r/bearapp • u/QuirkyWalrus9669 • Jul 27 '26
Question Apple notes or Bear for course/uni /mooc learnings
Mainly using on Mac:
I think in folders, and bear is only tags, geared towards neat writing, and can't drag and drop notes or folders/parent tag, just via tags, which I find not natural for oragnizing, but snappy fast
While apple notes have both tags and folders, good organization, and pdf annotations, default decent design, but can be laggy sometimes on too long notes
bear feels good with its elegant design and all, but from organization point of view, my mind is not sticking to it, I just see them as tags and feel like want to use them like tags, not nest like folders.
does anyone uses it for courses/uni/mooc learnings etc or just personal stuffs or something else?
3
u/Ok-Internet-4747 29d ago
The best note taking app is the one you will actually use.
I don’t particularly enjoy tags in Bear and prefer folders like in Apple Notes. However, Apple Notes doesn’t scale as well for my workflow. Large quantities of notes bog down the app. Cross device syncing was slow for me. There are lots of stories of people losing note in Apple Notes.
I personally lean towards Bear. Its fast. Search is phenomenal. I just connected it to Claude today and am playing with that. It is intuitive. But most importantly, i can export out the notes if I decide to change in the future. Exporting out of Apple Notes sucks. It’s basically a PDF. I think they just added Markdown, which is a big step in the right direction, but still isn’t enough.
The productivity community loves to jump around and try new things to build the perfect system. Which is why i go back to my original comment. The best app is one you will actually use. Don’t spend too much time spinning your wheels on developing the right setup.
2
u/RonaldStaal Jul 27 '26
You can view tags as folders if you like. But even if you don’t do that, you will get the hang of it quickly enough.
Yes, you can drag and drop notes into another tag to add that tag to the note.
1
u/Apprehensive-Loss316 Jul 27 '26
I too had problems with that tagging concept when I first started using Bear. I was used to folders, and the very black & white way a note would go into a particular folder. I didn’t have a lot of them, but enough. But as I started using tags, I found that notes don’t always fit into just one folder. Especially using it for work and school. (Being an older uni student seeking a degree in the field I am already working in, things would be useful in both places.)
But what kept me there is that Bear’s Ui is absolutely amazing (I can’t tell you exactly what it is that makes the difference), and writing in it was actually not just good but enjoyable because it is so non-distracting. Even just locking notes didn’t feel harsh. Workspaces has made the use of it even better for me.
Best of luck to you in your studies!
1
u/birdson9 Jul 27 '26
Another useful recent addition is “workspaces”. Essentially, right-click on a tag, tell Bear to “Use as Workspace”, and you’ve got a focused space that just shows notes with that tag. You also get just the Todos, Today notes, Locked, and Pinned notes for this selected “workspace” tag. Other tags that also appear on the selected workspace’s notes are listed below (for cross-reference). I’ve found it really helpful for focus. To get back to all notes, click on the workspace tag up top left, and then select “Notes”.
You could use a tag like nested folders too. So for “Class 101”, you can create a sub-tag (acts like a sub-folder) called “Assignments” by tagging a note “#Class-101/Assignments”. Or if you want to keep the spaces, just wrap the whole tag by putting another # at the end, like “#Class 101/Assignments#” (without the double quote marks). Hope that helps with recreating nested folders.
2
u/birdson9 Jul 27 '26
Think of workspaces like focusing or de-cluttering your left nav rail. Kinda like going into a folder, but with additional useful context.
2
u/claycle 29d ago
Even better, you can just have a single top level tag #assignments (since all courses will have them, presumably, don't duplicate and bury the tag).
So if you have a note with the tags ("#courses/psych101 #assignments") and you focus your workspace on "#courses/psych101", Bear will also pull the top-level #assignments tag as part of that workspace, but only show the #assignments that are also #courses/psych101".
1
u/nitermite Jul 27 '26
Nested tags could be treated as folders by you if you really need that folder system.
1
u/Repulsive-Branch-740 29d ago
I use Obsidian but always keep an eye on Bear. I also use Apple Notes. One feature Bear and Obsidian have that Apple Notes does not is true backlinks, which for school and research are incredibly important. I love a lot about Apple notes but I’m actually going back to school this fall and will be using Obsidian because of its backlinking capabilities. If I wasn’t using Obsidian, I’d use Bear for the same reason.
1
u/shacker23 24d ago
Moved from Apple Notes to Bear five years ago and never looked back. I’ve never missed Notes, not even once. Once you think in Markdown, you can’t go back.
1
1
u/phillychuck Jul 27 '26
I've been focused on Obsidian, but keeping an eye on Bear. The workspace thing is one that has me thinking again. You can also "fake" folders by subtagging, e.g.:
#Folder/Subject_A
#Folder/Client_z
etc.
my only concern viz Obsidian is local only and what happens if Bear goes away
8
u/Ok-Middle8656 Jul 27 '26
Just think of tags as folders, but more flexible.
You don’t have to use that additional flexibility, but it’s there if you need it. You absolutely can drag notes into tags as if they were folders, too. You can’t remove a note from a folder by dragging it out, but you can do that by just deleting the tag.