Bear App: The Minimal, Secure Evernote Alternative (not sponsored)

I’ve been using Bear -- the minimal, secure Evernote alternative -- on and off for nearly 2.5 years. And every time I come back to it, I’m always surprised and want to use it more. 😍

Bear is like a more secure, more aesthetic child of Evernote and Apple Notes. It’s really simple to get started with, there aren’t any confusing bells and whistles, and it never gets in the way of your work. Let’s check it out!

〰️ my links 〰️

〰️ connect 〰️
🍳 Cooking YouTube - @souschefharshibar

〰️ timestamps 〰️
0:00 - Intro
What is Bear?
0:47 - History
1:39 - Features
How Bear Compares:
3:46 - Bear v.s. Evernote
4:18 - Bear v.s. Notion
4:52 - Bear v.s. Obsidian
My Experience
5:10 - Pros
7:34 - Cons
Should I Get Bear?
8:28 - Why You Should Get Bear
9:20 - Why You Shouldn’t Get Bear
10:05 - Conclusion
10:45 - Bloopers

〰️ music 〰️

〰️ disclosure 〰️
Some of the above links are affiliate links. Using these links is the best way to support me and my everlasting desire to find that Indian parent approval 🙃

〰️ editing effects 〰️

#harshibar #bear #notsponsored

[_HMCB_]

Bear is like a fine Italian handmade shoe. You can feel the love put into it. It’s rewarding to see people still care about the details, whether a digital or tangible product.

[tintianoTV]

Harshi, lovely to see your channel grow & be recommended over the months. Your style of delivery is getting more awesome by the day!

[funkybkool]

I have the same relationship with Bear —- I always want to use it more! :). Simple, Secure, and Minimal … I’d add elegant to that list! Well done review!

[_HMCB_]

The iCloud storage is the best part; simple text files I can see in the file system and aren’t abstracted. The very modest payment goes towards developing and refining the app. They offload storage to iCloud, which is relatively inexpensive and helps them focus on the experience. What’s not to love all around. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the best 1.50 I pay per month bar none. Next is my .99 cents in extra iCloud storage. Lastly, Spotify at 10.00. Those 3 make the core of my personal and work life.

[vagabondsteve]

Outstanding video. Thank you for all the effort. Love the comparisons to other apps, smooth speaking voice, visuals, and the content is wonderful.

[DarrenBrierton]

I’ve been using Bear for about a year now. I’m torn because there are many things I love about it, but a couple of things I really don’t. The pros for me are: (1) exceptional design, both aesthetically and ergonomically; (2) sticks to the Mac design ethos of “just works” with minimum configuration options; (3) it focusses on one task, instead of trying to be all things to all users; (4) I find its non-standard hierarchical tagging system that allows spaces in tag names extremely powerful and I use it extensively, although I see in some of the comments below that others disagree with me about that. I’m looking forward to the next release with the new editor with outlining/folding (headers and list items), tables, and footnotes support — those are things I really want. However, the cons are: (1) no “graph view” or similar tool if you want use a zettelkasten or other graphing method for note; (2) all notes are stored in a SQLite database, which seems to defeat the purpose of using Markdown — yes you can export notes as Markdown and in many other formats too, but I’d like to be able to use multiple apps to edit one and the same notes. It seems to me that the notes themselves could easily have been stored as plain text files, with attachments in (perhaps hidden) folders, and then the SQLite database just used for Bear’s specific functionality such as its non-standard tags, search index, etc. (3) All notes are stored in a single monolithic “vault” regardless of whether they pertain to my day job, my personal life, or writing projects outside of work. I would really like to be able to separate out these things — if you want to store everything together as a “second brain” you can, but I prefer to keep things separated by project.

[MagpieCrafter]

I really like how Bear looks and feels, but I have a problem how slow it's development is. Notion is great and would be perfect if data extraction was a real possibility. Obsidian seems to be created for people who know how to code. I can move in it fine, but have a constant fear that if I mess sth up, I won't be able to make it work how I want to again. As to other apps - I'd love to see your take on Craft.

[m.shihamadam]

I discovered Bear a few years ago and I love it - Thank you for this video on Bear!

[livininabubble]

I tried Bear multiple times and wanted to love it, because the UI is so clean and neat. But my brain just can't handle the tagging system 😩 ....
Without a regular folder structure it's just impossible to sort the chaos in my head properly😅. I wish they would add that as an option.

[PrajwalDSouza]

Hierarchy structure is a pro. :D This is the only app that offers this structure.
It is probably way ahead of it's time with this.

[JohneCook]

I've spent all day looking for alternative to Apple Notes (which is robust but doesn't have text highlighting). Your video was fun, informative, and helped me decide on Bear, especially as the Devs work toward merging the Panda formatting features into the main Bear app down the road. Thanks!

[aleksandrmikhailov]

Thanks for the video. Actually, Bear can link notes together with double brackets and it's pretty useful if you want to make something like a table of contents.

[Jbiglin]

Well done! I like your transparency about how you have a tough time choosing certain tools. This is my first time on your channel and am checking out some of your other vids now. Probably going to subscribe.

[muralipatnam]

I love how you use Telugu and Indian Gifs in the middle of the video. The soap opera gif from mattu vadalara cracked me up

[Aphrx]

Ou this looks cool! Never heard of Bear, but looks better than my Notion setup for my YouTube video ideas. Looks like I might be switching over to Bear!

[rajdeepsingha]

Can you please do a video looking at the new Bear 2.0 update??

[yashsolanki]

I've installed so many note taking app but never used them any of them for more than 2 days 😅 and here i am again watching note taking app video

[miguelsouderado]

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and experience. Also: very nice job on the lighting and sound in the video. Pro.

[SuboptimalEng]

I was shook when you said Bear was $150 /month
Checked online and realized it was $1.50 /month 😂

[Balakrishnan]

This is first time I'm hearing about Bear App but seems like currently its not cross platform.
3:57 Yes Evernote has unique set of features, I've been using Evernote for about 10 years now, I've tried different note taking apps but none are meaningful as Evernote.
With current new version of Evernote I believe its going in right direction to unify the experience.
Eventually it will be more stable and more feature rich I hope ...