Apps

In praise of Bear

Jatan Mehta

Feb 20, 2024 — 1 min read

I’m impressed by the Bear app’s ability to import and export an exceptionally wide range of file formats compared to the 20+ note-taking apps I looked into. Last year I was on a quest to find an app that can reliably import entire blog archives as well as contents of any individual web pages I throw at it with high fidelity. Bear does both.

Notion was a close second in its import support but not in its relatively limited export options. It also messes up the order of some text in HTML files. On the other hand, many of the popular note-taking apps can’t even import HTML files, or export as such, both of which is perplexing. Workflowy, the app I use to organize my article notes, can export notes as HTML but not import them. In fact, it seems to have no import option for anything at all!

At $15/year (at the time I brought it), Bear Pro is also among the cheapest note-taking apps out there while being generously featured, pleasant to use, snappy, and efficient. I’ve imported and consolidated all the note-taking I do into Bear. I love typing a lot in this beautiful app with my bear hands.

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