Automatic To-Do sorting: Now completed tasks can gracefully move to the bottom, so you can keep your attention on what still needs doing
Full Changelog
CoreOS
New Encryption Support
Notes with attachments can now be encrypted
Encryption layer changes require native apps to be updated for sync compatibility
A warning will prompt users to update if version mismatch is detected
Automatic Sorting for Completed To-Dos
Completed to-dos are now automatically moved to the bottom of checklists.
This feature can be enabled in Preferences > General
Improved Local Note Pinning for Tags
Notes pinned inside tags are now only shown as pinned within that tag
Notes pinned outside tags still appear pinned across all sidebar locations
A new “Pinned” section under Notes lists all locally and globally pinned notes
Fixes & Improvements
Resolved file renaming issues
Minor theme color tweaks
Fixed crash related to wiki link autocompletion
Resolved edge case with @title special search
Various localization updates
Backups now retain the read-only state of notes
CloudKit sync updated to support Apple’s Advanced Data Protection
macOS
(macOS 13+) Live Text for Images: A small icon now appears in the bottom-right of images to enable Live Text
Style bar now restores automatically if left open before quitting the app
Image resizing no longer causes selection change
Minimum system requirement is now macOS12.4
iOS
ISO8601 date format is now supported in the BIU keyboard’s date tool. Option can be enabled in Preferences > General
Enhanced behavior of the virtual keyboard
Fixed issue with tag folding in the sidebar affecting note list context
Resolved table paste bug
Fixed a crash on the Watch app
Minimum system requirement is now iOS15.6
Feedback welcome!
This beta brings some big changes, and we’d love your help testing it thoroughly. Let us know how this beta feels, and don’t hesitate to share any feedback with us!
If I’ve enabled Advanced Data Protection in my iCloud settings, does that mean Bear’s notes are now automatically end-to-end encrypted during sync? Or are there additional steps I need to take?
For me personally, this is the highlight of the release. Thank you!
This on the other hand is disappointing, especially because I need local pinning for the locations. It is not at all clear to me how global pinning can be useful here. But apart from that, it prevents what I would have intended if local pinning had also been used here.
I would like to pin some templates in the untagged location. In the ToDo location, on the other hand, I am interested in the notes that currently contain urgent ToDos. There is no reason for me to see these notes under “all notes” as well. Here, I am mainly interested in the notes that I am currently working on. I am therefore in favor of implementing local pinning here as well.
I am curious to hear how other users see this or whether global pinning can be of any use
I have notes that are pinned as master “maps of content” notes that I use for research. This new functionality will allow me to pin key notes within tags and also see the master maps of content. This aids in research and jumping to relevant other notes. Global pinning is indeed quite useful and made even more useful (and powerful) by the addition of localized tag pinning.
Can you give more details or an example how you would use global pinnings. I do not really understand what you mean. Pinning in localizations (Notes, Untagged, Locked, Today, …) are not shown within tags just within themselves.
I have one note that is pinned “globally” because I use that single note as a “master” tags list. What this does for me, is maintain tags in place that do not have any notes yet. Why? Because, by doing this, visually tags feel more like folders if they exist when there are no notes “assigned” to them. Just because I don’t have a note today with that tag, doesn’t mean I won’t tomorrow. This also helps to maintain naming consistency, because I could forget the exact nomenclature I used the last time I used that tag.
Until now, I was using Bear partially because I really wanted to make it my default note-taking app. I never really succeeded and ended up going back to Apple Notes (mainly for security reasons).
But with note encryption INCLUDING attachments, everything has changed.
The ability to pin a note within a tag without affecting the “all notes” view is a real plus. Without that, I would never have been able to get organized!
In short, I can finally consider putting Bear at the top of the podium as my dedicated writing app.
There’s only one thing missing to make the app perfect: the ability to automatically encrypt notes with a certain tag. That is, being able to right-click on the tag and have it automatically encrypted. This feature would make me immediately switch my entire workflow to Bear.
In the meantime, I’ll use it as much as possible. And if I forget to encrypt notes sometimes, I’ll find them in Apple Notes. Unless the feature arrives before then.
Thanks again for all your hard work. It was definitely worth the wait.
Sorry for the syntax, English is not my native language.
What do you mean with “pinned globally” in the context of the new implementation? If you pin a note under the “all notes” location they won’t appear anymore pinned under a tag. Do you need these globally pinned notes also to appear under “untagged”, “today”, “locked”, “todo” or “archived”? Or vice versa: a note pinned under “untagged” f.e. to appear under " all notes"?
Bummer. I missed that… What I want/need, is that if something is pinned in the “All Notes” view, that I see that pinned note, in all tag views from the navigation column (not necessary for the “untagged, today, locked, etc.”)
There were a few key factors that led us to this decision:
The “Untagged,” “Todo,” and other sections under Notes are relatively lightweight abstractions, essentially functioning as “saved searches.” This makes implementing local pinning more technically challenging.
For certain sections, like “Today” and “Untagged,” pinning doesn’t make much sense. This could also apply to new categories we might introduce in the future.
We believe that limiting pinning to only the global and tag levels offers a simpler, cleaner mental model for most users, so we decided to move forward with that approach.
A new feature we’re not ready to disclose yet
We’re always happy to hear your thoughts, if anything’s unclear or you have ideas on how we can make it better, just write here
Generally speaking when might 2.4 be released to the public? I did TestFlight for iOS but I was not able to get into TestFlight for Mac and I updated iOS and did not take into account the database modifications. So, I am unable to sync with Mac.
Hey there! If you have enabled Advanced Data Protection (ADP) in your iCloud settings, notes edited in 2.4 and later will take advantage of ADP automatically with no extra steps needed on your side.
Some metadata like note titles and tags may remain unencrypted to maintain Bear’s functionality (Think of it like encrypting a file: the content is locked, but you still need to see the filename). Attachments like images and PDFs are already encrypted separately. Hope it answered your questions!
Important: This beta includes some foundational updates. To avoid potential issues, we recommend backing up your notes before updating.
A more powerful note encryption: You can now encrypt notes that contain attachments, meaning you can encrypt any notes in Bear now!
Pin notes within a tag: You can now pin notes locally inside individual tags without cluttering your global pinned list
Automatic To-Do sorting: Now completed tasks can gracefully move to the bottom, so you can keep your attention on what still needs doing
but so glad globally supported encryption is here