Bear 1.1 unveils loads of improvements, including improved tagging, export

Shiny Frog has released Bear 1.1, its Evernote-baiting, notetaking app for Mac and iOS. Mac users gain Touch Bar support and wider drag-and-drop support, while iOS users can now take "smart" web clippings using the app extension.

Although Bear operates a two-tier platform, with free and Pro licenses available, the update treats both equally, providing new features for both groups of users as it aims to stake a claim in the note organizing marketplace.

Most new features apply equally to both iOS and Mac platforms, with support for bulk deleting and renaming of tags added. Users also gain infinite nest tagging.

Free users gain a second theme -- High Contrast -- while three additional fonts have been added: Georgia, Courier and Open Dyslexic. Users’ choice of font also extends to the notes list.

The Search tool also gains a handy Boolean operator in the form of a dash (-) for excluding items from searches.

The Editor also gains improvements: more languages are supported via the syntax highlighting tool, including Perl, C#, Tex and CoffeeScript. Users can now halt a list or checklist using the [Shift] + [Return] keyboard shortcut, while previously completed tasks can now be unchecked.

Bear Pro users gain various export enhancements – code syntax in HTML, JPG and PDF exports, improvements in support for DOCX styles and preservation of modified/creation dates with certain formats, including TXT, DOCX and HTML.

Platform-specific improvements include Touch Bar support -- placing formatting options at the user’s fingertips -- on the newer MacBook Pro (or when using Touché).

Mac users can also drag notes to tags to label them and merge multiple notes. Also added is support for the TouchBar-like app Quadro, QuickLook and Firefox.

iOS users gain 3D Touch support for quickly previewing notes and attachments on iPhone 6S and 7, a new Bear web app extension to improve web clippings and support for haptic feedback. Siri can now also be used to read out all or part of a note.

You can download Bear 1.1 on Mac, iPhone or iPad now -- OS X 10.10 and iOS 9.0 or later is required. The app offers both free and Pro platforms, the latter costing $1.49 monthly or $14.99 annually.