Bear is a popular note-taking and writing app for iOS and macOS devices. On April 30 it rolled out the latest version (1.5) with improved features, elegant interface design and much snappier experience.You can download the recent update from Apple’s App Store.
Debuted in 2016, Bear was selected by App Store as the App of the Year, and then on WWDC 2017 event it won the Apple Design Award. In this app, all notes are stored in portable plain text. And it provides a Free version and a Pro version to meet different user demands. The pro version requires a subscription (US $1.49 monthly or US $14.99 annually) to unlock advanced features, including exporting and sync between all devices.
Bear v1.5 is a big update that adds many features, like Notes Archive, Custom Icons for Tags, and ePub Export. With the latest update you can archive and hide older notes, to have a clean notes list, and you can still search and find older notes in the archives.
You can quickly search and find your notes from the sidebar, which adds new Untagged, ToDo and Today sections. The app also adds new themes called Ayu and Dieci.
From the version 1.5, you can customize the icons for tags you create. Once you create a tag, an icon will be pre-assigned to it, and you can switch the icon from 169 different icons, 80 of which are new. The vendor said it will add more icons in the future updates.
Moreover, the Export options allows you to export all notes of a specific tag, and sub-tags will become sub-folders. For users who are looking to export notes in the digital format. there’s also a new EPUB export option, available for both Free and Pro versions.
On Mac you can use the Dieci theme and even float individual notes on top of all others by double clicking a note in the Notes list, a gesture introduced from iPhone X.
Note that some new-added features in version 1.5 is only available for Pro users. The free version does not provide sync on multiple platforms, cannot change the theme and lack some format export options. If you are in need of these features, try the Pro version.