Apple Markup in Bear vs. Panda

Beta Panda Feedback
1

I’m glad to see that iOS Markup can be used when tapping on an image or a PDF in Bear/Panda for iOS.

However, there is a functional size difference in the preview window between Bear and Panda.

In Bear, this is a full screen experience. In Panda, this is a pop-over window that uses a fraction of the screen real estate. I’ve attached two images showing the difference.

My personal workflow is as follows:

  1. I will find a journal article online in PDF form.
  2. I will create a new note in Bear, saving the online PDF into Bear.
  3. I will write a few notes, add tags to this note.
  4. I then open the PDF within Bear and make highlights & handwritten notes on the journal article with Markup.

Possible Solutions:

  1. One solution for Panda would be to allow for a tap and hold option similar to “Crop” for images. This could mimic that function by tap and hold then adding the option to “Markup PDF.” This function would open a full screen editor with Markup, similar to the full screen “crop” function.
  2. Keep the current pop-over window that Panda uses and offer a “full screen” button to edit in full screen. (Aesthetically, the consistent pop-over window for images and PDFs is great, however, the loss in screen real estate for using Markup is, in my opinion, an inferior experience to the full screen view Bear currently has).

Markup is extremely helpful because it allows me to stay in Bear/Panda without leaving the app to highlight and markup PDF’s. Additionally, I don’t know of a way to “edit” a PDF that is stored in Bear/Panda with an external PDF editor, and then have it save the changes back to the Bear/Panda attached PDF (I believe this to be true for Bear/Panda on both Mac and iOS). This is why I’m writing here in the feature request page to keep Markup a full screen experience in Panda.

Thank you for reading!

Examples - Portrait:

Bear iOS (current)
Bear iOS (current)2048×2732 1.01 MB

Panda iOS (future)
Panda iOS (future)2048×2732 751 KB

Examples - Landscape:

Bear iOS - Landscape
Bear iOS - Landscape2732×2048 1.08 MB
Panda iOS - Landscape
Panda iOS - Landscape2732×2048 798 KB

2 Likes
2

I think this is just a matter of setting the modalPresentationStyle on the popup to FullScreen. If so, it’s a one line fix (the default changed in a recent version of iOS). I suspect this is just an oversight and will be fixed in the final app, but it doesn’t hurt to point it out to them. I had to go through my day-job app and add that in a bunch of places.

1 Like
3

Hello @trix180. Thanks for some recent posts.

I was wondering if the Bear Team had a thought on my old post you could share. I know this post might have been buried so I thought I’d ask again.

Thanks and cheers!

4

Hello! Sorry, I somehow missed this thread. Yes, I think the fullscreen popover makes a lot of sense here. Also, the “annotate” submenu we used for images makes a lot of sense for PDF attachments too. If other problems don’t emerge, I think we’ll have the above soon.

1 Like