Migration: From Bear

Bear stores notes in its own database with a Markdown-flavored editor. Migrating means exporting to standard Markdown, relocating image attachments, and deciding how to translate Bear's tag-only model to Binderus's folders-or-tags choice.

Step 1 — Export from Bear

1. In Bear, select all notes (Cmd A in the note list).
2. Right-click → Export Notes.
3. Choose Markdown as the format.
4. Check "Export images attached to notes" so image files come along.
5. Pick a destination folder; Bear writes one .md per note plus an assets/ subfolder for images.

Step 2 — Move into your vault

cd ~/Documents
mv ~/Desktop/BearExport MyVault
# or, if you already have a vault, copy contents in
cp -r ~/Desktop/BearExport/* ~/Documents/MyVault/

Open Binderus, point the data directory at the destination folder. Notes appear immediately.

Step 3 — Reorganize tags vs folders

Bear's organization is flat — every note lives at one level, organized only by tags (#project/work, #journal, etc.). Binderus supports both folders and tags. You have three choices:

1. Stay tag-only. Leave notes flat in the vault root. Use #tag hierarchy with slash-separated tags (#project/work) for nesting. Sidebar → Flat List view in Settings → General → Sidebar View.
2. Reorganize into folders. Move notes by tag into matching folders: #journal → journal/, #project/work → projects/work/. Tags can stay in the body for redundancy.
3. Hybrid. Top-level tags become folders; sub-tags stay as tags inside notes. Most parents-of-many-tags users land here.

Step 4 — Image links

Bear's exporter writes images to assets/ with relative links like ![](assets/image.png). Binderus reads these as-is. If you want them under _images/YYYY-MM-DD/ like Binderus's native paste flow:

• Move assets/ contents into _images/legacy-bear/
• Update links with a sed pass: find . -name "*.md" -exec sed -i '' 's|assets/|_images/legacy-bear/|g' {} +

Optional — most users leave the structure Bear gave them.

Bear → Binderus syntax differences

Quick fix for Bear's highlight syntax:

find . -name "*.md" -exec sed -i '' -E 's/::([^:]+)::/==\1==/g' {} +

What doesn't carry over

• Bear-Pro features — themes, OCR. Binderus ships its own themes (free); OCR is in the optional plugin lane.
• Note locking with Touch ID / Face ID. Closest equivalent: encrypted storage backend with a passphrase + auto-lock.
• Bear's "Edit Information" panel (read time, char count). Binderus shows this in the status bar at the bottom of the editor.
• iCloud sync between Bear devices. Replace with any sync provider — see Sync.