Bear - Markdown Notes

Shown for US

• Free to download
• In-app purchases

Last verified 31 Jul 2026

Shown for US

4.7 6843 ratings · App Store

1. 5/5Yes! Bear is the GOAT 😅😻🤗🥳

   I hated the notes app, even tho on iOS it did get a lot better. It still wasn’t enough for me. So I downloaded about 10 note-taking apps, tried them each for a day or two, kept fiddling around, but it was a Goldilocks problem for me. I can’t handle too many options in my organization- I end up creating these ridiculous systems I will never use. But I need a fair amount of functionality, and all the apps I tried where one or the other. Bear was one of the last I tried and I fell in love so fast. It’s minimalistic but, for me, it does everything I need and it does it well. The UI is elegant and cozy and enjoyable to work in. There were a few things I didn’t know how to do right when I started but it wasn’t much a learning curve. I had the basics down once I read through the welcome pages, and then specific questions I had were always in the Support Library or in the community pages. It took me less than a day before I started to feel intuitive using it. I just think it is great, I was gearing up to start using Obsidian but tbh when I watched the first video it linked to it seemed kind of cult-y. I use Bear for all my notes, and since I am trying to write a book, I did decide to use Ulysses for that. But I like to keep my notes and research over here until I have them pared down, then I move them into the project over there. Bear is great- be like Bear, get Bear, and the subscription is a no-brainer. Thank you Bear!! 👏👏👏👏

   Chaotic_rebelkat · 31 Jul 2026

2. 5/5Clean and Powerful

   This app shines in the little details: it’s crazy fast, compare it to Apple notes and you will see a night and day difference, especially for long notes. It has table of contents, which makes it easy to navigate long notes. The tag system is miles better than folders. You can manage your todos by following a thin line under each of your notes that shows the progress of your todos in the note. It supports latex! So you can write math formulas now. It has web access. It has a nice menu of themes. It shows you unmentioned backlinks: you can reference other notes that mention the title of your current note. You can lock notes with attachments. You can copy links to each note. You can export to multiple formats. You can draw (although here it’s a bit basic) and have Bear detect words in your images. It gives you useful stats about your notes. And I could keep going. You would not tell half of these when you first open the app, and that’s the point. Its power is modest. It enables you and gets out of the way so you can work. Their dev team is small and slow, but they deliver. Late sometimes, but they deliver. This app is a powerhouse.

   rock1001 · 31 Jul 2026

3. 3/5Interesting

   Bear is ok but the lack of folders is annoying. In fact it’s a deal breaker. In no way does the tag system give more freedom or make things easier, in fact the opposite is true. Just because something is better for you personally doesn’t mean as a business owner you don’t try and accommodate everyone who might possibly be using your product. And answers like “we have determined this is better” don't help. Better for you maybe but not everyone. The hashtag system is ok but a lot of us use folders and without them it makes organization difficult. We can’t nest hashtags into hashtags so the left column is just a jumbled mess, that can never be organized. Every time I open bear It’s like walking into a messy room that I can’t do anything with. Also the reading time estimation is way off. This is an important feature for us in fact one of the only reasons we considered bear so we don't have to take notes from Apple notes into pages, just to find out word count, and then paste into a website to find reading time But bears estimation calculation is severely off by a lot. I did a test and used three different online calculators to determine reading length for some text I wrote, and all came back between 9 and 9:30 minutes. Bear however said 4:45 for the same text. This may not seem like a big deal but is extremely important for what we do.

   Media-amp · 31 Jul 2026

4. 3/5WARNING FOR TRANSFERRING NOTES

   Let me start off by saying I love bear and have been using it for maybe half a decade now. I have tons of notes in there, and even with the free version it does exactly what I need it to do. So then here comes the issue: I recently got a new iPad and wanted to copy the notes from my old iPad onto the new one (I have the app on all my devices, but because I have the free version, I just copy and transfer whatever I need to). I hadn’t had the chance to do that until today, so I had time to start new notes on this new device (including notes I take for my classes). I was under the assumption that restoring a backup would import all of the files that I saved a backup of on my old device. There was NO WARNING that my current notes would be deleted if I restored this data. I did not have a backup of the notes in my new device either. Again, this is a great app, but I can’t forgive the lack of warning that caused me to lose all those incredibly important notes, even if in hindsight “restoring” data implies overwriting it. Even your average video game does this kind of warning. To the developers, please add clearer warnings and descriptions for what restoring a backup entails WITHIN THE APP, rather than just on your website. And to other app users, don’t be stupid like me and accidentally overwrite all your local files!

   Dariverdariver · 31 Jul 2026

5. 5/5Best Notes App Ever!!

   TLDR: Bear is an impressive notes app that functions very well on all Apple devices, and has everything you’d want in a notes app without the issues seen across it’s competitors. This is hands down the best notes app I’ve ever used. I’ve tried them all; OneNote, Evernote, Apple Notes, you name it. None are as clean and minimal as Bear. No intrusive UI; No head-scratching organization structure; Bear allows you to jump into your notes quickly and organize them with ease using an extremely flexible tagging system. The text editor is of such good quality, it almost feels like the Notes app merged with Microsoft Word to create a perfectly balanced app for both simple and sophisticated use cases. It’s easy to import pictures, create checklists, and export to other formats as well. It comes with plenty of themes to customize to your liking, and the app is available on all Apple devices. The Apple Watch app is icing on the cake! You can craft and view entire notes from the app, and it even retains it’s structure and readability. It’s so good that I could be fine studying lecture notes on my watch if I wanted to!

   flyeaglesfly2020 · 31 Jul 2026

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