Bear
Ranked 14 of 33 note-taking apps by recommenders
Markdown notes app for Apple devices, praised for fast performance and polished design. Critics say it's subscription-priced and stores notes in a database rather than plain Markdown files.
Markdown notes app for Apple devices, praised for fast performance and polished design. Critics say it's subscription-priced and stores notes in a database rather than plain Markdown files.
23 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 14
- criticize it
- 9
- approval share
- 61%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 14 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Subscription cost without enough extras
“it offers only subscriptions, yet comes with absolutely nothing that could possibly justify a subscription”
Comment from 20 Feb 2026 in “"I Trust in TextEdit."” “One time purchase, then I would have been interested. Yeah, a free version, but subscription…”
Comment from 11 Aug 2026 in “Show HN: Write.md, a free, open-source, themeable Markdown editor for macOS” “I do not want to pay $$ per month just to sync notes between iPhone and Mac”
Comment from 28 Sep 2026 in “Show HN: Building a Markdown editor for Mac, iOS and web” Stores notes in a database, not Markdown files
“it doesn't work on markdown files directly”
Comment from 24 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Tolaria – open-source macOS app to manage Markdown knowledge bases” “it does not work with a directory of Markdown files, but locks them away in a database”
Comment from 24 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Tolaria – open-source macOS app to manage Markdown knowledge bases”
Other note-taking apps people recommend
The four most recommended other note-taking apps, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 33 note-taking apps, rankedWhat people said
20 of the 23 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I do not want to pay $$ per month just to sync notes between iPhone and Mac”
“Bear notes (which I subscribed to) can't sync.”
“they all didnt even come close to what I personally wanted”
“One time purchase, then I would have been interested. Yeah, a free version, but subscription…”
“Truly native and 100% macOS-ish.”
“There’s really nothing that compares to Bear, Things, DEVONthink, Transmit, etc.”
“Blogs on indie platforms like Bear and Pagecord get promoted in the Discover (and Spotlight, on Pagecord) feeds which definitely drives traffic”
“abandoning Notion, Obsidian, Roam and Bear”
“you need to configure bear or ninja or whatever to produce a compilation database”
“it does not work with a directory of Markdown files, but locks them away in a database”
“But it worked so fast and smooth”
“My problems with Bear is that it's getting slow and I don't have easy direct access to my text data.”
“big fan of Bear! It was a big influence for Tolaria”
“it doesn't work on markdown files directly”
“I got sick of Bear and Obsidian”
“Bear is my fav answer to this. It's mostly "just markdown", but great design.”
“Bear is my fallback on iOS, but I much prefer some of the themes available for Typora, and simple files in folders over tagging.”
“it offers only subscriptions, yet comes with absolutely nothing that could possibly justify a subscription”
“SQLite in iCloud Drive is the reason I am not using Bear notes app”
“S1 and S2 of The Bear were incredible. S3 felt like it tried too hard.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.