Bear - A beautiful, flexible writing app for notes and prose

Hi everyone! We're Shiny Frog from Italy and we love to make beautiful, useful apps. We created Bear because we wanted a beautiful way to write, easily organize our notes, and publish or share in various ways. This has been a labor of love for nearly two years, and we're releasing the beta today because we'd love to hear what you think! To try Bear, please visit our beta site linked above and enter your email address so we can register you on TestFlight. The Shiny Frog team is myself, Matteo Rattotti, Konstantin Erokhin, and Danilo Bonardi. Comment here with any questions or feedback and we'll do our best to respond!

Hey, why the nonstandardized implementation of Markdown? The bold and italics in particular is not how that tends to be used in most apps.

I have to admit I sort of rolled my eyes when I saw "another notetaking app" on product hunt. But after giving it a look I have to admit now that i am really excited to try it out. It might just be the app I have been looking for. Currently I am using Evernote, but it is by no means an ideal solution. I like that its cross platform and integrates with everything. However the rest of it, to me at least, is a terrible experience. Evernote feels clunky at times for such a basic thing, and organization tools are available (tags, folders, etc) but the UI doesn't implement them very well. They have a good search which is what I have found that I need to rely on most often when searching for a note. I would love to turn this upside down and find something that works. I really like the idea of markdown and I love the design and simplicity with how it appears to be implimented. Last thought: The variation of Markdown you are using is slightly concerning. Just because it strays from the norm. For example in traditional markdown you would add an asterix around *italics* and double asterix around **bold**. However in your implementation a single Asterix will cause bold and not italics, which is confusing for someone used to traditional markdown. Also in traditional markdown a single underscore would also make text italics while in your version it will make it underlined. I am not sure if this is a problem or not. I would have to try the app. While I will be honest that if we were redo-ing the markdown spec today I would give you two thumbs up for your version (it is more intuitive) but my concern is that I will have to remember that I am using the Bear Markdown which is different than traditional markdown. I fear it will cause me to make errors in Bear or errors in other markdown apps that i use because I have to consciously remember which version I am using and remember two syntaxes. While the traditional markdown is seemingly inferior to your version of markdown, I would still lean towards using it because it is consistent across other markdown apps. Maybe you can have an option in settings that would allow you to switch between the two version. I am excited to try the beta and maybe after trying it for a while I will realize that this markdown issue isn't a problem. I just bring it up as an initial concern. Best of luck with the release and the beta!

I searched high and low for a replacement to the Mac OS default Notes app, which is incredibly limited in functionality and insufficient for my needs. I had one twist - I needed to find a note taking app for Mac that did not sync or store notes in the cloud. Bear does just that and it happens to be great. I really enjoy the hashtag categorization system and ability to have multiple tags on a note. It's a twist on Evernote style tags, but with a lighter-weight style of notebook organization and management.

Pros:

Clean interface, markdown editor, link to other notes, unique hashtag categorization system, one of the few note apps that doesn't need clou

Cons:

note linking process is a little clunky, can't customize or pin favorites in tag folder order

Any ETA on the beta launch? 😄

Windows/Android versions please, I really need to use your great app!

Overall I love Bear. It is beautifully designed. I love the simple interface and the ability to tag notes is amazing. It makes searching for old notes so much easier. This is better than Apple Notes and I love it so much more than Evernote.

Pros:

Clean and simple, ability to tag notes, markdown capability

Cons:

Lists with checkbox on my iPhone show up in markdown on my mac. The checkboxes are not there. I find this annoying.

@mattteorattotti Looking sharp. I like the idea and am going to give it a try. I am looking to substitute Evernote, which has too many features for my needs. I have two questions: 1 - Are you looking to develop for Android? (Well, just noticed the answer for this in other comment. But would be very welcome if you would.) 2 - Are you looking into encrypting the note files? That would be perfect.

Looks great. Why did you guys come up with the idea of creating *another* (emphasis mine :)) note taking app? I mean there's so much out there. How do you think you will stand out from the other apps?

As an Evernote user, I'm always on the lookout for something less clunky, and Bear sounds excellent. Using visible Markdown rather than hidden and unmanageable HTML is the best choice. However, Evernote's big draw is that it's everywhere, and currently Bear is exclusive to Apple platforms. Are you planning to do something more universal? I know there's a possibility of an Android app, which would be a huge help; to compete with Evernote, though, it'll need to be possible to access your notes from Windows and in a browser. Are either of those on the roadmap?