Bicycle For Your Mind
Making Bear Work With OperatorMono
I have been using Bear - Notes for iPhone, iPad and Mac for my notes and general writing.
Bear Editor Pref
Bear ships with the ability to use San Francisco, Avenir Next, Helvetica Neue, and Menlo. They are nice but I miss OperatorMono.
I must advice that the steps you need to take to manage this switch of fonts is a little weird. Most Mac users are used to choosing a font from a font list without much thought. This is different. This will need a dive into the innards of the application and some editing of files within the innards. So follow along carefully. The good news is that you don't have to be afraid. If you screw something up and Bear refuses to load. You can delete the application. Download it again from the App Store and you are ready to get to work.
First Step: Finding the File/s to Edit
Go to the Applications Folder. Find Bear. ⌃click (or right click) on the application.
Bear Show Package Contents
You are going to get a drop down menu. Choose, Show Package Contents. The Finder windows will show you the contents of Bear, the application. Click on Contents. Then on Resources.
Bear Font Themes
I didn't like the Menlo font. I didn't mind the others, but I didn't like the Menlo font at all. So, I decided to change the Menlo theme. You can choose any of the others you want. The System one was more complicated, but if you have come this far, you are willing to live on the edge. Go for it. Let me know how it worked out.
Second Step: Editing Menlo.theme
You have to hold on to the ⌥ key and drag the file Menlo.theme to the desktop. You can't drag it over. If you do, it makes an alias. You have to hold down the ⌥ key and drag. That makes a copy of the file on the desktop. Compress the file by ⌃Clicking on the file and choosing Compress "Menlo.theme" from the drop-down menu. This is your backup in case everything goes to hell. Now open Menlo.theme by again ⌃Clicking on the file and choosing Open With and a text editor from the drop-down menu. I chose CotEditor, any text editor will do.
Bear Menlo Theme
It is a plist file. It is a dressed up XML file. You can edit this in a text editor. A cursory search and I found three places which refer to the Menlo font.
Bear Menlo Theme Contents
I changed the references to Menlo to OperatorMono. I chose OperatorMono-Book for the paragraph and monospace font, and OperatorMono-Bold for the Title Font. I saved the file. You can use the name of whatever font you want in replacing Menlo. Make sure it is the actual name of the font file. I put in a space between Operator and Mono and that didn't work till I realized that the font file was OperatorMono.otf.
Replace the Original Menlo.theme
Take the edited Menlo.theme and drop it in the folder called Resources you got the file from originally. Overwrite the old file. You will be asked to authenticate this replacement. Type in your system password and you are ready to go.
Launch Bear. Enjoy your editor displaying your choice of font.
Caveats
Bear Post Switch
This is an unauthorized hack. The developers of Bear obviously do not endorse such aberrant behavior. I have been using the application for a week since the switch and everything is working out fine. I have not done any damage to the application or the cosmic order of things. Of course, this is not a hack which is going to last through an update. I will have to repeat this when Bear gets updated or the developer adds the ability to use our own fonts making this hack unnecessary.
In the meantime, I am enjoying Bear with OperatorMono.
macosxguru at the gmail thingie