Bear Web Public Beta - You are invited!

Announcement
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We’re excited to share a new chapter for Bear: Bear Web is now in Public Beta! This is a big step toward making Bear available wherever you need it, and we’d love for you to give it a try.

:warning: Please read the following carefully before jumping in.

About Bear Web

Bear Web is a web app designed to complement the native Bear apps on Mac, iPhone and iPad, providing you with the flexibility to access your notes from any web browser. It is primarily for situations where you cannot access the native Bear apps and need to browse, edit, or search your Bear notes. It is not intended to be used as a standalone note-taking solution and will have certain limitations due to Web app restrictions, such as export and sketcher.

Bear Web image
Bear Web image2400×1554 325 KB

:warning: A few things to keep in mind

  • Bear Web is in public beta, so things will improve as we go. Please do not use it for critical work and make sure to backup your notes regularly
  • A Bear Pro subscription is not required to access the Bear Web public beta. However, it is required to sync your notes with the native Bear apps, and will be required to access Bear Web once it’s out of beta
  • Advanced Data Protection (ADP) must be turned off to use Bear Web due to Apple’s restrictions

What’s the difference?

We are doing our best to bring the same Bear experience to your browser, but some features from the native apps may be unavailable or behave differently due to web limitations. Some features, like encryption and TagCons, are still on the way. You can check the release notes for the latest updates.

Bear’s keyboard shortcuts vary slightly between the native macOS version and the web version. These differences arise primarily due to system-specific key mappings and conflicts with browser shortcuts. You can check the full shortcut list here: Bear Web keyboard shortcuts

How to get started

  1. :warning: Back up your notes
  2. Open Bear Web in your browser and sign in with your Apple ID
  3. That’s it, you are in!

Give feedback

We’d love to hear your thoughts about Bear Web. If you run into a bug or want to share your feedback, please post in Bear Web category on the forum and join discussions here. When sharing feedback, please include the operating system and browser you’re using – it helps a lot!

Happy testing!

Thanks again for being a key part of the Bear journey. We can’t wait to see you access Bear on more devices, including Windows and Android! :wink:

The Bear Team
:bear::heart::spider_web:

27 Likes
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Have you thuoght about wrapping this in Electron to make it a Windows and Linux app?

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Awesome release!

Can you guys write out the features missing between Bear Native and Bear Web? And share which features are unavailable due to web limitations vs. features that just haven’t been developed as yet?

3 Likes
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I just tried the web app despite having ADP turned on – and it works! Any idea why that might be?

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I get this error when logging in:

CleanShot 2025-07-09 at 16.03.11@2x
CleanShot 2025-07-09 at 16.03.11@2x3232×1852 166 KB

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HOLY SMOKES!!! How in the world y’all have managed to make it work so well!!! Haven’t encountered any issues yet not even bugs, and the best part is that it syncs so quickly!!! :exploding_head::exploding_head::exploding_head:

3 Likes
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Man, imagine having it on Linux, where most note taking apps sucks or don’t even have a native version. :sob::sob:

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Wen themes? Wen dark mode? Thanks!

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Very slick!! I like it! :+1:

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Very nice! I have been waiting for this for months. It looks and works great so far.

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Not something we are considering now.

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We have previous such reports and we are not sure what is going on. Authorization is all handled by Apple. What browser/device are you using?

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I just experienced the opposite. ADP had to be turned off.

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Wow, this is spectacular !!! THANK YOU!

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Themes, encryption, backlinks/TOC/statistics, printing, quick open, some note list actions, tagcons, and settings are all missing, but can be added depending on user feedback.

Import, export, backup and sketcher are unlikely to be implemented anytime soon, at least to the same degree as in the main app.

So let us know what you are missing the most!

2 Likes
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Bugs will have priority, but let us know what features you miss the most and we can focus the work there.

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Thank you so much for making this. I love Bear but I can’t use it on my work laptop, so web access is amazing. I’ll let you know how it goes.

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Brave on MacOS (everything’s latest stable)

1 Like
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You can sign-in and access notes even if you have ADP enabled by turning on “Access iCloud Data on the Web” in ADP settings. It just worked for me.

1 Like