Bean for Mac
Fast and uncluttered word processor.
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Bean overview
Bean is lean, fast, and uncluttered. If you get depressed at the thought of firing up MS Word or OpenOffice, try Bean.
If you use Text Edit but have to jump through hoops just to get a word count or change the margins, try Bean.
If you're pining away for Write Now-esque simplicity or just want a low-pressure writing environment, try Bean.
Features:
- A live word count
- A Get Info panel for in-depth statistics
- A zoom-slider to easily change the view scale
- An Inspector panel with lots of sliders
- Date-stamped backups
- Autosaving
- A page layout mode
- An alternate colors option (e.g., white text on blue)
- An option to show invisible characters (tabs, returns, spaces)
- Selection of text by text style, paragraph style, color, etc.
- A floating windows option (like Stickies has)
- Easy to use menus
- Remembers cursor postion (excluding .txt, .html, .webarchive formats)
- All of Cocoa's good stuff (dictionary, word completion, etc.)
- Please keep in mind that Bean is betaware
What’s new in version 3.7.0
Changes
- View > Alternate Colors (for example, light text on dark background) can now be used when View > Layout is selected. To turn this off, go to Bean > Settings… (or Preferences…) > View tab, and under Alternate display colors, deselect the Layout view item.
- Format > Document > Facing Pages enables mirrored margins and differing headers/footers for odd and even pages. A larger inner margin (one that alternates between odd and even pages) is sometimes required for book publishing and book binding. Alternating headers can be used, for instance, to put an author’s name at the top of the left page and a book’s title at the top of the right page.
- Format > Document > Right to Left adjusts a document’s pages, columns and all text to flow right to left. It is intended for use with right to left languages. Press the option key while selecting Right to Left to retain the original (and potentially mixed) text direction.
- The new menu items under Format > Writing Direction allow for finer control when mixing left to right and right to left languages. Use the menu items to adjust the direction of individual paragraphs and of smaller selections (spans smaller than a paragraph) of text.
- The menu item View > Show Layout / Hide Layout is now View > Layout and has a checkmark when selected.
Bugfixes
- File > Show in Finder is now only enabled for saved documents (20240424-1).
- Fixed a problem where the zoom slider control might not update upon zoom in and out (20240425-1).
- File > Revert To Saved does a better job reverting document settings (20240425-2).
- Fixed a regression that could cause page layout to fail after the first page (20240425-3).
- File > Page Setup now works properly with Edit > Undo.
- Addressed a problem where macOS 14 Sonoma might fail to display lines of text in page layout mode (FB13758160, 20240511-1).
- Fixed a problem where background color could be incorrectly applied when editing links (20240505-1).
- Known issue: The File > Open file selector sheet displays recently saved and closed documents as not selectable (FB13758070). The problem appears in other apps under macOS 14 Sonoma.
Bean for Mac
Free
In English
Version 3.7.0
What users say about Bean
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(247 Reviews of Bean)
Comments
User Ratings
Aug 1 2023
Version: 3.6.0
like the old days, before bloat was born. Trim, muscular, go-to-it. (Nice Icon too. Stands out in the dock.)
Dec 21 2022
Version: 3.5.0
My default .rtf (and more) editor for a decade now! It also has the ability to edit .webarchive files! Whenever I need to keep note of anything I use it. Thanks to the dev!
Aug 30 2021
Version: 3.4.5
Why does Bean always swallow the first letter of a word at the beginning of a sentence? Bad.
Nov 28 2020
Version: 3.3.4
A lovely app. Feels good to see free software that's not actively developed anymore, undergo bug fixes and compatibility updates.
Bean has been very reliable so far. The UI elements are beautiful and worth gracing a Mac screen and running under the delightful macOS / OS X / Mac OS X; the app has support for tabs; compatibility with Word, etc. appears to be close to impeccable.
The app, like many a quality old Mac software & all verisons of OS X, has also a nostalgic value, as it is over 13 years old. For us old Mac OS X aficionados, the nostalgic factor isn't unimportant, either (I find that to date there's no OS UI that comes even remotely close to comparing to Mac OS X (and now macOS) in beauty and user experience polish, with a possible exception of the Elementary OS, the second handsomest OS I know of).
Sep 29 2020
Version: 3.3.3
OK, it's not my first comment about Bean. But I feel every time astonished of how an application yet almost perfect (fast, uncluttered, with all necessary features to write almost any text, available also in my language) has still regular updates with not only bug fixes or compatibility maintenance but also with changes and features, while "no longer being actively developed". I think a lot of developers of still "actively developed" apps should learn from the creator of Bean. Thanks for the great work, I say it once again, 90% of the time I need to write a text on my Mac, I find myself opening Bean (and I have actually installed at least other 4 word processors and two or three text editors).
