Bear Markdown: Syntax and Export Guide

Bear markdown is CommonMark plus a handful of Bear-only marks: ~underline~, ==highlight==, [[wikilinks]], and #tags. Everything else you type in Bear is standard and travels cleanly. This guide lists Bear's syntax against standard Markdown, walks through exporting a note as .md, and shows exactly which elements survive when you open that file somewhere else.

How Bear Markdown Syntax Compares with Standard Markdown

The app's own FAQ says it follows the CommonMark specification, and for headings, emphasis, lists, code, quotes, and links that's true. The table below comes from Bear's Markdown FAQ and its tables and export pages, checked in September 2026.

Element	Bear syntax	Standard?	What happens elsewhere
Heading	# H1 to ###### H6	Yes	Renders
Bold	**bold**	Yes	Renders
Italic	_italic_	Yes	Renders
Strikethrough	~~struck~~	GFM extension	Renders on GitHub, Obsidian, most editors
Underline	~underline~	No, Bear only	Shows literal tildes, or strikethrough in some parsers
Highlight	==highlight==	No, Obsidian and a few others	Shows literal equals signs on GitHub
Inline code	`code`	Yes	Renders
Code block	Three backticks	Yes	Renders
Bullet list	- item or * item	Yes	Renders
Numbered list	1. item	Yes	Renders
Todo	- [ ] task	GFM extension	Renders as a checkbox on GitHub, Obsidian, this editor
Quote	> quoted	Yes	Renders
Separator	---	Yes	Renders as a horizontal rule
Link	[title](url)	Yes	Renders
Wikilink	[[Note name]]	No, Obsidian and Logseq share it	Shows literal brackets on GitHub
Footnote	[^1] and [^1]:	Extension	Renders on GitHub and in pandoc; not everywhere
Tag	#tag or #multi word#	No, Bear only	Shows as plain text
Table	Built with the table button	Standard pipe table on export	Renders

The single tilde for underline is the one that bites hardest. In GFM, ~text~ is strikethrough, so an underlined word in Bear can appear crossed out on GitHub. The Markdown underline guide covers the portable alternatives, and the Markdown text color post does the same for ==highlight==.

How Do You Write Markdown in Bear?

Bear renders marks inline as you type: the asterisks stay visible but fade, and the text between them turns bold. You can type the syntax directly, use the B/I/U button in the formatting bar, or use keyboard shortcuts. The Format Bar also removes a style: put the cursor in the styled text and toggle the style off.

# Lab notebook 11 Sep

Copper sample ~must~ be cleaned first. ==Do not skip.==

- [ ] Weigh sample A
- [x] Calibrate the probe
- [ ] Log the result in [[Conductivity table]]

Reference value: 401 W/m K.[^1] See [the datasheet](https://example.com/cu).

#lab/thermal #week 37#

[^1]: At 20 degrees C.

In Bear that note shows an underlined "must", a highlighted sentence, three checkboxes, a clickable wikilink, a footnote, and two tags (one nested, one multi-word). Tags can go anywhere, including inside headings and paragraphs, and \# escapes a hash you don't want turned into a tag.

One thing you won't find in Bear 2 is the Markdown compatibility mode toggle that older third-party guides describe. That setting belonged to Bear 1, which used its own Polar Bear syntax by default. The current FAQ describes CommonMark as the only mode, so a bear markdown note today is standard from the first keystroke, apart from the four marks listed above.

Nested styles work too: **_bold italic_** renders both. Bear's FAQ warns that not every Markdown app supports nested styles, which matches our experience with older renderers.

Tables are the exception to "just type it". Bear creates tables from the table button in the formatting bar, not from typed pipes, and the first row is always the bold header. From a cell's menu you can copy the whole table as Markdown, CSV, or HTML, and on export the table becomes a standard pipe table. The pipe syntax itself is in the Markdown table guide if you want to write it by hand elsewhere.

Bear Markdown on iPhone and iPad

The syntax is identical on iOS and iPadOS; what changes is how you reach it. The B/I/U button sits in the keyboard suggestions bar and opens the same formatting menu as the Mac, including the table button. Typing the marks directly works too. Sync between the phone and the Mac needs Pro, so on the free tier each device holds its own set of notes, and export is per device.

How Do You Export Bear Notes as Markdown?

Bear's export FAQ documents two paths, and both are free.

