Bear 2.3: New iOS18 tinted icons, multiple color highlighter, and more

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Bear 2.3: New iOS18 tinted icons, multiple color highlighter, and more

It’s Apple release season with lots of exciting new features and devices being teased — Bear is ready to take advantage of all the goodies on show plus a brand new feature that empowers your writing experience. Let’s dive in!

Multi-Color Highlighter

You asked, and we listened! In Bear 2.3, we’re excited to introduce the highly requested multi-color highlighter feature, giving you the flexibility to choose from five dynamic colors:

  • 🟢 Green
  • 🔴 Red
  • 🔵 Blue
  • 🟡 Yellow
  • 🟣 Purple

Now, you can easily distinguish different types of highlighted content by using multiple highlighter colors—whether it’s highlighting key points, marking sections for further editing, or color-coding tasks.

These colors are also consistent across all Bear themes, ensuring that each highlight color remains easy to recognize and distinguish even when you switch themes.

How to use

💻 Mac

  • Select the text you want to highlight in the editor
  • Use the keyboard shortcut ⌘ ⇧ M to quickly highlight your text
  • The green highlighter will be applied to the text by default
  • To change the highlighted color, click the highlighter icon before the text and select a different color
  • Alternatively, click the BIU button in the top right of the editor and select the highlighter icon, then choose the highlighter color you’d like to apply to your text

📱 iOS

  • Open the BIU keyboard
  • Tap the highlighter icon to apply the default highlighter color to the text, or long-press the icon to choose from different colors
  • To change the highlighter color, tap the icon before the highlighted text and select a new color from the popup menu

New Tinted Color Icons

We’re excited to announce that Bear now fully supports iOS 18’s new Tinted Color Icons! 

Whether you prefer bold hues or subtle shades, this feature lets you customize your Bear app icon to match your unique style, adding a tint to all your Home Screen icons.

Control center widgets

Bear now offers quick access to our core features with our brand-new Control Center widgets! Choose from New Note, New To-Do Note, New Scan Document Note, or Search Notes to streamline your workflow and keep your productivity tools just a tap away.

There’s More

We’ve also fixed a bunch of bugs and added some more actions to make life easier. Check out the full Changelog below:

macOS

  • Fixed note scrolling glitch
  • Fixed Timing.app integration

iOS

  • Support for tinted icons
  • Support for control center widgets
    • New Note
    • New ToDo note
    • New Scan Document note
    • Search notes
  • Restored the correct coloring of Bear’s custom keyboard
  • New attachments export menu
  • Fixed issue with side actions positioning

coreOS

  • New Highlighter colors: It’s possible to choose between 5 different colors for highlighting your notes
  • Added more actions to the … menu inside the note
    • Pin/Unpin
    • Trash/Restore
    • Archive/Unarchive
    • Privacy
    • Sort ToDos
  • DOCX exporter fixed issue with markdown [unlinked references]
  • Minor changes to the existing themes
  • Code blocks no longer change height during markdown hiding/showing
  • Header links now work correctly if the target header is folded
  • Fixed attachments path issue with merged markdown exports
  • Fixed wiki link name update bug concerning locked notes
  • Fixed an issue with note search and attachments no longer connected to notes
  • Better handling of HTML comments during exports
  • The Add file shortcuts action now has an extra parameter to limit insertion to a specific header inside the note
  • Fixed issue with copy as > HTML when performed from the note list
  • Fixed lag popovers appearing lag for notes with a lot of links
  • Better handling of inline stylers when they are toggle off inside a word
  • Fixed HTML export W3C validation issues
  • Fixed issue preventing attachments to be correctly linked in textbundle and BearNote exports when they were in some folding conditions
  • Changes in the Quick Open panel search algorithm

Update now and tell us what you think!

iOS App Store
Mac App Store

We’d love to hear what you think about the new tinted icons and the multi color highlighter. How will you use the new highlighter colors? What tinted icon will you choose? Have you added any new widgets into your control center? Reach out to us on our new Community Forum, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, or directly at bear@shinyfrog.net to tell us what you think about these new features!

Happy Writing! 🐻❤️😊