Bear turns 10: the notes app that still feels like day one
Bear turns 10, and it still feels like day one
Three friends who loved Apple and design built their own notes app in 2013; it hit the App Store in 2016, won Mac App of the Year and an Apple Design Award, and now serves millions. For its tenth anniversary, the team shares the two principles behind every decision—delightful to use and safe to trust—plus hidden details, a feature that never shipped, new icons, a Tamagotchi-style widget, and merch.
Keeping a note taking app private and standard wasn’t a revolutionary idea in 2016 when we first launched Bear, but today, it kind of is.
- francescobonomi
I've been a long-time user of Bear and I remember when they first launched. I think it's one of those apps that made history for its clean UI and macOS-like experience.
Lately I've been trying some of the markdown file-based editors, mostly to be able to view and edit documentation written by LLMs while working on projects.
I've tried a few. Obsidian, Cogito (in beta) and ZenNote, which I see no one mentioned. For now I settled with ZenNotes because it came with vim motions out of the box. But I'm also liking the Cogito approach, with a much cleaner UI.
- brink
It just so happens I am looking for a solid knowledge management application. Too bad this is Apple-only.
I've gone from Obsidian, to LogSeq, to Org-mode on Emacs a few days ago, and I think I'm probably going to stay there.
I'm no expert on the subject, but I'm pretty sure Obsidian is winning not because it's great, but because it mostly doesn't suck, and it runs everywhere. I have little doubt that Bear is a better app than Obsidian.
- tptacek
I'm gradually replacing most of the software I use with software I conjure myself, and Bear is the reason I'm probably never going to write an editor; it's not clear to me how I could improve it. Emacs is probably out the door by the end of 2027, but I'd be surprised if I wasn't still using Bear for years from now. It's quite good.
- sandgiant
Bear is such a fantastic app. They nailed the editor feel and function early on and then have consistently improved stability and performance ever since.
They worked on a file backed editor at some point called Panda, but decided to scrap it due to the trade offs of not controlling the storage format. Really respect the focus on their core USP.
Edit: Looks like Panda was recently revived under a new name and is currently in beta: https://lettera.md.
The support is super friendly and responsive and sync just works perfectly and consistently.
Their only response to the AI mania has been adding an official embedded cli to interact with the DB safely.
They are currently working on a web client. This has me slightly worried, but it's apparently been a recurring request for people forced to use Windows at work. I trust they know what they're doing.
- PUSH_AX
Tried bear, tried obsidian…
To be honest I just use a code editor with markdown files in a folder now. The journey is over.