Big news—Bear encryption just got even better! You can now encrypt notes with attachments, ensuring your most important ideas, documents, and secrets stay safe. This update also introduces smarter To-Do sorting, more flexible pinning, and a smoother overall experience. Let’s take a look together!
Bear 2.4 will require macOS 12.4 and iOS 15.6 or later to support new features and improvements. If you’d rather stay on your current OS, you can turn off auto-updates and update Bear manually.
Encryption, upgraded
For the first time, you can encrypt notes with attachments in Bear (Bear Pro required), meaning you can encrypt any notes in Bear now. Your images, PDFs, and other files are now just as secure as your text, giving you complete peace of mind.
To make this happen, we’ve made a fundamental upgrade to Bear’s encryption system:
We’ve upgraded Bear’s encryption system to encrypt every component of a note, including attachments like images, PDFs, and other files. This ensures everything stays secure and in sync across devices, with smarter checks to prevent conflicts during encryption. Your password is never stored anywhere, ensuring a complete protection of your data. Plus, we have made sure that the new encryption system is ready for Bear on the web when it launches. With these upgrades, your notes and files are more secure than ever.
Please note: You’ll need to update Bear on all your devices to keep sync running smoothly. If you’re on an older version, Bear will kindly remind you to update for seamless syncing.
Sort To-Dos with ease
Your To-Do lists should work for you, not against you. Sometimes a cluttered list of completed and unfinished tasks can be overwhelming. Now, Bear provides a new menu option to automatically moves completed To-Dos to the bottom, so you can always focus on what needs to be done. You can find the setting under Settings > General in Bear.
More Powerful Pinned Notes
Pinning keeps your most important notes within reach, and now it’s even more powerful. With this update:
- Pinned notes inside a tag stay pinned only in that tag. No more clutter across all your notes
- Notes are pinned globally when no tag is selected in the Sidebar
- A new Pinned section under Notes in the Sidebar gathers all pinned notes—both local and global—for easy access
- A refreshed pin icon for a modern and clean look!
For example, you can now pin the House Innovation Plan under #personal
and the Annual Work Report under #work
separately, keeping them neatly organized without cluttering your All Notes view. At the same time, you can still pin Daily Thoughts globally, so it’s always within reach whenever inspiration strikes.
You can find more information about Pinning here.
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
- Improved in-note search performance
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
Update now!
Bear 2.4 is all about making your note-taking experience smoother, smarter, and more secure. Update now and give it a spin—we’d love to hear what you think!
Happy Writing!
The Bear Team