Bear vs Bear 2

Bear

Bear is a minimal Markdown note-taking app with excellent aesthetics.

Bear 2

The long-awaited Bear 2 update brought a lot of new features including backlinks, tables, footnotes, Markdown hiding, nested styles, folding, table of contents, custom fonts, and more.

• Tables – Visualize information in rows and columns
• Hide Markdown – Formatting markup now hides for a cleaner look and easier reading. For example, the asterisks for **bold** will be hidden but will appear for editing when the word is selected
• Nested styles – Add multiple text styles to text. For example, bold and underline on the same word
• Folding – Fold away sections of text you no longer need to see (headings, todos, and lists)
• The new sketching tool and canvas (iOS) – A completely revamped sketching experience, new canvas tools, and Apple PencilKit support
• GIF support – GIFs can play in notes
• Link previews – A thumbnail preview of web links
• PDF previews – A thumbnail view of attached PDFs
• Image resize and crop – Scale and crop any image in a note
• Footnotes – Add reference information for a topic and easily navigate to it
• Document scanning (iOS) – Convert images into PDFs
• The all-new editing keyboard (iOS) – Quickly format text and add attachments from a custom keyboard (BIU button)
• The all-new photo picker (iOS) – now you can select multiple photos at once to insert in a note
• RTL Language Support – Support Right to Left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew.
• The new Info Panel with Table of Contents and Backlinks
• Table of Contents – An outline of your note based on headings 1-6
• Backlinks – A list of all notes that link to the current note
• Pin tags in the Sidebar
• Search TagCons – Easily find the right icons for your tags
• Improved Search – Find text inside notes
• OCR search – Search for text in images and PDFs (Bear Pro required)
• Note List preview options – Select from small, medium, and large note previews, also with options to hide attachment or subtag notes (A good way to use a tag system as folders)
• New widget – Show Random Note
• New Lock Screen widgets (iOS) – Random note, Last edited note, New note, New todo note, New photo note, Search
• Custom Fonts – Yes, even Comic Sans
• Six new Bear Pro themes – Notes, Dark Notes, Rosé Pine, Rosé Pine Dawn, Tokyo Night, Academia
• All-new app icons – Pick one separate from your chosen theme (including our fan-favorite googly eyed beta icon!)
• Two new Shortcuts – Export Note and Backup (Mac only)
• Apple Watch – Visual refresh and tables support

Fan of beautiful note-taking apps? 🤔

Maybe Paper is what you're looking for.