I tried all mainstream note taking apps and I settled on Bear

my story with bear started when my relationship with Evernote has ended uh I've been a user and I've been with Evernote for almost a decade and I had a large database with them uh just like many of you I was affected by the price hike and the subscription price nearly doubled for me and it wasn't justifiable so I was looking for an alternative solution to pull away my data something that is uh promising for a long time and also give me escape plan Plan B if anything goes wrong just like uh Evernote did uh I've tried a handful of mainstream applications which I list here uh these are basically I think a lot of you know about them I've tried almost all of them and uh I ended up with bare note for some reason that I'm going to explain this video how how did I justify this decision and what was the rational behind it so these are a list of features that I've seen uh in Bear and uh I found them exceptional uh working perfectly fine as a not application and uh this is basically everything that I need uh in a not application uh so in no particular order uh this is it so first thing first is the user interface uh this is bare notes user interface it's quite neat and clean it's basically everything I think that anybody wants for focusing fully on note taking application and easy access to every particular note that you have uh up here you got your search which is quick access quickly accessible indexing every single note that you have and uh by a quick search you can uh get anything that you store as you can see uh when I type how you can see like how quickly it filters throughout all my notes and uh it gives me the result that I need so this is super fast and super Sleek I love the interface of the uh bar note application uh it the idea is quite simple the concept is there's no folder structure in it uh there's only uh hashtag and also sub hashtags I would say and it makes it looks like for example this here I have a technical note and under technical I have EF core so it creates a collapsable uh hashtag for me and I can expand it and collapse it uh and it does uh somehow works as a a folder for me I do not need to worry about uh maintaining any notes it's that super easy and that's super fast this is another thing that I love about it so you add your hashtag and then uh you can even do multiple hashtags for each individual note for example this note I want it to be under technical EF core um I want it to be also under technical itself or uh databases for example uh then e F core so if I search for now any of this I would I should see this uh particular note by clicking on each individual uh hashtags so uh apart from that uh they have tons of themes and icons also which if you want to see in a uh I don't know different same different style different uh color it's fantastic so so you they give you I think over 30 options uh in terms of uh themes and I think around almost 20 of uh icons here no what I'm saying is 16 16 icons here I oh yeah so there are around 20 uh so beside that uh you can also change your font you can change the scale and and also each individual uh representation of text uh as you can see it's highly customizable easy to read easy to um access uh the theme is not synced among all your devices so you it's something great that I love uh because on my phone for example I would love to see a different style different theme while on my laptop I want to to see uh for example light or I'm more uh comfortable with dark uh yeah so you can customize them separately on each of your individual devices so second uh second is migration as I said I wanted to migrate easily I had around 10,000 notes and I wanted to uh migrated without any pain and be Prov Ed this ability for me to import directly from Evernote they connect to your database in your Evernote and pull down everything flawlessly as you can see all my notes are having their image attached all the links are working perfectly fine and there's absolutely even the codes blocks as you can see they are uh completely uh in order uh I've to be honest I haven't seen any issue at all with u with the import I checked every single note not not every single note I didn't check every single note but uh I mean every single note that I checked so far uh they were Flawless they were absolutely no problem in them and I don't think uh there missed anything beside ever note you can see that they can directly pull from draft obsidian or day one uh I believe obsidian is also working flawlessly I tried to pull some of the data that I had on obsidian and it worked fantastically there was no no issue I didn't try drafts on day one but I think that would be fine so number three is markdown markdown is uh using uh particular commands to write down your note without even needing to access any of these uh uh ribbons over here so for example if I want to make something bold I would just add them into double what did I do uh double asterisk these are rules that you can uh check on the internet on what is marked down and how we can do it's just uh Comm and commands between everything for example a single hashtag space would give you the header number one uh double hasht give you header to vice versa or for example if I want to add a code block I can just do it as easy as this and uh yeah that's it basically markdown for a lot of us is the way to go next on the list is ability to quickly access my notes on um iOS and my iPad and also my iPhone uh this is critical for me because I access a lot of my information on the go and for example if it's if I show you you just pull down uh from your main main notes or you tap on this search icon that's how easy you can access your notes the next on the list is working super fast even with large data um as I said I imported around 10,000 notes into this application and the way it syncs all the time and is accessible throughout all devices the way it's indexes all these notes and I can quickly access all these notes is Flawless this is something I barely seen in any other app to be done so robust and I love it so next thing on the list is ability to export or backup your data uh just like uh we covered import we should always have a you know I'm thinking of what happened to ever note might happen in a different way in any other application so it's great to have always a plan B and make sure you can export your uh data easily this is something that uh a lot of people do not consider for example people who are using one note Microsoft One Note they do not know that they're going to be stuck with this with the Microsoft One Note forever you you might be able to export your note in one note in PDF but what you can do with it uh you get what I mean uh the ability to Quick export and easily import another applications what bear does here is you can back up your notes uh which is a single file which uh bare note provides for you so if I uh let's say I want a full backup of my database I can easily export all of all of my notes and you can see even with the large data that I had how quickly it uh backup everything the most important thing here is export notes so you want to make sure that you can uh export as flexible as possible look at the uh basically the extensions that be is providing here you got ability to export in a txd you got ability to export in markdown text Bondo bare note uh RTF almost every possible uh scenario here so they are quiet uh open I think that they're transparent with the development the developers of this application they don't want to they don't want to tie you to the application uh so I mean in the anytime you want to get away with it you can do another thing that I've SE in a similar application