Bear

What reviewers actually said

Built only from these 120 real reviews (foreign ones translated). Superscripts jump to the quote here. Apple has no per-review links, so [ref] opens that app's reviews on the App Store.

1. [R9] 5/5 · US Just better than anything comparable: - It works - It works consistently - Great UI - Smooth down to the smallest of interactions - Fast - Same great experience on every Apple device No matter how many times I try other note taking apps, none of them come close to the simple, great experience of Bear.
2. [R10] 5/5 · US Should need no introduction: Bear slaps. I've used it for like 8 years now. Super simple, just the right amount of complexity. Themes and styles are beautiful, including all the custom icons. Sync is always super fast and smooth. Exporting, tagging, formatting, all just work exactly how you'd want. Everything feels crisp and easy to use, especially and most importantly the note editor UI, which is
3. [R12] 5/5 · US The very best! ♡: This app is reliable, easy to navigate, and stylish. I love using it every day! Please consider adding a feature for user-made themes in the future! And a feature to toggle a note’s history + restore versions!
4. [R13] 5/5 · US Bear is the Best!: Hands down my favorite notes app I’ve ever used. It’s getting more features all the time and has everything I need. Most aesthetically pleasing app, too. I love how it syncs across my iPad and MacBook, and the way it centers the content inside the window is an amazing but simple feature that not all other notes apps have. Well worth the money. My go-to for many years now. Smal
5. [R6] 5/5 · US Exactly what I needed: I was looking for an Evernote alternative where I could use tags, and this is perfect. I both like to write and store recipes using tags for season, type, occasion etc. The support for nested tags is much appreciated, and their Pro plan is very reasonable. Not much is paywalled (it’s just cloud features, themes, and search), so give it a try!
6. [R23] 5/5 · US Brilliant, lovely: So easy to use and intuitive. The aesthetics make it fun. I haven’t found a better app for organizing all the notes, documents, links, and courses I collect and refer to to support my career-change coaching practice. The tagging system allows me to classify something by topic and also author or source. It’s a beautiful personal library. And the customer service is extremel
7. [R24] 5/5 · US Clean and Powerful: This app shines in the little details: it’s crazy fast, compare it to Apple notes and you will see a night and day difference, especially for long notes. It has table of contents, which makes it easy to navigate long notes. The tag system is miles better than folders. You can manage your todos by following a thin line under each of your notes that shows the progress of your tod
8. [R25] 5/5 · US Tried them all-came home to Bear: This app is so streamlined that it can be deceptive how brilliant it is. Bear works with your mind, without friction. Hashtags are one of five key power tools here. Use them to create a filing system, as well as to cross index any files you want. Bear seems simple, but it is in fact the most elegant writing tool out there. In its elegant simplicity exists ultima
9. [R22] 5/5 · US Indispensable: I do a ton of notetaking, and Bear is now my indispensable tool for doing so. The UX is great across iPhone, iPad, and Mac, syncing across devices just works with iCloud without any extra subscription, and the Markdown support is great for portability between systems like blogs.
10. [R16] 4/5 · US Almost Perfect Out of the Box: I would give it 5 stars if there was the ability to disable word wrap in code blocks and allow a sideways scroll. I do a lot of code snippets, but most lines are beyond the iPhone Pro Max screen width. Callouts could benefit from this as well. It would also be great if we could add or edit a CSS stylesheet file for the HTML export, or dare I ask for in-app style cus
11. [R30] 5/5 · US Solid and beautiful text editor: I’ve used Bear for a few years now. I really enjoy the functionality, UI, and ease of formatting. I have the yearly subscription, so my notes sync across devices readily. I can also adjust font, spacing, and color themes easily. I’m not an advanced Markdown user, but I’m beginning to learn more features I’ve barely touched, like making your notes into your own pseu
12. [R31] 5/5 · US Excellent for so many things: I’ve been using Bear Notes almost from the beginning. It was slow going at first and I hung in there as Bear moved closer and closer to 2.0 and I have to tell you after using nearly all of the options that are out there for note taking, journaling and more, there’s no better. So if you’re stuck with another note app, and want to see what else is out there, give Bear
13. [R41] 5/5 · US very functional without extra junk: I replaced evernote with bear about 9 months ago and wish I had done it 2 years ago. Bear is super functional, I get pretty much everything I need. Get bear pro, it is completely worth it and the best deal of all the notes apps.
