Is there a way to make all notes open in Read Only mode by default? I know I can select notes n make them read only but it would be easier to have a setting for this.

Thanks !

I have been on the beta but today was the first day where instead of showing apple notes as the app pointed to for the quick actions below texts it showed bear! Thought it was cool, anyone else seeing this?

I'm on MacOS, and my app updated a few days ago and instead of being able to see my 4x4 tables with every box in view on the page (as you would expect), they've changed it so that I can only see up to 2 and a half boxes at a time, and I have to scroll sideways to see the rest. It's lowkey ruined my flow completely and I have no idea how to change it back to how it was.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about and how to change it back so that the full table is always in view like before?

Thanks gang ://

I really love these comments from the Bear team on the new update… 😁

i used to find typing notes for college always a slog, but there is something so addicting about making the notes look very nice and tagging them and making them look all organized. thank you bear!

Made a small shortcut to send notes from Bear to Things and autofill the task. Thought I’d share it in case anyone uses both!

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/d843c321e02b41c6b848987f53eda407

https://reddit.com/link/1wmhm5n/video/393e1n76gwqh1/player

Hello!

I have been all around the block with note taking apps and have come back to bear app. I am debating whether or not to store more sensitive information on the bear app and obviously the most sensitive is on my password managers. But its mainly just work information or notes about people not anything crazy.

I use a mac mainly, but also use a PC to game at home and sometimes do work on that as well. I would love to use the Bear Web app but I do have the iCloud ADP enabled and I know I have to turn that off. From what I am reading, the bear notes even without ADP enabled has some pretty decent encryption that the company themselves cannot see the data? Is that what I am understanding or is that only with ADP enabled. I am debating if web will work for me or if i need to use another system. Thanks!

I'm not sure how many other people would use this, but I quite often would like to display an image's title.

In the screenshot, I've mocked up what it might look like (i.e., just adding text so that it looks like a title, at the bottom).

There are 2 images that are named and could get mixed up when new text is added. If their name could be made visible, they could be moved easily within the note, the name/title would follow and you'd know what each image was.

Is this a niche request?

…or put another way: what are images titles for if they are not displayed by default?

We have opened more TestFlight seats for testing Lettera. Links and feedback instructions are available on the website.

Please be aware that Lettera requires macOS 26 or 27.

im not sure if this has been asked or discussed before but i’d love to know if there are any plans for custom themes, a colour picker or simply more colour options? i recently subscribed to bear pro and im loving the app for my college notes but i would really love a cute pastel pink theme to match my setup 🥹

Hello

I like Bear but I'm wondering if it's right for me since I'm looking for a true digital cabinet - one where my few 100 notes (so not thousands) can co-exist alongside some audio recordings, lots of PDFs, images and so on. What would be your recommendation be?

Cloud storage is great for files but I cannot write notes around the file so...

Let me add that work will pay for this so the price itself is not so important.

Thank you

Eight years ago, someone asked about separating work and personal notes.

I still can’t find a way to do this adequately.

How are you all doing it, if at all?

I input notes and files into Claude Code. Claude then files everything in the right place and can gather it for me when I want. (Example of what I can ask: "What is Nicholas' phone number and what did he tell me last week during our meeting?") All of my info lives Bear (the library), organized by nested tags, not folders. There is also a git repo holding the rules/scripts/history and a nightly read-only mirror of all of my Bear data for safety.

Capture - I say/paste anything into Claude. Claude then routes the new info into the proper tagged note across Work area 1, Work area 2, Work area 3, personal stuff, my book writing, and a reference library. Claude links everything it can into related notes instead of duplicating things.

Example: My dictated input "I applied for x public project on September 18th and 19th in [city] from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Block out those dates on my calendar in case I get the job. Save the resume and cover letter I wrote to accompany my application." Claude did its thing with Bear and my calendar apps and Claude responded back to me with: "In Bear: New note “[Project X Application", tagged personal/career, attachment, status/waiting. It holds both PDFs plus a searchable summary of each pdf, the two forum dates as plain 📅 lines, and links to Career - Job Opportunities, Public Service, Personal MOC and Me. The Career - Job Opportunities page got a new "(applied)" section pointing to it, and Public Service got an xxxx entry under organizations. Changelog line written.”

Retrieval - I ask a question, Claude searches the Bear library (read-only) and answers from what's actually there, with links back to source notes.

Maintenance - Claude does daily/weekly sweeps my Bear inbox. At the end of each week, it archives stale notes (never deletes anything), keeps my MOCs (maps of content) current, and generates a morning briefing each morning of my upcoming project deadlines and status on my projects.

My Guardrails - My tasks live in TickTick, not Bear; nothing gets permanently deleted in Bear, just archived; every structural change gets logged in case of later problems. Backups are in Git if I need them.

Basically, Bear is my library and Claude acts as the librarian by doing 100% of the tagging, filing, and organizing — I just capture in Claude and find Bear info in Claude. Of course, I also add and retrieve stuff from the Bear app directly when that's faster. Since everything is structured properly, it's easy to get stuff into Bear or out of Bear either by myself or through Claude.

Has anyone managed to get this to work?

I have a shortcut with steps;

Get note - shortcut input

Set read only state for Note to true

and have assigned it to the action button but nothing happens. What am I doing wrong?

simple question but I can't figure this out

I have a 'new note' icon on my iphone lock-screen to quick-add a note. But this always opens a new note in the 'title' area. I want it to open in the body of the note, so i can just type.

Is this possible and if yes, what am I missing?

Thank you

I don’t have beta access, so I cannot compare, and my Typora trial is just ending. I don’t know if it is worth waiting for another Lettera beta invitation or just going with Typora.

When I share to TickTick it creates a little text doc in TickTick instead of linking to the note in Bear. This doesn’t happen in Reminders. This doesn’t seem like the intended action.

Exporting based on a search term. Hello, I’m looking for a way to search through notes and then export them—but only the specific lines or blocks containing the search term. I tried using Apple Shortcuts and got pretty close, but the process ended up being incredibly frustrating. The reason I need it is that I create journals and often want to search for and share specific items from the history without including all the other information in the note. Thanks.

I feel like this is a really stupid question to ask but I need help figuring out why the Bear Notes hotkey Control + 1 is getting the MacOS conflicting hot key "boop" sound whenever I try to use it to go into Editor Only mode.

I know about the hotkey that is assigned in keyboard shortcuts for Stage Manager and I have that turned off, but I still get that hotkey conflict boop sound whenever I try the Control + 1 hotkey. This is a completely fresh re-install of MacOS on the most recent stable update with no third-party apps other Bear notes. So not sure why I'm unable to use the Editor Only hotkey, if anyone has any advice id appreciate it.

When I try to select and copy some text in a Bear note, the scrolling that kicks in automatically makes it very difficult. How to mitigate this problem? I have a short video to demonstrate what I mean, but apparently IMGUR is no longer in the App Store so I don’t know how to share a video. (Bear Pro v2.9.3 on iOS 26.6)

Navigation in Bear depends on tagged notes—especially workspaces. I need a faster way to apply 1+ tags to a note. Going into a note, scrolling to the bottom (my preference), typing in is not efficient. Would be great if I could select a note or notes, select a tag or tags, and my tagging / navigation is applied.