My time with Bear Notes: can it replace Apple Notes?

So my wife told me today I am a cheater.

After being truly devoted to Apple Notes and even getting some really positive feedback on my workflow with this App, I found it’s already been a month since I’m extensively using Bear 2.0 Beta.

And I have to say there was not a single moment I thought about going back.

That’s great to know my Sophisticated Procrastination © continues to shine, however, I think I might extract something useful from my new way of living digital life. And share it with you, guys.

Say hi to Bear

Why taking Notes in Bear is different from taking Notes in Apple Notes

To answer this question, let’s take a look at a broader picture, of how the Bear app is different from Apple Notes overall:

• Bear is using Tags, and only Tags, while Apple Notes are more relying on Folders (and Smart Folders) to structure the content.
• Bear supports links and backlinks, while in Apple Notes linking is nothing more than a pain-in-the-arse. And certainly no backlinking options whatsoever.
• Bear is using Markdown, while Apple’s solution relies on the Rich Text Format.
• Apple Notes supports Quick Notes which is something heavily integrated into the OSs. Bear does not have anything like that.
• Bear is able to store Web Pages with all of their content as very beautiful notes, while in the Apple Notes, I wasn’t able to reproduce this functionality even with the help of Shortcuts! (for some reason Shortcuts related to web article creation do not work, might be a bug that will be fixed soon)
• Feature-wise, Bear supports complete parity across the platforms. Your Bear will look and work exactly the same both on your Mac and your iPhone or iPad. Apple Notes for Mac are significantly more functional (formatting, links handling, tags handling, etc) than its mobile versions.
• Bear supports numerous exporting options — RTF, PDF, DOCX, MD, ePub, and many more. For Apple Notes you have to use a 3rd party tool to grab at least something out of your vault, and that would be a Markdown only.

But that’s not it, there are several new features in Bear 2.0 that make this app so good in 2023. Out of the full list of features, I see 3 biggest changes relevant to me and my way to take notes:

• Compared to the OG Bear there is now full-blown backlinks support. And this is a game changer.
• Version 2.0 sports a completely new Markdown editor with tons of new features and capabilities. Totally different image handling as well as expanded Apple Pencil support (on iPads)
• Bear 2.0 is able to search deeply inside notes, attached pictures, and PDFs. That is something that previously was possible only with Apple Notes.

So answering the question in the heading — everything is different about Bear, especially with their newest release. That is why if you’re planning to transition from Apple Notes to Bear, be ready that the way you take notes with this application will be different.

Beauty of Links in Bear Notes

One thing to know about links — just like with tags you can link to anything or anyone (or even any time). That certainly enables you with unlimited powers in your note-taking. But to make it work, I keep in my mind this little point:

If it is something that is being mentioned often — just make a note about it.

Backlinks in Bear will show you how exactly often and where exactly you mention certain item (project, person, date, event, whatever)

So, if I have a meeting with John, I will most certainly mention John somewhere inside the Event Note. Then, if I click on John’s note — I can see both content about John right inside his personal note and also all the places within the rest of my notes, where I mention John.

John’s note in its turn, can be tagged something like #people or #contacts — for you to be able to see John in the respective list.

See how the Backlinks work in Bear 2.0

Now here’s the trick — the same applies to Dates, Months, Years, Projects, Customers, Locations, and lots of other stuff that you mention often.

When to use Tags and when to use Links?

This is the question that can sink someone in thoughts for many hours. Especially the one who is looking for a future-proof scalable structure.

I personally solved this problem for myself in the following way.

Tags to me are more like metadata, a property, or a really vast area of knowledge, rather than a standalone creature. Would you see value in creating a note about Health? Not really. And about the Legal domain? Unlikely.

But those two will work great as Tags, containing multitudes of notes of respective area.

On the other hand — stuff like…

• John
• 7 April 2023
• House renovation
• Top 20 apps to check
• Article Draft

…are much more precise and deserve standalone notes, which

1. you can fill with meaningful information and content, and
2. you can backlink to (and from)

Tags don’t need to be filled with information and linking directly to them does not make much sense. The true value of Tags reveals when they’re combined.

When you search for something, Tags can be combined, while linked pages cannot.

Certainly, if you’d like to see all your Family Projects, you can easily search for the tag # Family while having your # Projects tag view open.

Now if you would have Family Note or Projects Note it would be hard to combine those searches together.

Another example: let’s say I’d like to see my Drafts of Medium articles. Quite an effort to maintain a note Medium with links to Each Draft Article. It is much easier to create a tag reflecting the type of content #Draft and be able to list all of the notes of such type further filtering within #Medium area.

Here comes the biggest disappointment in Bear Notes

I really wish Bear supported smart folders, just like the Apple Notes do, or some custom filters that would allow to join multiple tags together in one single view. In the application that relies on tags as much as Bear — it would make so much more sense!

• #Family + #Projects
• #Company + #Resources
• #Published + #Articles + #Medium
• #Draft + #Articles

But for now, those are just dreams… You can workaround this however by going to particular tag and then searching inside it for another tag. That would work. Also, you can throw at Bear something like:

bear://x-callback-url/search?term=type/Published&tag=Areas/Medium&token=170422-2C2822-598222

…That will do exactly the same.

But that’s kinda dorky.

Key outtake to be successful with Bear

To sum up, the key difference of working with Bear compared to other apps resides in the structure of Tags, which can have multiple levels. However, due to the linking abilities of the new version, you can keep this structure relatively simple over time.

What I figured out about Tags:

• Tags work best for the Types of content (Draft, Memo, Meeting Note, List) and for Areas (Family, Health, Finance, Travel)
• Tags don’t matter too much. Most of the stuff can be sorted out via linking, back-linking and search capabilities.
• Tags would make hugely more sense in Bear Notes, if there were Smart Folders or other options to combine different tags together as needed.

Summary: Bear is great for Newcomers

If you’re just starting your journey in the note-taking world, Bear will be awesome, not only because of its versatility, but mostly because of the fact you don’t even have to think about tags, folders, or any sort of classification.

You can literally start with the note called TODAY and manage all the rest through the outgoing links from this particular note, using this one single note as an entry point to your Note-Taking World.

Then, as your Digital Brain continues to grow, you can introduce types and ways of classification, like tags, nested tags, notes-collectors, Daily Notes, Weekly Notes, and the rest…

But what’s good is - on early stages none of that is mandatory.

The search is awesome, you can link anywhere with a simple “[[“ sign and backlinks will show you all the other relevant parts of your Note Collection.

All of that combined is simply not possible to achieve with Apple Notes, no matter how user-friendly Apple’s native app is.

And don’t forget Bear is a predator — it eats almost any type of content. You can feed anything to him, and it will always stay available — which is a very important point for a note-taking all-rounder.

What’s next

My next article will cover more details of my workflow with Bear and usage of shortcuts and automations to minimise my daily efforts. Stay tuna 🐟.