Moving your dataImportBearMigrationWikilinks
Import from Bear
Bear Settings → Backup → JSON export. [[wikilinks]] are converted into page mentions automatically after the import.
about 4 min Updated May 11, 2026
Export from Bear
1
Open Bear settings
On macOS: the menu bar → Bear → Settings (Preferences in older versions). On iOS: ⓘ at the top left → Backups.
2
Backup tab → Backup all notes
Click 'Data → Backup all notes' and you are offered .bear2bk or JSON. Choose JSON.
TIP.bear2bk is a Bear-only backup that Tabple cannot read — it has to be JSON.
3
Choose where to save it
Save it to Downloads or the desktop. The file name is usually of the form bear-export-YYYY-MM-DD.json.
Import into Tabple
1
Settings → Import notes
Go to /settings/import and pick a project.
2
Choose the file on the Bear card
Press 'Choose file' on the Bear card, or drag a .json file onto it.
NOTEA progress bar appears after the upload; expect roughly 30 seconds per 1,000 notes.
3
Check the automatic wikilink conversion
After the import, a '[[page name]]' pattern is turned into a page mention chip (@page) automatically whenever a page with the same name exists.
TIPThe conversion runs as a batch after the import finishes — matching happens once every page has been created.
Conversion rules
- One note → one Wiki page. The path of the first tag (
work/clientA) maps to the page tree (folders) — the same structure as the Bear sidebar titlefirst; if absent, extracted from the first line ofbody(leading#stripped); if neither exists, 'Untitled'- The body (recognized under any of the
body,content, ortextkeys) is converted from markdown to editor JSON - Automatic [[wikilink]] conversion — kept as text during the markdown conversion, then replaced with a page mention chip by the import's 2-pass title matching. If no match is found, the original text stays
creationDate/modificationDate→ preserved as the page's created and modified times- Tags that are not in the body are preserved as a
#tagparagraph at the very top of the body
Cautions
- What the import does not handle today — Bear's editor appearance settings are not preserved. If a note has several tags it is placed only under the first one (a Tabple page belongs in one place only).
- Images in the body are converted according to the behavior of the markdown-to-editor converter — external URLs are kept as they are, and since data URLs have no separate R2 upload path, a large base64 blob can be left inline in the body.
- There is no official Bear JSON export, so the output format of community conversion tools is assumed — both a
notesarray and a root array are recognized. - A note that is still syncing may be left out of the export, so wait a moment before backing up.