update 2.1 is available via TestFlight for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. With this update, we added the Quick Open (⌘O) for quickly jumping to notes and tags without leaving the keyboard. The Quick Open is currently available on macOS only but we are working on a version for iPad too. Please try it, we are very curious about your feedback.
We have also worked on improving the performance of the macOS Note List Search for large note collections, let’s us know if you still experience lags while writing the search term. Notes search is a central part of Bear so please test it regardless of the size of your library.
Bear 2.1 for Mac also includes 2 new importers: Obsidian and Markdown folder. The latter is built to provide a way to import markdown files with attachments by selecting the folder containing both, overcoming some macOS Sandbox limitations.
We also added some QOL improvements for the editor and the app, bug and crash fixes.
Here is the complete change log for release 2.1, as usual, thanks for all the feedback provided so far!
2.1 Changelog macOS
Quick Open! Hit ⌘+O to quickly search notes and tags. Hit Enter to open the note and ⌘+Enter to open an external window
Note list Search performances improved for large notes and attachments library
The Quick Open looks very nice. This was one of my most needed features, so I’m very pleased!
I’m not sure if the Obsidian Importer is working properly. I imported some files with the Obsidian syntax: [[Note Title#Heading 1]]. I expected them to be imported into Bear as [[Note Tittle/Heading 1]], which is the Bear syntax for linking to a heading, but that didn’t happen.
Quick Open is a great addition to Bear’s note search and retrieval features. In particular, the combination of ⌘+O to search for a tag followed by ⌘+F to quickly search for a string within that tag is great.
Note list search performance feels faster but I only have a few thousand notes with mostly image attachments (i.e., I don’t store many PDFs in Bear).
Obsidian importer - I don’t link to headings much but, yes, the importer doesn’t catch this.
CMD+O is for the Quick Open panel and CMD+SHIFT+F is for the note search and move the sidebar selection to Notes. They are two different functionalities.
It only currently displays 5 results. It would be nice if it had the option for more. Also, I have a note that has the term “R9” in it. However, when I search for R9, it actually returns results of r and separately a 9, rather than together. When I search the normal way, it returns the corrects results.
This is a great feature and I look forward to using it and seeing it refined a bit more.
Thanks for all the hard work you guys are putting into this app, it’s great to see all the new features and bug fixes. I was just curious what the rough time frame for 2.1 going from beta to actually getting released might be… is that kind of update usually a few week(s) or month or more? I obviously don’t need a specific date or anything, I’m just asking because I’m getting ready to finally hit the go button on transferring all my 2k notes from Evernote to Bear, but ideally wanted to wait until the laggy search bug had been addressed since I did notice that being an issue in some of my initial testing.
I’ve used it several times, and has worked great so far. No issues!
One request for this, if possible could you include the option to change the shortcut? I would like CMD L, as the muscle memory from Safari for going to the URL bar, would work well here in Bear…
The quick open search the notes using only their title and uses the a fuzzy search meant to provide results in case of typos. For example searching for cmmon will show matches also for title including common.
I suspect this is an issue with the “score” we are giving to or matches. The tag has most likely a low score and is not showed but it should if no other results are available. We’ll adjust the algorithm for this scenario.
Yes, We are working on a version for iOS. Are you interested in triggering the Quick Open on iPad with a keyboard or an iPhone/iPad with touch controls only?
Awesome to hear! For me, it’s primarily iPhone. I’m curious what you’re thinking to trigger it? Other apps use pull down but that currently triggers search.
My preference would be for this to override search (in note and global) as I use the quick open more often. But use the symbol next to search to quickly change search type between quick open, in note, and global. So quick open is the default.
Just commenting on the “end editing” portion right now as I’m still collecting my thoughts on the quick open feature.
Thank you for adding the ability to end editing on a detached window. I’m curious though, why not add this ability for the main window while both side bars are closed and only the editor is showing? It would be very much appreciated!
(either macOS, iOS or iPadOS, but would prefere iPadOS)