How to write an article on your Apple Watch

Here’s how you can write any article using your Apple Watch: Open the Bear app, tap the microphone icon at the bottom right, and start dictating your article. Say punctuation marks as you speak. After each sentence, pause and select “Done” at the top right. To continue, tap “Append” and repeat until you finish.

The Bear app, recognized by the App Store with an Editor’s Choice award, stands out among other notes apps. Its Pro version ($29.99/year) syncs your Apple Watch dictations to your iPhone.

Once you are done dictating a sentence, reading it on your Apple Watch is hard. You can’t really see much of what you wrote there, much less edit it, and that makes the Apple Watch ideal to produce The Ugly First Draft.

Content marketing hero Ann Handley explained The Ugly First Draft in her book “Everybody Writes.” The idea is that you write a complete first version of your text no matter how bad it turns out before you start editing.

As we all know, if you edit as you go, you might never finish. On the other hand, once you have the entire text you can take your time to edit it, or you can ask somebody to be your editor—even ChatGPT.

In software terms, you have a minimum viable product. The key is to refine it to the desired quality.

At first, using my watch to write felt odd, like Buzz Lightyear logging mission reports. But then I realized that nobody pays any attention to what I’m muttering into my wrist.

People record voice messages while walking on the street and have entire conversations on speakerphone in public. In contrast, it takes just a moment to dictate a sentence into your watch and once you’re done, it’s there.

“There” in my case it’s my iPhone. There, I copy the text and paste it on Word, where I can work on it with all the editing tools I care to use. There are versions of the Bear app for iPad and Mac as well.

I asked Bear support about loading notes on Windows, and they said they are working on a web version of the app which will let you access your notes from your other computers.

Still, there are plenty of notes apps for the web and other computers. What makes the Bear app special is that it works well on Apple Watch.

For example, you can file your notes on your watch by dictating the word “hashtag” followed by the category you want a specific note under. Or you can start a note on your iPhone and finish it on your watch.

From what I can tell, the team behind the Bear app is small: 16 people at a company called Shiny Frog . I’m glad they took the Apple Watch seriously when much bigger companies don’t.

On the bright side, that means I can work on my ugly first drafts with less interruptions.

This was the second issue of Else, a weekly newsletter with alternative software reviews. I’ll be back next week with a review of the CVS website. Was this message forwarded? Subscribe!