Bear - Markdown Notes

What people write about

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1. ★★★★★data, history or progress disappears

   All my work is gone. They updated the app and absolutely everything that I’ve kept there is gone and customer service has helped very very little. If ur gonna use the app at least keep your work backed up elsewhere

2. ★★★★★accessibility and assistive-technology issues

   Voiceover users beware. I didn't even get to read the welcome notes before deleting this app. The side menu will not stop popping out, no matter what I do. The advice was to swipe right from the middle of the screen to avoid this but nothing worked. And if the welcome notes have titles, VO didn't read them. Just skip this one. Save yourself the headache.

3. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   不好用. 非常垃圾。辛苦写了几个小时的字全没了。不建议使用。

4. ★★★★★crashes, freezes and errors

   App not syncing across devices - iOS 26 broke it. App not syncing across devices - seems to have broken with iOS 26. :(

5. ★★★★★data, history or progress disappears

   Good, but files sometimes disappear.. I have been using this note app to copy and organize my old recipes. It is easy enough to use, once one learns the special characters needed for anything outside of plain script. My problem is that notes occasionally are erased, through no keystroke I can find. If I try to correct a spelling, the note disappears, completely erased. It is not shown on the list, a search for key words finds nothing, and categories no longer show the note. Some of these are old family recipes, and if I have deleted the source copy, it is completely lost. This app is SO CLOSE to being exactly what I need, but how can I trust an app that saves “most” of the notes, but randomly drops others? If I need to keep an old copy, just to be safe, why would I need this one for a duplicate?

6. ★★★★★data, history or progress disappears

   Notes disappeared. All of my notes that I’ve had for 4 years disappeared due to an “error” and I can’t get them back. Switching to another notes app, what a disappointment.

7. ★★★★★data, history or progress disappears

   Do not rely on sync. I had to reset my phone to factory condition, double checked that the sync was on and was backing my notes up to iCloud… Only to find out after resetting my phone that all of my notes were gone, and it synced to the sample notes on reinstall of the app. Absolutely worthless. I completely regret ever signing up for pro and spending my money on this.

8. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   Hang on to your notes. All of my notes were deleted upon update.

9. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

   Not worth the coin. You have to pay to store to iCloud?!. You have to pay to store to iCloud?! That’s silly and greedy. I have been developing software for over 40 years. I can understand wanting to get paid for your work. But this limitation makes this software untestable for one’s environment. Free apps do save to iCloud. It also doesn’t allow you to edit the raw .md files, which free apps do as well. So where is the value add if you pay for it? None.

10. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

    Not “in-app” purchase. SUBSCRIPTION based!. EDIT 04/16/25: Annual price raised to $29.99. Same complaints as before. Software is not a service and I will not RENT it from you. —— Previous review: I am sick and tired of all these apps that claim to be free with “in-app purchases” that you think will be a reasonable $3 or $5 price tag for something simple like the basic ability to sync your writing across two devices (something Google notes does for FREE) only to discover after you’ve installed it that it’s SUBSCRIPTION based and will charge you $20 a year for something that should be a standard feature in a writing application! No, I will not subscribe. I will leave you negative feedback, delete the app, and avoid your company in the future until you catch on that users are NOT interested in paying multiple times for software. I’d have BOUGHT THIS APP OUTRIGHT if your prices were reasonable, but a $20 annual fee is absurd. After two years your app will cost TWICE what Scrivener does and have fewer features! Uninstalled and a complaint has been filed with the Apple Store that they stop showing subscription apps as “in-app purchases” and start showing them as “subscription-based fees” so I know not to waste my time downloading them. PS: Scrivener, which has about twenty times the features of this app, is a one time fee of $25. Less if you get it during National Novel Writing Month. I bought that software without complaint on two platforms at full price because they were UP FRONT and HONEST about their pricing structure and it is WORTH it.

11. ★★★★★accessibility and assistive-technology issues

    Unable to use. App print is gray on white background, lacks sufficient contrast to be easily read. Font too small. When I have to work hard to read something! I just pass. App not useable for ne.

12. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Can’t get Apple Pencil to work. The only reason I would use Bear is to use my Apple Pencil. I downloaded to iPad, went to “scribble” options, nothing. Tried everything I could think of. Anything this unintuitive isn’t worth my time. I’ll stick with Kingle Scribe.

13. ★★★★★a needed feature is missing

    Need lifetime. Please add lifetime purchase

14. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Copy-pasting. Pasting into Bear is creating funky symbols for punctuation marks. It’s very frustrating.

15. ★★★★★data, history or progress disappears

    Data lost & Customer Support not responsive. I have been a subscribed member of Bear for more than 2 years, and the data saved in the cloud was completely lost after my MacBook was fixed. The customer support didn't respond to my emails and request for months...What a scam!!

16. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Ruined a perfect app. God I would give anything to have back the old Bear. She worked flawlessly…. now she’s only a shell of what she once was.

17. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Sync doesn’t work. I’m using pro but if it doesn’t improve, I think I’m gonna cancel it…

18. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Disappointing. I saw a few people extolling this app. I downloaded it, but it doesn’t even open an existing not. I tap and tap nothing then randomly it might open. I only used for two minutes! Glad I didn’t waste a lot of time on this app. Uninstalled - back to the search!

19. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Create new note button not showing and can’t search tags. If you look at a note, then click on a tag. You aren’t able to create a new note within that tag. You also can’t search tags. what?!

20. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Found a bug…. Try to highlight text from bottom of note upwards. Doesn’t work.

21. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Latest update. Guys— please don’t clutter the screen with the “back / forward” button. Not necessary. Or at worst let people tap to get that.

22. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Full of hate. I’m just going to use Google Docs instead. Hate this app.

23. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Still waiting for basic AI-model features.. You guys are losing millions each month by procrastinating Ai features. Ai is dog simple to implement in markdown frameworks & offers almost zero business risk and no potential for complaint; mainly due to its ability remaining impossible to comprehend by any average user. And yet having zero of it at all to simply assist formatting or language tasks makes Bear obsolete—and sadly impossible to justify any relevant need. This state of dev can be survive for a whopping 1-2 yrs before sudden collapse by competitor takeover due to one small feature focused on leveraging advancements rather than foregoing them.

24. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    what have you done all these years?. what have you done all these years?

25. ★★★★★search fails to find what is needed

    Such a mess!. I cannot find anything I wrote. A total mess.

26. ★★★★★crashes, freezes and errors

    Bugs, Zero Support & Broken Sync. Lousy app. Cosmetically pretty but far inferior to Apple’s Notes or Evernote. The worst feature? Incomplete and botched syncing of one’s content on one device with other devices: you will never know which notes have been synced with or why. Do not bother trying what the company suggests, which is a comical and useless deletion and reinstallation of the app. The company should have tried to have it work in the first place.

27. ★★★★★data, history or progress disappears

    Ever since Bear2 update everything is significantly more annoying and inconvenient. The update causes most of what I loved about the app to disappear. I just haven’t moved to a different note app because I have so much on this app I need to move, but I’m finally fed up.

28. ★★★★★trial charges and refunds

    DONT DO IT!!. This app is so thirsty for money they have FORCED ME INTO A YEAR SUBSCRIPTION. I only tried to get a trial, but I guess I didn’t cancel it in time. I tried to file for a refund but of all the refund requests I’ve ever filed, this one doesn’t ‘meet the qualifications’ well I DONT WANT IT. I EVEN OFFERED TO PAY FOR THE MONTH THAT I WAS “using” IT. But no I need to pay for a whole year because nobody is buying subscriptions. I hope you all choke on my money and you deserve what you get.

29. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Really I thought I found the perfect app. Can’t see any of the features because you have to “go pro”😒

30. ★★★★★crashes, freezes and errors

    Not intuitive; no longer as accesible. I feel that Bear is going corporate. Buggy. Unbelievably complicated. I found Typewriter easy and free markdown editor. Optional donation. They and like the other note apps have a flexible tool bar for easy writing. Just make no sense for Bear to cramp nearly all their button 2-3 layers deep.