is Obsidian obsidian is also quite transparent they give you the full control of Walt and all your data so in the future if you want to for example move to other applications if obsidian didn't work for you or if bare note didn't work for you you can easily export it this is something you I advise you to consider when you're choosing your note application so the other thing on the list is as I mentioned even at the beginning is the nested tags um for organization purpose as you can see you can have as much nested as you can so here I have for example Free level nested let's see how deep we can go uh ABC let's say DF EFG and as you can see here I get all my nested tags and this gives me a Le a very good level of organization and something great about it is if uh barote recognizes anything about U uh the hashtag that you put for example if you name it something mainstream like notes it automatically assigns an icon for you memo for example keep I would say I don't think keep is uh yeah like development books if it recognizes the hashtag it automatically assigns an icon for you if not you can just right click here uh edit tag and then uh assign a image to it which is quite large and generous database here of uh icons and emojis another great thing on the list is ability to scrap the web and store it on both iOS and Mac I've seen this feature on both Mac if you install the extension for Safari and uh on iOS it's already provided let me show you how it works uh as you can see here uh I navigated to Bear website let's say it's an article that I would love to save it on bear uh I I just share it with bear and I choose web page content and I click save I tap save so bear automatically scraps everything on this and stores it flawlessly here all links are provided usually it pulls down the images uh not sure oh yeah it works even with gif as you can see it pulls down the GIF I don't think it pulls down the videos because it makes sense videos are usually external links uh but this is fantastic when you want to save an article or something from the web and uh I believe I I I barely seen such feature in other note applications that you you are able to pull down the contents of the website and scrap it next thing on the list is ability to annotate the note as you can see here on my iPad uh on a newly uh scrapped content I can uh tap here and choose annotation uh it's resizable and I can collapse this in order to give myself more space as you can see it it works it works flawlessly uh this is a sample my offland rating but yeah it works just as uh Apple note does it uh I believe this uh stencil bar is shared with uh some sort of U kit that Apple provides to developers is quite the standards now uh it has all the features that Apple note has it so yeah this is I think a feature that comes very handy for a lot of us the other features that I've seen here is um ability to add to-dos uh anywhere and then uh it will appear in your to-do list here so if you let's say you have a uh I will go back to this note and I will add a to- do here let's see if it appears uh if I go back to my to-do list now this note as a whole entered the area and I can see that the to-do is here as fast as I mark it done it will disappear from my to-do list next thing is ability to add a password to your note and lock it so if I go here for example to this go to privacy uh and tap add password I can just uh go for my fingerprint reader and biometric I mean and it should now be locked if I go to my lock I will see this and if I want to access it I have to unlock it which is right now unlocked because uh because I use my biometric just now but if I close this and reopen it I should not be able to see my note unless I provide my Biometrics again the other thing that might not be much of a concern for you but it's somehow important is that uh the way that barote stores the data barote uses QQ light which stores in iCloud it means that they do not use their own uh service they do not pay EXT that's why they charge you so little for the service and for the application the database is stored in iCloud which is uses your own space and somehow it gives you additional privacy and security over controlling your own database it means that beote do not have access to your database it gives you some level of additional privacy to your own data you can delete it as any time you can at any time you you can back it up or you can do as much modification as you want to it so that was it uh this was all the features that made bare notes stand out for me and I believe the last which is also very important for a lot of people is the subscription price subscription price for beote is uh 2.99 per month and this is nothing I believe in compared to a lot of other applications like for example if you want this sort of uh syn uh obsidian charges you 10 USD per month uh for a year they charge you 29.99 uh with a tiny discount uh yeah I haven't seen any I mean all any other application gives you all these features with such a minimum price they charge just for maintaining their team uh I love it I mean they are very generous with what they doing and uh I hope they can cope with this tiny amount they get as much user as they can so they can stay on the market okay that was the list of Pros about this application but what is wrong with it something that you need to consider I believe is uh barote is only accessible in apple platforms is currently logged into Apple ecosystem which means that if you are using a Windows machine you might not be able to access your data and this is deal breaker I understand this is kind of deal breaker for a lot of us um I know that there is developing an applic a web app which solves the problem in near future but I emailed them and I uh received the response that I might not be I should not disclose it but uh they said that they they plan to release it end of 2024 uh I hope they do because I partially access my notes on Windows machine I develop for Microsoft and uh that part cpos me a little bit but yeah I mean for me that balances out with all the features that I get from this application but hopefully they release that web application quite soon the other issue that I found was a little bit annoying but not deal breaker was uh here so in in my application I didn't find a way to collapse these columns I would love to collapse them and I just like Focus immediately on the Note here I would love to um open a CLI clean a slate to work on uh anything that I want to put down um I know that if you double tap double click on any note it will ex uh it will just like detach it and you can expand it you can even like uh maximize it into a new screen but still I would love to see a way to collapse these columns because there is a way in iOS and uh in uh iPad OS to do it so why not in Mac OS so that was it guys hopefully this video helped you uh with some uh ideas of uh how this app compares to other not taking that you are considering I would love to hear your thoughts please write down a comment and let me know uh what do you think what applications are you using and how does it compare does it give you as much detail as much features as bear uh or not what makes you stay with them and let me know if you want me to uh create another video on different applications that I tested and explain a little bit further on those thank you for watching and hopefully I see you in the next one

Channel: Ben's Cyber Life

Views: 6,774

Keywords: Bear app, Bear, Obsidian, Notion, Evernote, Apple note, Note taking, annotate, productivity, note, note taking, apple, pencil, app review, application

Id: 8Sr6juY3ZF8

Length: 22min 20sec (1340 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 15 2024