Software Alternatives & Reviews

Bear VS Notational Velocity

Compare Bear VS Notational Velocity and see what are their differences

Bear logo Bear

Bear.app is a note-taking and content writing app that helps you boost productivity with its intuitive tools.

Notational Velocity logo Notational Velocity

Notational Velocity: modeless, mouseless Mac OS X note-taking application
  • Bear Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-15
  • Notational Velocity Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-12-12

Bear videos

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Notational Velocity videos

Notational Velocity Demo

More videos:

  • Review - Notational Velocity and SimpleNote
  • Review - What is the Best Feature in nvALT and Notational Velocity?

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Bear and Notational Velocity)
Note Taking
73 73%
27% 27
Todos
64 64%
36% 36
Productivity
63 63%
37% 37
Task Management
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Bear and Notational Velocity

Bear Reviews

20 Obsidian Alternatives: Top Note-Taking Tools to Consider
When Bear users talk about it, the common theme you will hear across all people is Bear’s minimalistic UI. Bear comes with no bells and whistles save for a few formatting options. Bear users can link their notes to each other and sync them across all their apple devices.
Source: clickup.com
The best note-taking apps for collecting your thoughts and data
Bear Markdown Notes is an app for macOS and iOS devices with an excellent interface and selection of features that could make me regret my faithfulness to Android. Even the free version offers a number of tweaks — for example, the header can either be the first sentence of the note or the date and time (or you can leave it empty and put in anything you want). You have a wide...
7 minimalist alternatives to CherryTree
With Bear Pro, you can encrypt individual notes to keep them safe and lock Bear to keep away nosy friends, family, and coworkers. Set a unique password that only you know, use Face/Touch ID to open your notes, and know that your Bear is safe from everyone.
Source: papereditor.app
15 Best Notability Alternatives 2022
Other handy features that Bear provides include an advanced markup editor, rich previews, multiple export options, and smart data recognition for elements like emails, links, and addresses. In terms of pricing, Bear is a very affordable alternative.

Notational Velocity Reviews

Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?
Good to see the best features of Notational Velocity being carried forward. I like the sound of iCloud syncing, too.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Bear should be more popular than Notational Velocity. It has been mentiond 49 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Bear mentions (49)

  • Ask HN: Apple Notes has jumped the shark, what should I replace it with?
    I'm still happy with Apple Notes for its integration with all of Apple Apps, easy sharing with family members, etc. I have tamed it more as an ephemeral and quick Notes App. The notes that starts there are usually transferred to a more permanent and organized Plain-Text setup[1] (currently guardian-ed by Obsidian). If I had to replace Apple Notes, I'd look at either one of these; - https://simplenote.com -... - Source: Hacker News / 23 days ago
  • How I stay (more) focused with ADHD
    Bear for most of my notes and freeform project planning. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Your Favorite Note Taking App
    Long time Bear user for notes. Love it and happily pay the few bucks for premium. Source: 5 months ago
  • Building WYSIWYG editor
    Hey! I want to create a WYSIWYG Markdown editor similar to the one in the Bear app. I understand that this could be a challenging project. As I have very little experience with iOS/Swift (I'm an ML engineer), I just need an overview of the tools/frameworks I should consider using to build this technology. Any advice would be appreciated. Source: 6 months ago
  • Minimalistic yet beautiful native macOS Apps?
    Recently, I've figured out Bear, a minimalistic yet beautiful Markdown note-taking app through another topic here. I can not recommend it more, it does its job really well in this manner. So, I'd like to enrich my macOS experience by getting recommendations from this great community. Do you know any other macOS app that is both minimalistic and stylish? If so, please let me know. Source: 8 months ago
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Notational Velocity mentions (12)

  • Syncthing: A continuous file synchronization program
    For iOS, I placed a syncthing folder inside my iCloud directory and it works fairly well. My MacBook, an always-on Pi, and a few other boxes run syncthing for a directory full of Markdown files that I use with Notational Velocity[0] on Mac and 1Writer[1] (highly recommended!) on iOS. Using it this way for a couple years and it works well, occasionally go through and diff the sync conflict files that slowly... - Source: Hacker News / 12 months ago
  • Show HN: Simple TODO with tag based filtering
    Just picking and choosing the best features from my favorite apps: - TaskPaper tags are nice, but isn't multi-platform. - I like search+creation UX of nvAlt (explained well on: https://notational.net/), but no decent non-mac clients. Also non-plaintext richtext gets in the way. - I use SimpleNote because it's multiplatform, but the tags are hard to use. Also somethings like inter-note tags are just a distraction... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • nvALT 2
    Https://notational.net/ Still works on MacOS 12.6. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Innovative Rich Text Editing: Typing Affinity
    Bike is beautiful! I'm tempted. But all my notes are in Notational Velocity (https://notational.net/) at the moment, because the largest source of friction for me is *finding note files*. In Notational Velocity I never have to open a file dialog; file dialogs on Mac OS are still shockingly slow, and even if they were fast it would take too long to find the file I want. My hands never leave the keyboard; I just... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • What do you dislike in the note-taking apps you use and why?
    Has the very simple modeless operation of Notational Velocity: When you open the app, you just start typing, and it incrementally searches the full text of existing notes, and creates a new note if the search text is not found. Source: over 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Bear and Notational Velocity, you can also consider the following products

Evernote - Bring your life's work together in one digital workspace. Evernote is the place to collect inspirational ideas, write meaningful words, and move your important projects forward.

OneNote - Get the OneNote app for free on your tablet, phone, and computer, so you can capture your ideas and to-do lists in one place wherever you are. Or try OneNote with Office for free.

nvALT - A fork of the original Notational Velocity with some additional features and interface modifications

Obsidian.md - A second brain, for you, forever. Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base that works on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files.

nvPY - nvPY is a note-taking tool inspired by Notational Velocity, nvALT and ResophNotes.

Simplenote - The simplest way to keep notes. Light, clean, and free. Simplenote is now available for iOS, Android, Mac, and the web.