This has a 3m 27s minute read time so BARE with me. Sorry.
For the past 3.5 years at school I have been using Microsoft OneNote as my main note taker, thinking “Hey. It works. And I can get it on every device? Might as well just use it.” But over time I feel like my notes just became more and more bloated and cluttered with all the tools that Microsoft just leaves hanging around in the UI. I’ve decided to switch over to Bear, a #texteditor application that’s designed to be just that, bare (see what I did there?)…
I’m not going to go into huge detail on things, but I’m just going off how it feels, what it looks like, usability and practicability.
At First Glance
There’s not much there. It’s just you and a blank screen. No lines, no rulers, no changing colour, font, text. It’s just a blank screen for typing, and it’s really nice. Sometimes I lose myself just starting into this nice blank… screen………. huh, oh sorry. Plus this editor has one of the best things that has ever happened ever and that is MARKDOWN!!! Yes, I’m a little excited. I’m so happy to see an editor focused in it. Markdown is just simple to use and the formatting they use in the application is great, showing where the headers, hashtags, astir and everything.
More Information
In the top right of the screen you get three options: 1. More information 2. Share 3. Delete More information is where the magic happens. Clicking on it gives you more information about the document. At the end of this I pressed the button and it said that I had: 690 words, 3836 characters, 3m 27s read time (yes you should read all of it, it’s not long!), 26 paragraphs. As well as modification date, last device, and creation date. Also, the more information panel also allows you to export the note into different documents quickly in the system.
NOTE: If you press the pop-out button in the top right the window will hover over the editor and will give you a constant play by play of your texting (so cool! gasming).
Organizing
Hashtag everyone likes those right? Hashtags are a great piece of none-sense that someone made up I think for Twitter (but I’m not going to look it up because I’m too lazy) but they work really well! I mean they’re just easy to parse. In Bear all your organizing is done with hashtags, and that’s it. You go alphabetically, can add the note to n many tags and Bob’s your uncle (no not mine, I don’t have one).
After that…
That’s really it. Those are the largest features and the most powerful tools Bear has to offer. And there’s nothing more you need to writing. Scripts, screenplays, notes, code snippets, novels, #tumblr posts, you name it, just type it up or Bear.
I will say this though, the largest downside is that syncing across all your APPLE OS ONLY DEVICES (forums say multi-platform is in the works) is only available with the paid version! What’s worst is that it’s ridiculous to not have that feature right in the basic, but I understand that they wouldn’t make money otherwise. It should be a standard feature with a lowered price ($9.99/mo syncing in my opinion).
End of the Day
I’m going to use this editor for the next little bit as it comes with a free trial for a month, but I’m excited to see what this can do for me. I’ll be sure to write a post about it later on here.
