Hello Bear Community,
We all know how shortcuts can boost productivity in Bear. Whether it’s for navigation, formatting, or custom commands, these time-savers are invaluable.
Share your top shortcuts, please!
6 Likes
Good Idea! Here are some recent shortcuts I made.
The first does search and replace strings across all the notes collection and might be useful after migrations from other apps or huge imports.
Bear global search and replace.shortcut.zip (12.4 KB)
This search and export all the notes matching a custom search criteria and might be useful on iOS. The export format can be changed in the export action.
Search and export.shortcut.zip (12.1 KB)
This last shortcut is quite simple but on macOS, if you follow this article, allows you to schedule automatic backups of your Bear notes.
We’ll possibly write a blog article with the complete procedure.
Backup Bear Notes.shortcut.zip (11.7 KB)
9 Likes
Thank you very much and congratulations on making an excellent application. By the way, I was reading a post on Reddit where they mentioned you, and it was about a shortcut to create a database. Here it is: Reddit - Dive into anything
1 Like
Daily Note
This shortcut will create a new note with the date in the tag, automatically keeping your daily notes or journal organized by year, then month, then day.
(I did not create this, someone else created it for me - I can’t remember who)
Bear Daily Note
2 Likes
I modified the Daily Note Picker shortcut from an article in the Bear newsletter recently.
Here it is:
It’s great for navigating to past daily notes from the calendar picker, and if the note doesn’t exist, it creates new daily notes with a customizable template (see the text action in the shortcut).
I also made one that sort of fakes having Saved Searches in Bear. It puts together an x-callback URL that opens a pre-filled search. For example, if you want a list of notes that have one of #tagA or #tagB but not #tagC you could type #tagA #tagB -#tagC.
I save the URLs in a pinned Bear note so they’re always close at hand.
4 Likes
Could someone tell me how to get the Bear favicon in the shortcut? The screenshot attached shows one with, and one without. I’d like to have all my shortcuts I use with Bear to have the Bear favicon in it…
I’m not sure if this is by design or a bug but, if I create a new shortcut and place a Bear action you’ll see the favicon appear. Then you can change it while still having Bear’s icon as an option for later. Apparently, this is not possible for imported shortcuts. Maybe you can create a new Shortcut, set the icon, and copy the content of “Today Calendar…”
I tried your suggestion, and it didn’t work. I also tried adding a Bear action before pasting the other actions in. When adding the first action, the logo appears; but as soon as I paste in the actions from the other shortcut, it disappears. It must be a bug. Thank you for trying!
These are great! In particular, the daily note was a great starting point for my shortcut.
I’ve created a modified version that uses chatGPT to create something similar to a koan, essentially a story in just a few sentences that is meant to provoke thought or introspection. Then, it generates reflection points and things that I can incorporate into my day based on that story.
I specify output parameters in my prompt (Telling it the exact markdown to use), combined with a header and footer that I’ve specified in the create note step of my shortcut, result in something that looks like this:
You can see at the top, I’ve created links to the previous day and next day (obviously next day doesn’t yet exist, but it will work after it gets created), as well as a link that says “Feedback”. This Feedback link is something that I actually use at the end of the day after I’ve completed the other sections of my daily note, which then feeds my note back to chatGPT, soliciting for feedback on what I’ve written, and then the output of that gets appended to the end of the note. I’ve removed everything except the section headers and titles for clarity, but these would normally all be populated, with the exception of the block quotes under the reflections, which is where I enter my notes.
This is the formulation of the note in the shortcut:
This is what a fully generated note looks like, before I’ve entered anything:
I’m still tweaking some things here and there, but overall it works great. I really enjoy having a dynamic daily note that helps give some ideas for things to focus on for the day. Shortcuts in bear are super powerful, and really unlock some functionality that I wouldn’t have otherwise thought possible.
Thanks for the ideas!
3 Likes
I created a super simple shortcut to append a little snippet of whatever I need to jot down to a note called Scratchpad.
https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/57a385dea698437ab3808a23503d915a
However, I would love to find a way to have the shortcut end without opening Bear (and without going to Shortcuts). Just stay on the Home Screen. Is that possible? If so, how?
1 Like
I think you’re using the wrong action maybe.
https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/45a757813552490a9cdf0753a025f28e
Try my modified version out.
also check these docs How to use Siri Shortcuts with Bear
This is very helpful - thank you!
I don’t know much about creating shortcuts, but I think I understand how yours works. Is there a way to add a “—” before the text of my input, so that I can have each little jot separated by lines? Or is that something I’d have to remember to type in myself before the real content?
Also, can you explain what the “Receive input from quick actions” does? Would that only work on macOS? I intend to use this kind of shortcut across devices.
Thank you!
Glad it works for you!
Yes, you can just add anything before and after the [Provided Input] variable. You can write a whole note in the small input field and just interpolate the [Provided Input] in there.
The “Receive input from quick actions” doesn’t work with my example because I didn’t wire it up properly, but it allows you to use it from the share sheet or various integration points across all OSes. It works with all of them and you can for example send a picture to the Jot shortcut and it will append it to the end of the note.
I’ll fix the shortcut and you can try it out.
1 Like
Sharing a super useful shortcut by GregorySchier
Shortcut to add ideas to a note with the press of the action button
