Bear + Safari Split View on iPad: The Complete Guide

To use Bear and Safari in Split View on iPad, open Safari, swipe up slightly to reveal the Dock, then drag the Bear icon to the left or right edge of the screen until the display divides into two panels.

Once you have both apps open side by side, you have a genuinely powerful reading and writing environment. Safari shows the source; Bear holds your thinking. There is no copying text into a separate document later, no switching back and forth, no losing your place in an article. The two apps complement each other because one is built entirely around consuming web content and the other is built entirely around capturing and organizing text.

Why Bear and Safari work well together

The combination earns its screen space in a few specific situations:

• Active research and note-taking. When you are reading a long article, report, or documentation page in Safari, you can highlight key passages and write your own commentary directly in Bear without leaving the page. Your notes stay contextual rather than becoming a disconnected list.
• Writing with references open. If you are drafting something in Bear — an essay, a report, a newsletter — and need to verify facts, check dates, or pull exact wording from a source, Safari is right there. You read, confirm, and keep writing without breaking your flow.
• Building a reading log or knowledge base. Open a Bear note dedicated to a topic, then browse related articles in Safari. Each time something is worth keeping, you paste the relevant excerpt and add a quick thought. Over a session you end up with a structured note rather than a pile of browser tabs.

How to set it up with Splicon

Opening Split View manually every time takes more steps than it should. Splicon solves this by turning any two-app combination into a single tap on your Home Screen, complete with a custom icon that shows both apps side by side.

If you haven't downloaded it yet, grab it here: Download Splicon free from the App Store

Once you have it:

1. Open Splicon and search for Bear and Safari. Select them as your pair. Splicon pulls in the real app icons so you can see exactly what the combined icon will look like.
2. Choose a split style and generate the icon. Pick whether you want Bear on the left or Safari on the left, then export the finished icon and save it to your Photos library.
3. Open the Shortcuts app and create a new shortcut. Add an "Open App" action, set it to open Bear in Split View with Safari, then tap the shortcut settings and choose "Add to Home Screen." When prompted for an icon, select the image you saved from Splicon.
4. Add the shortcut to your Home Screen. Place it wherever you want — next to Bear, on a dedicated research page, or in a widget stack.

From that point on, one tap launches both apps already arranged the way you want them.

A few tips once you're set up

Bear supports drag-and-drop, so you can select text in Safari and drag it straight into a Bear note rather than copying and pasting. If you use Bear's tagging system, create a tag like #research or #reading before your session so notes from that sitting stay grouped together. On the Safari side, Reader Mode cuts out navigation clutter and makes long articles much easier to read in a narrow Split View column.

The Bear and Safari pairing works because both apps stay out of each other's way. They do one thing well, and together they cover the full loop from finding information to doing something useful with it.