# Free Alternative to Bear Published January 1, 2026 · Updated August 10, 2026 The best free alternative to Bear ($30/yr) is Standard Notes, which is open source. Install it with: `brew install --cask standard-notes`. ## Leaving Bear: The Best Free and Open-Source Note Apps for Mac Bear is a beautiful Markdown notes app for Mac, iPhone, and iPad by Shiny Frog. The free tier is single-device; Bear Pro at $2.99/mo or $29.99/yr unlocks sync, themes, and full export. Many long-time users loved the original lower annual price and the typography-first native UI. Bear 2.0 brought tables and a rewritten editor, and it also made new users face the higher Pro price. Existing customers often kept older pricing, but subscription fatigue is real. Price is only part of the leave story. Bear stores notes in a proprietary SQLite database. Export is available, yet notes do not live as ordinary files in a folder you control. Bear is also Apple-only. If you test Windows or Android for work, you will feel that wall. Free and open-source Markdown apps can replace Bear for many people. Obsidian keeps local `.md` files. FSNotes feels closest to Bear's three-column Mac layout with file-system storage. Joplin covers clipping and encrypted sync via your own cloud. Standard Notes prioritizes E2E encryption over pretty Markdown. Simplenote, Logseq, UpNote, MarkText, and Notesnook fill other niches. Electron apps often use more RAM than Bear's native code. Some open-source UIs look utilitarian next to Shiny Frog's type design. A few options still win on ownership, price, and multi-platform access. This page ranks those options for people leaving Bear over price, file ownership, or platform lock-in. Pricing and product details match the facts already cited in this file. Start with FSNotes if you want a free Mac-native Bear-like layout, Obsidian if you want plain files and plugins, and Joplin if clipping plus free sync matter more than typography. ## Free alternatives 1. [Standard Notes](https://bundl.run/apps/standard-notes) — End-to-end encrypted notes app `brew install --cask standard-notes` 2. [Apple Notes](https://bundl.run/apps/apple-notes) — Built-in macOS note-taking app with iCloud sync, rich text, and collaboration features. `brew install --cask apple-notes` ## Verdict Leaving an app you love is always frustrating. I stayed with Bear longer than I should have simply because of the typography. Testing these alternatives reminded me how restrictive locked databases actually are. Moving to a local file system app like Obsidian or FSNotes gave me immense peace of mind. I no longer worry about subscription price hikes or platform limitations. The open-source community has built incredible tools. You just have to be willing to trade a tiny bit of visual polish for absolute data ownership. ## FAQ ### How do I safely export my notes out of Bear? Open Bear on your Mac. Select all your notes in the middle column. Go to File > Export Notes. Choose Markdown as the export format. Make sure you check the box that says 'Export attachments'. Bear will create a folder containing all your text files and a subfolder named 'assets' holding your images. Do not export as Bear Notes (.bear), as other apps cannot read that proprietary format. Export a small sample from Bear first and open it in the candidate app before you move everything. ### Why do my Bear tags look weird in other markdown apps? Bear uses a non-standard syntax for multi-word tags. It wraps them in hash marks, like `#project ideas#`. Most standard markdown apps, including Obsidian and FSNotes, do not recognize trailing hash marks. They will read that tag simply as `#project`. You will need to rename your multi-word tags in Bear to use dashes or underscores, like `#project-ideas`, before you export. File ownership and sync model matter more than theme screenshots when you leave a paid notes app. ### Can I get Bear's exact typography in Obsidian? Yes, but it requires some effort. Obsidian allows custom CSS snippets. You can download the 'Minimal' theme in Obsidian's appearance settings. Then, install the 'Minimal Theme Settings' plugin. Change the text font to Avenir Next and the heading font to whatever Bear uses on your system. It will not be a 100% match, but it gets you close to Bear's aesthetic. If Apple-only is fine and you only hate the price, FSNotes or Obsidian still deserve a weekend trial. ### Do any free apps support Bear's nested tags? Yes. UpNote, FSNotes, and Obsidian all