- Hey guys, what's up?
I'm Christian Taylor
and today I'm gonna be talking about
the best note-taking solution for your Apple devices.
So productivity is a huge thing,
we all do on our Apple products.
Whether it's taking a quick note in a work meeting,
or typing on your iPad taking notes as a student,
or just sitting with a client,
typing notes on your Mac for freelance work,
we all have to take notes,
and it is part of any productivity process.
Now I'm sure you're immediately saying,
"Christian, what's wrong with the Notes app
"that comes with my iPhone, or my iPad, or my Mac?
"All my notes already sync between devices
"and that's free, and I don't see anything wrong with it."
Well, there's not anything wrong with it.
I'm just gonna tell you what you're missing
and why you could be having a much better experience.
You see, I came across this app called, Bear
and I absolutely fell in love with it.
It is the best note taking app I have ever tried,
and today I'm going to tell you why.
So what sets Bear apart from it's competitors
is the advanced and unique method for doing formatting.
So, if you want to make something bold,
you put an asterisk before your sentence.
You type it out and put at asterisk after.
It automatically makes it bold.
If you want to make something italic, you do a slash,
your words, and then closing slash.
Or if you want to do a bullet point,
you do an asterisk, and you just hit the space bar,
and it converts into a bullet point.
Every single formatting option, whether that's italic,
strikethrough, underline, highlight,
it all has an option where you type
some kind of symbol before and after it,
and it gives it that format.
So why is this useful?
Well, it speeds you up.
It's a much more intuitive than having to select bold
or italics or whatever from the list of options,
which you can still do, by the way.
But I just think it is much better
to be able to speed-type along, and do a quick slash,
blah blah blah, and a slash, and it's italicized.
Now this can be kind of annoying for some people
because you can't turn off these semi-transparent symbols.
This ticked me off at first.
So what I mean is when you do something bold
and you use the asterisk or italics and the slash,
those slashes are still in your notes.
They're stuck.
At first I was like,
"This is incredibly tacky and just lame."
But then I kinda got used to it,
and I kinda liked the slashes for italics
or the asterisks for bold.
It just adds a little more emphasis.
So it's definitely gonna be something
you either love or you hate.
For me, it was an acquired taste,
and I now, really enjoy having those extra symbols there
to emphasize the proper formatting.
Now there are two other massive benefits to Bear.
The first one is themes.
So, if you like a dark mode
or just want to change up the look
and feel of your note taking app, you're in luck
because Bear supports this across all of your devices.
I am a huge advocate for dark mode,
especially when I'm gonna be staring at a notes app
for one hour plus, I don't want to be having
the light notes app that Apple gives you,
glaring in my eyes or anything.
It is much softer and easier on the eyes
for me to just look at the dark note taking app.
And I personally like dark mode
much better on apps, when available.
So I was super pleased to see that Bear includes
all sorts of themes that you can change easily.
In addition, Bear has an Apple Watch app.
So, while it may seem gimmicky at first,
there are a lot of times you're going throughout your day,
and you want to just make a quick note
of something fast on your Apple Watch.
And Apple's Notes app does not offer
Apple Watch capabilities.
So with Bear, everything syncs
right to your Apple Watch, so you can see
your existing notes on your watch, at a quick glance.
Or you can even add a new note, using your voice,
if you just need to jot something down quick.
And I really like that.
But all of these premium features come at a cost.
Now, Bear is a free app, but the thing is,
if you want it to sync between your devices,
which I think is a must for anybody.
And if you want to access the themes,
such as the dark ones or the other colors,
you have to pay for their premium option.
Now, their premium option is available
for $1.49 per month,
or $14.99 per year.
I personally subscribe to the yearly option
and I think this is a perfectly reasonable price to pay
for anyone who constantly is taking notes on their devices.
Let me make clear though,
that this is exclusively for the Apple ecosystem.
So Bear has an iPhone app, an iPad app,
a Mac app, and an Apple Watch app.
There is no Android app and there is no web version.
So, if you have a Windows computer
or an Android phone, you're out of luck.
So this is really meant for someone
who is deep into the Apple ecosystem,
who uses everything Apple, and is able to fully leverage
and take advantage of the platform.
Now, the only two features Bear is missing
is collaboration and tables.
So in the Apple Notes app, they actually let you collaborate
with other users, so they can see your notes in real time.
And Bear is missing this.
Now this doesn't bother me too much
because I think if something is collaborative,
you could really make it a Google Docs file.
Usually that's more of a formal thing,
like a document, and I don't really see
why you would need to collaborate on a note.
I think of notes as a personal use type of thing.
So, whether I'm typing notes on a sermon
or just taking notes for a class, as a student
or for a client, I'm not really seeing the value
to collaborative note taking.
One definite plus though, to the Apple Notes app is tables.
There is no option for creating tables yet in Bear.
And in Apple Notes, it is there.
So if you're trying to make some kind of pricing table,
or just options for a client you're trying to work up,
that is not going to be possible in Bear,
which is definitely a little bit annoying.
Overall though, for it's unique formatting,
dark mode, and Apple Watch support,
I really enjoy using Bear, and it's something that
I'm going to be a user with, long term.
What do you guys think?
Is the note taking app you guys use, important?
Or do you not care?
Do you just want an app to jot down a couple things,
and you're not really bothered by which app you use?
I'd love to know in the comments down below.
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With that said, I will catch you guys next time.