Bear Notes
Use grizzly to create, read, and manage notes in Bear on macOS.
Requirements
- Bear app installed and running
- For some operations (add-text, tags, open-note --selected), a Bear app token (stored in
~/.config/grizzly/token)
Getting a Bear Token
For operations that require a token (add-text, tags, open-note --selected), you need an authentication token:
- Open Bear -> Help -> API Token -> Copy Token
- Save it:
echo "YOUR_TOKEN" > ~/.config/grizzly/token
Common Commands
Create a note
echo "Note content here" | grizzly create --title "My Note" --tag work
grizzly create --title "Quick Note" --tag inbox < /dev/nullOpen/read a note by ID
grizzly open-note --id "NOTE_ID" --enable-callback --jsonAppend text to a note
echo "Additional content" | grizzly add-text --id "NOTE_ID" --mode append --token-file ~/.config/grizzly/tokenList all tags
grizzly tags --enable-callback --json --token-file ~/.config/grizzly/tokenSearch notes (via open-tag)
grizzly open-tag --name "work" --enable-callback --jsonOptions
Common flags:
--dry-run- Preview the URL without executing--print-url- Show the x-callback-url--enable-callback- Wait for Bear's response (needed for reading data)--json- Output as JSON (when using callbacks)--token-file PATH- Path to Bear API token file
Configuration
Grizzly reads config from (in priority order):
- CLI flags
- Environment variables (
GRIZZLY_TOKEN_FILE,GRIZZLY_CALLBACK_URL,GRIZZLY_TIMEOUT) .grizzly.tomlin current directory~/.config/grizzly/config.toml
Example ~/.config/grizzly/config.toml:
token_file = "~/.config/grizzly/token"
callback_url = "http://127.0.0.1:42123/success"
timeout = "5s"Notes
- Bear must be running for commands to work
- Note IDs are Bear's internal identifiers (visible in note info or via callbacks)
- Use
--enable-callbackwhen you need to read data back from Bear - Some operations require a valid token (add-text, tags, open-note --selected)
