Download Bear for macOS

Bear is for people who take quick notes, plan their morning, journal, and occasionally write longer pieces — all in the same place. It uses Markdown so formatting stays clean and text-focused, without toolbars getting in the way.

Tickable tasks and pinned tags in one place

• Daily notes and to-do lists that can be ticked off inside any note
• Pulling together images, PDFs, and clipped web pages into one searchable spot
• Writing longer text in a simple, uncluttered window
• Organising with pinned tags that sit at the top of the sidebar
• Finding notes fast — search works inside photos and PDFs, and notes appear in Spotlight

Cross-device sync means subscribing to Pro

• Syncing across devices requires Bear Pro
• Needs macOS 12.4 or later
• The web clipper is a browser extension for Safari and other macOS browsers

How Bear compares

Pick any two note apps and the differences show up in what they leave out. Bear keeps formatting visible but optional — type in Markdown, read in plain text. Apple Notes puts style controls in a toolbar and stores everything in a flat list. Bear’s nested tags feel closer to folders without locking you into one path. Craft goes the other direction: block-based pages and visual layout tools that suit presentation-heavy work. If you just want to write, Bear’s simpler.

UpNote and Joplin both handle Markdown well. Joplin adds end-to-end encryption and open-source flexibility, but the interface feels busier. UpNote mimics Bear’s clean sidebar and adds rich-text toggles, yet its search doesn’t dig into image text the way Bear does. For anyone who tags heavily — multi-word tags, nested tags, pinned tags — Bear still leads in keeping the sidebar tidy while letting complexity grow underneath.

Fits with your Mac

Bear doesn’t sit in a silo. A few connections make it part of the Mac workflow rather than another island of data.

• Spotlight. Notes appear in system-wide searches without opening the app.
• Siri. Dictate a quick note or create one with a keyboard shortcut triggered by voice.
• Apple Watch. Speak a thought and it lands in your recent notes — handy while walking or cooking.
• Share sheet. Send text, links, or images from any Mac app straight into a new or existing note.
• Web clipper. The Safari extension grabs articles, recipes, or research and sends them into Bear with formatting intact.
• Backlinks and info panel. Notes link to each other; the info panel shows a table of contents and which notes point here. Works like a lightweight wiki.

Together these mean you can start a note in Bear, find it through Spotlight, link it to a project page, and clip research from the browser — all without leaving your usual rhythm.

Drag #journal, #work, and #ideas to the sidebar

A little setup early makes the app feel like home. Start here.

1. Pin three tags. Drag your most-used tags — maybe #journal, #work, and #ideas — to the top of the sidebar. They stay there as one-click filters.
2. Hide Markdown for reading. In preferences, toggle Markdown visibility off. You still type in Markdown, but the preview looks clean, like a printed page.
3. Create a scratch note. Keep one note pinned as a daily inbox. Dump links, half-formed thoughts, and Siri dictations into it. Sort later.
4. Try the web clipper. Install the Safari extension and clip a recipe or article. Notice how images and text come through searchable, not just as attachments.
5. Check the info panel. Open any longer note and look at the table of contents. For notes with headings, it works like an outline you can jump through.
6. Search inside a photo. Drop a screenshot with text into a note, wait a moment for processing, then search for a word from that image. It shows up.

After a few days of tagging and linking, you’ll notice the sidebar stops being a list and starts being a map. That’s when Bear clicks.

Good to know: Bear’s privacy model means your notes, tags, and search index stay on your device. The developer can’t read them. Syncing, if you add it later, encrypts data in transit and at rest on iCloud.

• Improved internal error logging

• macOS 12.4 or later
• Apple Silicon or Intel Mac