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
bash
echo "Note content here" | grizzly create --title "My Note" --tag work grizzly create --title "Quick Note" --tag inbox < /dev/null
Open/read a note by ID
bash
grizzly open-note --id "NOTE_ID" --enable-callback --json
Append text to a note
bash
echo "Additional content" | grizzly add-text --id "NOTE_ID" --mode append --token-file ~/.config/grizzly/token
List all tags
bash
grizzly tags --enable-callback --json --token-file ~/.config/grizzly/token
Search notes (via open-tag)
bash
grizzly open-tag --name "work" --enable-callback --json
Options
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:
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)