I’m finding there is a noticeable delay when typing on very long notes (18K+ words), and this delay is especially significant when the note is formatted as a list.
The note formatted as a list has such a big delay that it really messes up your typing as you wait to see the text you just typed a second ago on the screen.
Am I alone on this?
I’m on macOS 14.5 on an Apple M1 Pro MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM and 1TB drive, running Bear app Version 2.2.2 (12722)
Bear is generally quite a fast editor, but it has some weak spots. In normal writing, it only needs to update the current block, which is usually the current paragraph. But for lists, it updates the whole list. And if you have a VERY long list it is starting to show. We could improve this, but it is complicated to do.
In the meantime, I recommend breaking the list up in some way, for example, by adding a horizontal ruler or a heading. If you add to the end, you could have a temporary ruler right before to speed up typing.
BTW, this is also true if you have plain text on every line. Then it all will be one paragraph according to the parsing rules of markdown, and everything will be redrawn for each key stroke. Adding a blank line is enough to break it apart.
Bear is optimized for writing and can handle book-sized notes. But for big text files that look more like logs, it may be less snappy.
It works, thank you! That is a great explanation and tip. It is an easy workaround I can live with.