One note. Click the three-dot button in the top right of the note, choose Export, and pick a format. On iPhone and iPad the same button sits in the note's toolbar.

Every note. On the Mac, click Notes in the sidebar, press Cmd+A to select all, then File > Export notes (Shift+Cmd+S). Bear writes one file per note into the folder you choose, named after the note title.

The formats split by tier:

Format	Tier	Use it for
.md	Free	Any Markdown app, git, this editor
.txt	Free	Plain text with the marks stripped
.textbundle	Free	Markdown plus images in one package
.bearnote	Free	Bear-to-Bear transfer
.rtf	Free	Word processors
.html, .pdf, .docx, .jpg, .epub	Pro	Sharing with people who don't use Markdown

Two export options matter for portability. Keep tags during export (in preferences) decides whether #lab/thermal lines stay in the .md file. Leave it on if you plan to convert tags to another app's tag syntax, off if the file is going to a README. Convert wiki note links to HTML links applies to HTML export only, so [[Conductivity table]] stays as brackets in .md.

Images are the reason .textbundle exists. A TextBundle is a folder containing text.md, an info.json, and an assets/ directory, with images referenced as ![](assets/photo.jpg). iA Writer and Ulysses, the apps behind the format, open it directly; for Obsidian, copy text.md and the assets/ folder into the vault. The export FAQ only promises images inside TextBundle (and as base64 in Pro HTML export). Choose TextBundle for any note with photos or sketches, and check the folder before deleting anything in Bear.

Test an Exported Bear Note in a Standard Editor

Paste an exported note into the editor below to see what a CommonMark renderer does with it. The sample is the lab note from earlier. The GFM parser here reads the single-tilde underline as strikethrough, the highlight shows literal equals signs, and the wikilink shows its brackets. The footnote marker and its definition stay as plain text, because this editor does not render footnotes (GitHub does). Headings, task lists, links, and tags-as-text render as expected. That's the exact set of fixes you need before a Bear md file goes anywhere else.

Fixing the note takes four find-and-replace passes: ~word~ to <u>word</u> or plain emphasis, ==text== to <mark>text</mark> or bold, [[Note]] to [Note](note.md), and tags to a front-matter tags: list or a plain line. We prefer doing this in a text editor with regex rather than in Bear, so the original note stays untouched.

Moving Between Bear and Other Apps

Bear to Obsidian. Export everything as .textbundle if you have images, or .md if you don't, and drop the files into a vault. Wikilinks work unchanged because Obsidian uses the same [[ ]] syntax, and ==highlight== renders there too. Underline is the only mark to fix. Tags become Obsidian tags if you rewrite #week 37# to a single word such as #week-37; the Obsidian Markdown cheat sheet lists its tag rules.

Bear to GitHub or a docs site. Export .md, then fix underline, highlight, wikilinks, and tags as above. Footnotes and task lists render on GitHub as they are; a docs generator without footnote support will show [^1] literally, so check its extension list.

Another app to Bear. The FAQ has migration pages for Evernote, Apple Notes, Obsidian, Drafts, Day One, and UpNote, plus a general import page for .md and .textbundle files. Standard Markdown imports cleanly; Obsidian callouts and Notion's exported HTML need cleanup first.

The acknowledged limitation is the database itself. Your bear markdown notes live in SQLite, not as files, so there's no folder to point another app at. Every move out of Bear is an export, and edits made outside don't flow back. If you want notes as files on disk, the Markdown note taking app comparison lists the apps that work that way.

What Does Bear Cost and Which Platforms Does It Run On?

The app runs on macOS, iPhone, and iPad, and nowhere else; there's no Windows, Android, or web version. The free tier includes all editing, the five free export formats, and three themes. Bear Pro costs $2.99 a month or $29.99 a year after a 7-day trial, and one subscription covers every device on the same Apple ID.

Pro adds the things people upgrade for: iCloud sync between devices, encryption of individual notes with a password, and the HTML, PDF, DOCX, JPG, and ePub exports. It also unlocks more than two dozen themes and OCR search inside PDFs and images. If you only use Bear on one Mac, the free tier is complete.

Bear Markdown FAQ

Bear markdown is standard where it counts and non-standard in four places: underline, highlight, wikilinks, and tags. Export as .md or .textbundle, paste the result into the editor to see which marks need fixing, and you'll have a note that renders anywhere. Keep the original in Bear until the converted copy looks right, because the export is one-way.