14. [R7] 4/5 · US Almost: It’s almost perfect, it won’t render math or PDFs or anything, it was working, the update broke it I love how it looks but the exporting and rendering are pretty fundamental and I feel like it should really be able to do more, like why not also have rich text as an option and if it’s only markdown then it’s a pretty high priority that it should do markdown literally flawlessly and it does
15. [R11] 5/5 · US ipad rendering bugged for months now: when using bear on the ipad in windowed mode (not full screen), sometimes following a link within a note causes a bug with rendering where the bottom portion of the note is not rendered. you can sometimes fix it by restarting bear.
16. [R14] 3/5 · US Great for saving info: Well, it was a great app, but the latest update just screwed up the copy and paste function. Used to be you could just copy and paste, then edit your data; now after you copy, it gives you a multiple choice for paste for which no selected options work, so they just rendered my favorite note taking app useless for copying data to edit.
17. [R15] 5/5 · US Fantastic: Love it. It’s a little glitchy sometimes but overall I love the design and feel
18. [R4] 3/5 · US Cannot sync well with the Windows web version: I wrote something on the web, and the next day I found it hadn't synced the latest web version. Instead, it synced an old version from my phone that didn't have the new content. Do you know how devastating that is? The experience is terrible. I specifically tested the sync the night before, and it seemed fine, but then it hit me with a big problem in the morning. · translated
19. [R21] 1/5 · US All my work is gone: They updated the app and absolutely everything that I’ve kept there is gone and customer service has helped very very little. If ur gonna use the app at least keep your work backed up elsewhere
20. [R34] 1/5 · US Not good: It's garbage. Hours of hard work writing just disappeared. Do not recommend. · translated
21. [R39] 1/5 · US App not syncing across devices - iOS 26 broke it: App not syncing across devices - seems to have broken with iOS 26. :(
22. [R1] 2/5 · US Clunky messy ui: Sure it looks "clean" at first but it automatically adds markups that show every time you try to edit a word. So if you delete part of it you end up with bunch of asterisks to delete. That's not clean. Would prefer no markups at all. And having to pull up a secondary keyboard for every formatting task gets tiresome and kills work flow. Why not a long press menu for frequent format
23. [R18] 4/5 · US I want to love it so badly: Bear would be my perfect notes app, and I would gladly pay the subscription for it. However, the keyboard toolbar/text editor on iPhone is so bad, especially when compared with the default Apple notes. (Please just copy how Apple notes sets up their keyboard toolbar, it’s so much better). If you want to format anything, it is such a headache and so incredibly slow be
24. [R42] 3/5 · US Used to like this more: There’s been a UI revision in the last while that’s made it super confusing to do things like add images to notes from my phone (go to BIU, open a keyboard, hold down on a camera icon, etc). It’s not at all fluid.
25. [R59] 3/5 · US Not digging the new: What has become of the ability to add existing photos from your library, or attachments to a note? I shouldn’t have to reverse engineer this at all.
26. [R19] 3/5 · US Tags for folder organization???: I’m looking for a new Notes app. I like the color themes that Bear offers. The app looks really good. The text and paragraph formatting options are limited imo. Where Bear lost me though was when I discovered in order to create folders and nested folders, I have to use tags. I mean, come on. Just let me create folders and nested folders. Had to delete the app. I th
27. [R48] 4/5 · US Almost perfect: Great note app does most things iOS notes can do and maybe more except make folders and sub folders to organize notes . And add audio files . If you could add these features I would say price is justified .
28. [R52] 3/5 · US Cute Idea: When I was looking for a notes app, the name and icon to this felt cute, so I checked it out. I like the simplicity and childlike feel to it. It has the features you would expect. A three columned layout, ability to create tags, ability to attach files, and plenty of text formatting options. One thing that I wasn’t a fan of is how to create tags. You have to create a hashtag symbol in
29. [R78] 2/5 · US Quality App Uses Atypical Organization: Bear is a nicely designed app that uses an unusual tagging structure for file organization. I think it will work well for many users looking for an Apple Notes replacement that uses plain text however, certain design decisions make it unusable for me. Bear doesn’t use a traditional hierarchy of directories for note organization but instead uses a tagging s
30. [R3] 4/5 · US I’m using this nonstop now: I love this notes app is just what I needed! Though I’m giving this 4 stars because I really wish the lock notes feature would be free.
