Bear 1.1 is the Bear-iest update ever

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Bear 1.1 is the Bear-iest update ever

After more code changes than we can reasonably count and many a late night of internal testing, a whopping 10 out of 10 zoologists agree: Bear 1.1 is the Bear-iest update we’ve ever done.

Ok, maybe we didn’t interview any zoologists. But seriously: 1.1 is, by far, our largest update to date.

There’s big new stuff for Mac users, like Touch Bar support and some new drag-and-drop magic. There’s big new new stuff for iOS users, like Peek & Pop and smart web clippings with the app extension. We have search enhancements, note merging, importing from more apps, a brand new set of actions for that amazing new Quadro app, more fonts and themes, and syntax highlighting for 10 new languages.

Lots of the new stuff in 1.1 is free for all Bear users. Some of it is extra special for our extra special Bear Pro users. Grab your favorite beverage, give the extensive list below a once-over, and check for updates to get a great big hug from Bear 1.1!

We hope you like our biggest update ever! We’d also love to hear what you think at bear@shinyfrog.net, Reddit, and on Twitter @BearNotesApp.

General

  • Bulk delete & rename tags — Are your Bear tags starting to outnumber your Pokémon? We’ve made it easier to clean them up.
  • New free theme — Our second free theme for all Bear users is focused on readability. It’s called High Contrast, and it’s good for visually impaired or Dyslexic people.
  • 75% more fonts — Free and Bear Pro users get three more font choices: Georgia, Courier, and Open Dyslexic.
  • Font all the things — Your font choice now also affects the note list.
  • Infinite nested tags — Did you know you can nest tags in Bear? Well, you can. And now you can nest an infinite number of tags. Careful with this one.
  • Exclude search terms — Sometimes, certain words just aren’t invited to a search query. Now you can exclude words by adding a (-) before them. For example: recipes -broccoli

Editor

  • Highlight all the things — Free and Bear Pro users now get syntax highlighting for more languages: Perl, Ruby, Scala, C#, Go, CoffeeScript, SCSS, Tex, R, MatLab.
  • New shortcut — ⇧↩︎ to discontinue a list, including checklists.
  • New shortcut — ⌘⌥↑ and ⌘⌥↓ to move paragraphs up and down.
  • Undo completed tasks — Yea, the point is to actually complete tasks and feel all warm and fuzzy inside. But sometimes you have to return the warm and fuzzy for a later date. Checkbox actions are now undoable.

Exporting

  • Export to TaskPaper — Ask and ye shall receive (1).
  • Syntax in exports — JPG, PDF, and HTML exports now include code syntax highlighting (Bear Pro required).
  • Better Word exports — Improvements in the DocX styles. (Bear Pro required)
  • Preserving the time-space continuum — Modification and Creation dates are honoured in export for TXT, MD, DOCX, taskPaper and HTML. (Bear Pro required)

Importing

  • Import from more apps — In addition to Evernote and Vesper, Bear can now import from even more apps and formats:
  • Day One
  • .TaskPaper files
  • .webbloc files
  • Escape tags — If you don’t want to create new tags when importing something, you now have the option to escape any tags that are found. Escaped tags will look like #tag in your imported notes.

Mac

  • Touch Bar support — Bear for Mac gets touchy feely. The Touch Bar on the new MacBook Pro puts Bear’s formatting options at your fingertips.
  • Drag to tags — Save a lot of tagging time by dragging and dropping one or more notes onto a tag.
  • Voltron all the things — Select multiple notes in the list and merge them to create one super note. Well, it’ll be one big note containing all the previously selected notes, but it won’t save the universe or anything. Or will it?
  • Support for Quadro — Quadro is an amazing new app that turns an iPad or iPhone into a sort of external Touch Bar for a Mac (or PC!). You create a visual panel of shortcuts for automating your everyday apps and tasks, the keep them just a tap away on your iOS device while you work on your desktop device. You can learn more at Quadro’s site or grab it in the App Store .
  • Quicklook support — Quickly preview a note or any note attachments by clicking them and pressing the Space bar
  • New Firefox extension — Firefox joins Safari and Chrome in the esteemed category of “Browsers for which We Built an Extension.” Select some stuff, click our new Bear extension, and automatically capture it to a new note. You can even set default tags for captured items in the extension’s preferences.

iOS

  • Peek and Pop — iPhone 6S and 7 owners can use this handy 3D Touch gesture on the note list to quickly preview notes and any supported attachments.
  • Bear-able web clippings — The Bear app extension now has an option to turn web pages into something more note-friendly. Think of it like Pocket or Instapaper for your notes. The App Extension now transform the content of web page into a Bear note.
  • Haptic feedback — When you rule the world some day, the ground will shudder with your every step. But you gotta start somewhere, and for now your iPhone can shake with haptic feedback when you do all sorts of things, such as tap on todos, fold text, reveal nested tags, and change themes.
  • Hey Siri, read my note — Yep, Siri can read your Bear notes out loud, or just the parts you select.

Extra

  • Automate font changes — We added new xcallback url for apps like Workflow and Launch Center Pro to changing Bear’s font.

(1) — Most of the time. Well, a good amount of the time. We can’t guarantee every request will make it in, but we’ll certainly try! And we always love hearing from you at bear@shinyfrog.net, on Reddit, and on Twitter @BearNotesApp.