support nested tags natively. If you have a tag in Bear formatted as `#work/meetings`, these three apps will automatically read the slash and create a folder-like hierarchy in their tag sidebars. You do not need to change anything about your single-word nested tags during migration. Keep Bear readable until the new app survives a week of real notes, not a 20-minute tour. ### What happens to my Bear highlighting syntax? Bear uses double colons `::like this::` to highlight text. This is a proprietary syntax. Most markdown editors use double equals signs `==like this==` for highlighting. When you export your notes, your highlights will just look like plain text surrounded by colons in other apps. You can use a free text editor like VS Code to run a global find-and-replace across your exported folder to fix this. Cross-platform needs immediately eliminate pure Apple-only replacements. ### Is it possible to sync Obsidian for free across Apple devices? Yes. If you only use a Mac, an iPhone, and an iPad, you can store your Obsidian vault inside iCloud Drive. The Obsidian mobile app can read directly from iCloud. It works reasonably well, though iCloud can occasionally be slow to sync large files. You only need to pay for Obsidian Sync if you want to sync between Apple devices and Windows or Android. Encryption-focused apps trade typography for threat-model clarity; pick knowingly. ### How do I keep my Bear images linked correctly in a new app? This is the hardest part of moving. Bear exports images into a separate `assets` folder and links them using standard markdown. Apps like Obsidian handle this perfectly if you drag the entire exported folder into your vault. Apps that use a database, like Joplin or Standard Notes, require you to import the markdown files through their specific import menus to ensure the image links resolve correctly. Plugin ecosystems can recreate Bear features, but they also create maintenance work. ### What is the best alternative if I just want a native Mac app? FSNotes is the only true native Mac app on this list. The developer wrote it in Swift, just like Bear. It uses standard macOS UI elements and requires very little RAM. Almost every other cross-platform alternative uses the Electron framework, which essentially runs a hidden web browser in the background and consumes significantly more system resources. Mobile parity is where many free Mac-first tools feel weaker than Bear Pro. ### Can I use these alternatives offline? Yes. Obsidian, FSNotes, Logseq, and MarkText all work entirely offline because they just read local files on your hard drive. Standard Notes and Joplin also keep a local copy of your encrypted database, allowing full offline editing. Simplenote requires an internet connection to sync, but you can still type notes offline and they will upload later. A successful migration is plain-text independence plus a sync path you understand. ### Why should I care about local markdown files? Local markdown files guarantee you will never lose your work. If an app uses a database and the company goes bankrupt, the app might stop working on future macOS updates, trapping your data. A folder of text files will be readable by computers fifty years from now. You own the files. You can back them up to a hard drive and open them in any basic text editor. Price comparisons should include the sync service you will actually pay for, if any. ## Sources - [Features and price of Bear Pro](https://bear.app/faq/features-and-price-of-bear-pro/) - [Bear , Markdown notes](https://bear.app/) - [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/) - [Joplin](https://joplinapp.org/) - [Logseq](https://logseq.com/) - [Standard Notes](https://standardnotes.com/) - [FSNotes](https://fsnot.es/) - [Notesnook](https://notesnook.com/) ## Related - [Standard Notes vs Obsidian](https://bundl.run/compare/standard-notes-vs-obsidian) - [Apple Notes vs Notion](https://bundl.run/compare/apple-notes-vs-notion) - [Apple Notes vs Obsidian](https://bundl.run/compare/obsidian-vs-apple-notes) - [Apple Notes vs Bear](https://bundl.run/compare/bear-vs-apple-notes) ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "Organization", "@id": "https://bundl.run/#organization", "name": "Bundl.run", "url": "https://bundl.run", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://bundl.run/og-image.png", "width": 1200, "height": 630 }, "description": "The Ninite for Mac. 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