Bear is damn near perfect. However, there are a couple of things I would miss greatly from Apple Notes and was wondering if any of these features were considered or are being considered:
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Attachments Browser: In Notes, pressing
⌘ + 3opens the view to what it calls and Attachment Browser that sections out all the attachments you’ve added to any note such as images, scans, documents, audio, maps, etc. It’s incredibly useful. I know Bear has something similar, but Bear shows you the notes those attachments are in and not just the attachments themselves. Getting to the attachment itself is incredibly useful if you know exactly what you’re looking for. In Notes, you can also right-click the attachment and there’s an option “Show in Note” which is great! -
Bear Browser Extension: Bear’s browser extension extracts the whole web page for you. However, this is rarely what I want. I like that Apple Notes has an extension of the Mac which adds a rich link to the content. I can then add text and whatever else, tell it to add it to an existing note, or create a new note. I use this all the time. I know I can copy the link and then paste it in Bear, but that can really break your flow.
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Quick Note: Apple Notes allows you to press
FN + qfrom anywhere which pulls up a small window that you can take notes in. This is incredibly valuable when you just want to get a thought out and deal with it later. I don’t think Bear has anything close to this besides the couple of shortcuts I’ve seen. However, you miss out on Bear’s amazing editor. Is there anything like this that I’m not aware of? Some apps that have this capability besides notes is Raycast – Floating Notes (great implementation), Things 3 (amazing implementation), TickTick (decent implementation), and Todoist (decent implementation) off the top of my head.
I would also like to add that I really like that Notes has a separate section called Quick Notes. It’s out of the way and acts like a dumping ground for quick thoughts or ideas to get sorted out later—doesn’t get mixed up in my main notes which is fantastic.
Here’s a video I made showcasing the Attachment Browser and Quick Notes feature.
For Good Measure
A few other features that would be nice:
- would love small collaboration (don’t needs any teams abilities). Mostly for sharing notes with a friend or family when planning trips, shopping lists, etc. Apple Notes has this ••
- Would be great to share a public link to a note and anyone can view that note online. I imagine this might come with the web version of Bear?
- Multi-cursor editing — massively helpful when pasting lists from somewhere else that has characters you don’t want attached to the text after pasting. Can edit them all at once. (probably a big ask)
- Custom theme editor please
– nothing crazy, just good enough (like how Linear does it) - A smaller size rich link or better → Mention style links like Notion or Confluence by Atlassian. Those are amazing as it formats just enough so you can identify the links quickly as it shows a favicon, and the page title, but it works inline with text.
- separate sorting for individual tags
Sorry this was so long. Figured I’d get it out in one shot since I was in the mood. Bear is amazing. Keep up the great work!
…at least on iOS.