Hi there,
As a long-time user, I have a suggestion. I recently noticed that the main menu in the app includes notes categorized as “untagged,” “to-do,” “today,” and “encrypted.” Honestly, I wasn’t aware of this feature until now. I discovered it because I noticed the “to-do” format option while editing a note. That got me thinking—if I set a to-do, does the system have any way to remind me about unfinished to-dos? That’s when I realized these categories are already included in the main menu.
Coincidentally, I’ve been working on a PM app recently (a kind of refactoring project), and this experience gave me an idea. What if Bear introduced a default index section that works like a dashboard? This dashboard could allow users to access frequently used features more easily. For example, it could include:
- Today
- Next 7 Days
- Most Edited (this could take longer to implement since it would require some statistical calculations)
- Encrypted Notes (with an option to toggle whether or not these appear on the dashboard for privacy)
- To-Dos
- Untagged Notes (probably the least important and doesn’t need to be so prominent)
I think this would give Bear a fresh, new feel and make it even more practical.
Some bonus ideas:
- Random note card (a note suggestion at random)
- Random tag
- Notes or tags that haven’t been edited/viewed in a long time
Just some thoughts! If you consider implementing these, I’m sure Bear will become even better. Thanks for everything!
2 Likes
+1 for this idea! Something like this would be nice.
These suggestions would make Bear way worse for me.
‘Untagged’ is the most important section of the ‘Notes’ menu, and I would like it to be top-level: it’s where I find new, as-yet-unprocessed notes.
If I could remove ‘Todo’, ‘Today’ and ‘Locked’ from view and just see ‘Untagged’, I would: I don’t need ‘Todo’ because I use OmniFocus as my task manager, I don’t need ‘Today’ because notes I’ve already touched today bubble to the top of the main Notes category anyway, and I don’t have any Locked notes as I use 1Password for secure information.
Chacun à son goût!
4 Likes
Cool, that’s a great perspective. You’re absolutely right—I never realized how important untagged notes could be for some people. Even though I personally never leave any of my notes untagged, it reminds me of the app we developed. In the to-do flow, the first row is always untagged and uncategorized tasks. The company’s reasoning was that this kind of need has always existed, and honestly, it makes sense.
As for the issue with to-dos, if Bear had a feature to add to-dos directly within notes, then logically, we’d probably expect the app to have some kind of way to remind us about those to-dos, right? I’ve seen so many people put a bunch of to-dos in VS Code but never clear them—just because they forgot about them. I think that’s super common. Of course, there are tons of ways to remind users about their to-dos: push notifications, homepage reminders, navbar alerts, app launch pop-ups… you name it. But here’s the thing—at least with the current design, when we click on the side menu under “Notes → To-dos,” what we actually see is notes that have to-dos marked inside them. That feels like a missed opportunity. Sure, from a design perspective, it makes sense to show “notes with to-dos,” but wouldn’t it be even better if we could reasonably expect to see an actual list of to-dos instead?
And about locked notes—I think that’s a super important feature. It’d be great if there were a way to see all the notes you’ve locked. But there’s one issue: there’s often “another person” who might know your password, or “that person” might realize their own password isn’t working. And, well… you know where that could lead.