Marc Tabyanan

Photo by Mark Basarab on Unsplash. Cheesy, I know, but that’s how I feel right now…

For a few years now, I have been using both Ulysses and Bear for different functions. General note-taking was done in Bear, and my blogging and gaming was done in Ulysses. There was a little overlap, with interesting articles and ideas being saved in Bear and not in Ulysses. I like both apps a great deal, and like features from each in different ways.

But I started thinking about whether I could use one app or the other, and not both. That had led me to what I am doing now: evaluating whether I can use Bear for all my writing and note-taking, and not use Ulysses at all.

Let me rewind a year or so ago. I was burned a few times by Ulysses and their sync capability. While both Ulysses and Bear use iCloud to sync between devices, there were a few times when Ulysses was just wipe itself on my Mac, and I would have to wait overnight for it to recover all my writing from iCloud.

It seemed like there was one month where it happened 4 times, and I really, really considered ditching Ulysses. And that stinks, because I love the app. It is the best app I found for sheer writing in Markdown. When I looked at moving everything to Bear, though, something gave me pause. No, I can’t remember exactly what it was, but I believe it had to do with Bear locking up with the large number of notes. I didn’t write down the details, so I can’t say exactly what happened.

Anyway, Ulysses seemed to fix something because I have not had any issues since then. But recently I have been looking at all my subscription costs, and came across the bills for Ulysses ($50/year) and Bear ($15/year). Not terrible but not so great.

I just noticed on the Bear Pricing page that the price for the Pro version is now $30/year. Still not bad.

I also realized that one of the features I liked in Ulysses was the clicky-click ability to upload articles from Ulysses directly into Medium and Ghost. Well, as I write now on Write.as, that feature no longer applies. So—can I move my writing completely over to Bear?

Right now I have about 5,100 notes in Bear. I can see that easily being at least 10,000, and maybe 15,000 or more when I move everything over. I have seen online that some users have had no issues at 10,000 notes, so I am still worried a tad. I have seen my iPad lock up in Bear for a couple minutes when I have moved a lot over on my Mac, and (I think) Bear on the iPad is syncing up. If that is just a price to pay while I move things over, fine. But it is a deal breaker if it continues.

So—has anyone done this kind of evaluation? Have you had a large database of notes in Bear and seen any issues? I am really curious to hear any feedback!

Marc #tech #writing #gaming #bear #ulysses