Your productivity workflow is simply incomplete without a capable note-taking app. Among countless options out there, Bear definitely stands out due to its sleek design, Markdown support, customization options, robust organization, and more. It’s a must-have productivity app for Mac users, and if you have recently started with Bear note app, check our top tips and tricks to get the most out of it.

Bear developers delivered a major feature boost with the v2.0 update. If you stopped using Bear earlier due to its initial lack of features, now is the right time to give it a try again.

10 Import your other notes into Bear

This is the first thing you should do after setting up Bear. It supports the following formats.

• .txt: Plain text
• .md: Markdown
• .rtf: Rich text format
• .textbundle: V2 text bundle
• .enex: Evernote XML export format
• .html: HTML files

Here’s what you need to do.

1. Launch Bear, select File at the top and click Import Notes.
2. Pick files or folders on your Mac to import and view them in your Bear account.

We tried it with a couple of Markdown (.md) files, and it worked as expected. You can also import notes from other apps such as Obsidian, Evernote, and Drafts.

9 Explore themes and app icons

Your Bear Pro plan unlocks dozens of themes and app icons to change the entire app's look and feel with a single click. Whether you prefer a light theme or a dark one, there are ample options to choose from.

1. Launch Bear and press the command and + keys to open Settings.
2. Move to the Themes. Pick one based on your preferences.
3. Slide to the App icon menu and select an icon that matches your theme.

8 Tweak typography

Bear has all the relevant options to edit typography in your notes. You can change text, headlines, code fonts, size, line height, width, paragraph spacing, and even paragraph indent. Here’s how.

1. Head to Bear Settings (as in the steps above).
2. Select Typography.
3. Make the necessary tweaks and draft your perfect notes in no time. You can restore editor defaults from the same menu.

7 Customize Bear keyboard shortcuts

While Bear supports a bunch of keyboard shortcuts for note formatting and other features, you can only customize a few of them. You can record shortcuts for opening a new main window and creating a new note.

1. Open Bear Settings and select General.
2. Select Record Shortcut beside each function and press the key combination that you want to assign.

6 Create new notes with date and time

By default, Bear creates new notes with Heading 1 formatting. It makes sense for most of your notes since they start with a title. However, if you use Bear as a digital journal, you may want to start your entries with date and time. Thankfully, there is an option to make this adjustment.

1. Open Bear Settings and head to the General menu (refer to the steps above).
2. Expand Create new notes with, then select Date and Time.

5 Organize your notes like a pro

Bear doesn’t use notebooks, sections, pages, or workspaces to organize notes. Instead, it utilizes tags and the slash (/) option to create sub-tags. You can even customize tags by inserting a specific icon for them. Here’s what you need to do.

1. Create a new note or open an existing one in Bear.
2. Type #tagname format, and Bear will automatically create a new tag for you.
3. If you want to create a sub-tab, type #tag/sub-tag format.

For example, if you type #2024/July, Bear Notes creates a July tag under the main 2024 tag. Once you create a tag, you can right-click on it and select Edit tag. Assign a specific icon and you'll be all set!

4 Connect your relevant Bear notes

Support for backlinks is one of the best additions in Bear. It lets you connect related notes and jump between them with a single click only. Bear calls it Wiki links, and it's super easy to use.

1. Open any note in Bear.
2. When you want to create a backlink, type Command + D or type [[note name]].
3. When you type [[, start typing a note name, and pick it from the suggestions below.

You can check all your backlinks from the info (i) > Backlinks menu.

3 Lock Bear app and specific notes

Bear comes with a couple of options to keep prying eyes away from your personal notes. You can either lock the entire app or specific notes from the Settings menu.

1. Open Bear and head to Settings.
2. Click the checkmark beside Lock Bear at launch.
3. As for locking a specific note, right-click on it and go to Privacy > Add Password.
4. Enter the password, retype it, and add a hint.

2 Create and use templates in Bear

Unlike other note-taking apps, Bear doesn’t come with a template library. There isn’t a direct way to create templates, either. You'll need to rely on this hack for now to create and use templates in Bear.

1. Draft a new note in Bear and create a standard format that you want to use again.
2. Give it the tag #templates.
3. From now on, whenever you want to use it again, go to the templates tag and select a note.
4. Right-click on it and select Duplicate.

1 Use Bear web extension and set web content preferences

Bear offers a web extension for most popular browsers out there. Let’s check it out in action.

1. Download Bear extension from the Chrome Web Store.
2. Whenever you visit an interesting webpage, right-click on the Bear extension and select a relevant option to save it directly to your account.
3. You can also select Bear at the top and click Web Content Preferences. Set default tags for all your notes from the web.

An ideal digital cabinet

While there are many reasons to choose Bear Notes, it’s not perfect, and it could take some inspiration from rival solutions. We would love to see a detailed graph view, support for math equations, templates store, AI integration, and reminders in future updates.

If Bear isn’t your cup of tea, check the top AI note-taking apps to supercharge your productivity.