Hey! welcome to the community. I’m already using something similar to keep it which is devonthink. Maybe using both will be overkill.
Moved everything from Bear to Apple Notes and cancelled subscription to Bear and have had no change to my workflows. I just use the app for basic notes and thing I want to retain. Nothing advanced. Apple Notes does the job for me.
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I did the same, the thing I find more interesting in Apple Notes is ability to add links with previews, way more convenient to organize web links, add albums from Apple Music with covers, Podcasts and other. Bear 2.0 seems will have a similar feature, but I just tired of waiting and paying. However, I will definitely check the new version, when it releases… in a couple of years
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I was on Bear a few years ago and I really liked it. One thing I missed was a web interface which was listed as “on their roadmap”. It’s still not here, and when I check in from time to time on the forums/web, people cite their glacial development pace numerous times. For me there are better options, but I can see where they’re loyal following comes from. The app is very well done.
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I was a longtime Bear user, but eventually gave up on them because of the glacial pace of development. I don’t have an issue with a developer taking their time to implement new features, but nearly every iOS release would introduce bugs the Bear team should have easily caught and fixed during the iOS beta period so that Bear would work from day one. Instead, those bugs would persist for weeks or even months. They also consistently missed their projected release dates by a wide margin while introducing minor features no one was asking for instead of focusing on the task at hand.
Eventually I jumped ship for a combination of Drafts and Ulysses, and subsequently dumped Ulysses and went all-in on Drafts for anything text-based I’m going to edit or add on to in the future, and DEVONthink for archival purposes, PDFs, etc. Works a treat, and I don’t miss Bear one bit.
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Thanks for sharing your experience. I also use DevonThink for long time archiving purposes while the notes app that is attracting me because of the speed of development, community and features is NotePlan.
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I started using Bear a few weeks ago and it is really polished and everything “just works” for me. But I’m not using iOS version, only macOS.
Coming from constantly being annoyed with Craft’s ‘blocks’ I’m very happy with Bear. I was happy with Apple Notes too but wanted to separate work from personal completely. When I first tried Bear I thought for sure I’d not stick with it because of the lack of folders and reliance on tags, but after a few days I’ve come to really prefer that way of organization very much. The app also is just very polished. For example just yesterday I had it open side-by-side with Microsoft Edge as I was performing some repetitive tasks in a web app in Edge, and as I completed each step I would check it off as done in a todo note in Bear. Clicking the checkbox in Bear didn’t cause the Bear app to be selected (i.e., Edge remained the active app), which would require an extra mouse click when going back to do something in Edge. I don’t know if that was intended by the devs but it sure was handy for me.
Also, and this is important to me having migrated away from various note apps - Bear is by far the best when it comes to not locking you in.
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I had the same experience with Bear. I thought I would hate the lack of folders, but I actually don’t mind it now that I’ve used it for a while. And I agree that the app is just so well designed it’s a joy to use.
As for the glacial pace of development, I don’t really care. It does what it says on the tin, at least for me.
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I was frustrated with the development pace for Bear 2.0. However, jumping into the beta, it’s well worth the wait. The team has done an AMAZING job on updating the product to include some power user-ish features (thinking mainly about OCR, better search results, and backlinks) in a very Bear-specific way. I have gone around the block with notes apps, and I keep coming back to Bear. Knowing that these updates were coming, I was sort of in limbo, but I’m so glad I didn’t abandon them entirely.
For fellow BASB fans, Bear is, in my opinion, has transcended from a Student notetaker app into a solid Librarian app. I’m excited to see what all they finish up on once it’s officially live, but be encouraged: Bear 2.0 is worth the wait.
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I recently created a post showing the main characteristics of the new public beta for iOS and Mac.
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Where can I find this post?
Check it out here:
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Here it is: The Bear 2 Beta has released
You can also follow the post the previous user made.
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I really liked using Bear back in the day. I stopped using it so long ago that I can’t believe people are still waiting for V2! I would’ve assumed they’d be teasing V3 by now. Even if this new version is great, I can’t imagine committing any important information to such an unreliable developer.
Though maybe they’ll get their act together the same way that Cultured Code did once they pushed out Things 3. They used to be almost as sluggish as Bear’s devs.
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I don’t know what’s happened (I think they may have employed a couple more people) but they are pushing out beta builds at a very fast rate and fixing bugs well, which I wouldn’t have expected given their previous track record. If they can keep the pace up (maybe not quite so intense) once they release, they’d be worth trying again.
The app itself is delightful in many ways.
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Unreliable? I would use that for developers who sell your data, have poor security, violate privacy, and are generally dishonest. Bear has always said that v2 would take time as it is a backend rebuild. “Slow” development is not the same as unreliable. I’d rather wait for a good v2 than a quick release full of bugs.
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I’ve played for a few days with the beta and I can tell… I’m going back to Bear from Apple Notes. They really fixed a bunch of flaws from the first version, now it’s the best Markdown editor, they added the thing I wanted for a long time - the ability to use tags as folders, that is, you can hide subtag notes from parental tag view, the backlinks implementation in Bear in my opinion better than in any other app, there is also features like the ability quickly resizing images and previews for links.
I also has not very good attitude towards developers because of their slowness of development subscription-based app, but sometimes these guys do things that no one else does or implement already familiar feautres better, so Bear is still an outstanding app in many ways and more suitable for me than any alternative. Hope that now the developers will really start paying more attention to the app, even after the “release”
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My dream is that they publish a voting for features platform and we as the users get to to have a voice regarding the evolution of bear.
It has improved a lot, but as you say, we all hope they become more active.
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I actually prefer apps that are not constantly changing. I really don’t mind a long development cycle. Solid, bug free performance is much more desirable.
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I’d agree, but a balance is needed.
An app that is not even properly updated for OS releases will soon cause more pain than it is worth.
There’s always a need for refinement. I don’t like apps that add a ton of new features every month: especially when that’s driven by a “voting for features platform”. It suggests that there isn’t a clarity of vision for the app and what it offers, but I equally don’t like apps that have no updates in many months.
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