I love a good note-taking app that supports Markdown and provides easy organization and search capabilities. I have used many throughout the years, and I wrote about them many weeks ago in this Medium story:
A reader of that story suggested I try UpNote, which has similar capabilities as Bear — my favorite note-taking app at the time. After checking its features, it piqued my interest, so I had to try it.
I like that UpNote supports more platforms such as Windows, Linux, and Android, besides macOS, iOS, and iPadOS that Bear supports. UpNote, like Bear, is free to use, but the free version is limited to a maximum of 50 notes. To unlock the limitless Premium feature, it costs $1.99 per month or $19.99 for a lifetime. The Premium version provides these benefits:
$19.99 for a lifetime is a great deal compared to Bear Note’s $14.99 per year subscription price.
UpNote, the pros
Like Bear, UpNote has both light and dark themes and excellent Markdown support. It’s a matter of preference, but UpNote formats the Markdown without showing the Markdown syntax:
Whereas Bear shows the Markdown syntax:
The UpNote rendering is clean and more elegant — it hides the Markdown syntax.
UpNote supports folders and nested folders; Bear does not have folders but uses nested tags instead. Folders make it convenient for grouping notes.
UpNote, problems and the cons
In my attempt to migrate notes from Bear to UpNote, I found that pasting from the clipboard in Markdown format did not format correctly. Here’s an example where the header carried over to the body, so everything became bold:
On occasions, I had problems adding tags. Writing #tag did not pick up correctly as a tag.
The only feature I missed from Bear Note is the hierarchical or multi-level tags. In Bear, you could do #toplevel/sublevel1/sublevel2. UpNote supports folders instead, which isn’t as convenient to use as a tag.
Conclusion
UpNote is an excellent value at a one-time cost of $19.99 for the Premium, unlimited version. It offers all the standard features that Bear offers.
People comfortable with Markdown could move to UpNote without losing much.
If you prefer to use folders for grouping, UpNote offers this while Bear doesn’t. Bear uses multi-level tags instead.
I am more comfortable using Bear and can get things done more quickly using pure Markdown for tags, but UpNote is growing on me. I’ll make the final decision when my Bear subscription expires.
