
Features
- Advanced Markup Editor that supports and highlights over 20 programming languages
- Rich previews while writing so you see prose, not code
- In-line support for images and photos
- Use Cross-Note Links to build a body of work, quickly reference other notes, and more
- Quickly add todos to individual notes to keep yourself on task
- Multiple themes to offer a style for everyone
- Multiple export options including HTML, PDF, DOCX, MD, JPG, and more
- Smart Data Recognition of elements like links, emails, addresses, colors, and more to come
- Hashtags to quickly find and organize notes however you like
- One-tap formatting on iPhone and iPad with a custom shortcut bar
- Focus Mode hides notes and other options when it matters
- All your notes are stored in plain text for the ultimate in portability
- Effortless, secure, and private multi-device sync via iCloud
- Regular updates to keep you and your writing current
Price
Core version for iOS is free. The Bear Pro subscription comes in two variant $1.49 monthly or $14.99 annually. Bear Pro offer advanced features, including sync between all your devices, application themes and exporting, which can be unlocked via a single subscription that covers all your devices.
Clean UI
Markdown is a is a new markup language with plain text formatting syntax. In short, simple characters and combination of characters can be used to create text formatting. For example, instead of typing text, selecting and then using Ctrl+B or doing Ctrl+B – type – Ctrl+B, you can start bold text with * and end with *. Here are few examples of markdown language used in Bear:
- Heading →# Heading 1 , ## Heading 2, ### Heading 3, etc…
- Line Separator →—
- bold→ *bold text*
- italic→ /italic/
- underline→ _underline_
- -strikethrough- →-strikethrough-
- link→ [link](http://www.bear-writer.com)
- unordered list →* unordered element (start of line)
- ordered list → ordered element (start of line)
- todo →- todo (start of line)
- done todo →+ done todo (start of line)
- quote →> quote (start of line)
- tag →#tag
- multiwords tags →#multi-word tag#
- nested tags →#recipes/meat
This may look confusing at first. Once you get used to the syntax, typing will be lightning fast. Using a markdown language makes typing lot more faster on a smart phone where you do not have the choice of using keys like Ctrl, Alt etc.
The User Interface is clean. When you open the app, you see a list of notes created by you (if any) and few tutorials from Beat. Go through the pre-loaded notes to understand how Bear works. Top on a note to open and edit. The ‘new note’ button is at bottom right corner. At the top you see the current folder you are in, option to open search window. Swipe from left to open Sidebar that contains list of folders, trash can and settings icon.
From settings page, you can change the theme, set general options, change typography (font size, line height, width, spacing etc), select import and export options, setup sync status/timing. You can also head to support page (in case you need help) from settings window.
As you will be using mark down language, what you get is white canvas. When the onscreen keyboard is pulled up, you will see couple of formatting options. These controls are placed right above the keyboard. Swipe right to left to see more formatting options. Do note that there is a markdown syntax for most of these options. You can add images, links to other notes, hyper link to webpages.
Once you create notes, you can export them to Text, MD, RTF, PDF, HTML, Word DOCX or you can create images. The export option is accessed by clicking on the ‘info panel’ ( i icon on top right corner).
If you go with Beat Pro subscription, you can use Apple’s CloudKit to sync between devices. Bear also supports handoff between iPad, iPhone and Mac so that you can instantly switch between devices.
Organizing
Bear organizes notes based on tags. Bear creates folders named after tags and any notes that has the tag will be added to the respective folder. All these folders/tags appear on Sidebar for easy access. This can be a problem for those who use lot of tags as it can created huge number of folders. So, do not be liberal in using tags. Bear has a solution (sort of) for this problem. We can create sub tags to group related tags together. For example #review/application will create a sub tag application under review and the note that has this will be placed there. In folder language. The folder Review will contain folder application. The notes with this tag will be placed under application sub folder.
Often, we get a need to link between notes. A simple [[heading of notes]] can be used to create a link to other post. For example, you have a post with heading “Review of Apple Notes”, you can link the same to a note by adding [[Review of Apple Notes]]. This is as easy as it can be.
Themes
Bear support Themes. Sad part is that themes are available only for Pro subscribers. There are eight themes available right now and they look absolutely gorgeous, especially the Cobalt theme.
Advanced Search
With Bear Pro, you can also setup search triggers. These search triggers will help you get effective search results. We could not test this in detail as it required Bear Pro subscription. Here is video that explain how search function works in Bear.
<iframe src=”https://player.vimeo.com/video/182400202″ width=”640″ height=”360″ frameborder=”0″ webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>
Verdict
If you are one of those in need of a plain and simple text editor with strong support for markdown language, Bear is the best one available. There are truckload of features available for Bear Pro subscribers. Give it a try and if you like the app, start with trial of Pro features. The trial period is only for a week.