31. [R45] 3/5 · US Honest review: This app has nice features, but it doesn’t beat Apple Notes, which is free. For specific needs, I already use Microsoft Word and Apple Pages. So I’ve got more than enough apps that cover everything Bear does, and more. The only edge is exporting to multiple formats, but copy and paste to Word or Pages does the job. Paying $30/year ($2.5/month) makes no sense with all the overlap. S
32. [R64] 3/5 · US Greed is a sin: This is a 5 star app held back by one simple mistake: pricing. I would GLADLY pay this dev a one time double digit fee to flip the switch to use my own iCloud memory to sync notes between my devices, because this app is very intelligently put together. Unfortunately, they are attempting to charge a monthly fee for that service. You might argue that clicking buttons is very difficul
33. [R79] 1/5 · US Not worth the coin. You have to pay to store to iCloud?!: You have to pay to store to iCloud?! That’s silly and greedy. I have been developing software for over 40 years. I can understand wanting to get paid for your work. But this limitation makes this software untestable for one’s environment. Free apps do save to iCloud. It also doesn’t allow you to edit the raw .md files, which free app
34. [R70] 3/5 · US No Cross Platform: I've been using this app on and off for years to journal but the lack of cross platform (pc or browser version with cloud sync) made me move to Obsidian. It's a shame because I'm choosing to pay double the price of Bear Pro for a subscription to Obsidian with enough space to accommodate my files. That money could be going to Bear if they had the capabilities. If cross-platform s
35. [R130] 2/5 · US It’s ok, from the developers’ responses, they’re pretty opinionated on it not getting better.: I tried Bear several years ago and it didn’t work for me mainly because I have an Android phone, and need it to sync with my phone, not just Apple devices (MacBook and iPad Pro). I looked into it again thinking maybe I could use it for some more work that I’ll just not do on my phone. I like tagging syst
36. [R180] 3/5 · US Not enough for me: What Bear doesn’t have is a web app or Windows app nor a Chrome extension, which would make me take this app more seriously as I work in a Windows workplace, even though my personal devices are Apple. Otherwise it’s a beautiful app.
37. [R5] 3/5 · US Sadly, voiceover support is lacking.: I was really excited to try this app especially since so many people love it and because I’m looking for something that is simple that also supports wiki linking. unfortunately, as a VoiceOver user, I’m finding the app very difficult to use. Many of the buttons are not labeled and also voiceover has trouble tracking focus as I move around the app. As such, the
38. [R28] 1/5 · US Voiceover users beware: I didn't even get to read the welcome notes before deleting this app. The side menu will not stop popping out, no matter what I do. The advice was to swipe right from the middle of the screen to avoid this but nothing worked. And if the welcome notes have titles, VO didn't read them. Just skip this one. Save yourself the headache.
39. [R8] 2/5 · US Extremely suspect privacy policy: Expressly states data can be used for beta testing and worst of all the testing is done with what is quite arguably the least privacy conscious company of the 21st century: Microsoft. Not to be outdone, the rest of the policy is extremely vague but lends itself to the interpretation that absent written notice provided to either the developer or applicable authorit
40. [R81] 1/5 · US Not “in-app” purchase. SUBSCRIPTION based!: EDIT 04/16/25: Annual price raised to $29.99. Same complaints as before. Software is not a service and I will not RENT it from you., Previous review: I am sick and tired of all these apps that claim to be free with “in-app purchases” that you think will be a reasonable $3 or $5 price tag for something simple like the basic ability to sync your writin
41. [R341] 3/5 · GB A very good app but: Lack of Windows version or even a WebApp in 2021 is “a bit” disappointing. I had a sub for more than a year but I was tired of not having the access to my text from many devices. So I moved to the other app. There is also Typora an amazing markdown editor for both Mac and Windows. There is a problem with notes sorting too. As the only option is to use tags. It’s not the best